Campaign
Ethics and Integrity?
How can Candidate
Feld be a “reformer” when her campaign uses dirty tricks?
For example, voters recently received a false postcard intentionally
designed to appear as though it came from Senator Oppenheimer when
it did not.
The Westchester
County Fair Campaign Practices Committee reviewed the post card,
adn found it to be misleading to the average voter. The Committee
also explained that the candidate is responsible for literature
prepared in her name.
Click here
to read the Fair Campaign
Practices Committee Report and also the Sound And Town Report
news article titled Feld
Held Accountable for Misleading Mailer.
How can Candidate
Feld be a “reformer” when her campaign literature makes
gross distortions of her record? Voters recently received a flyer
that made these flatly inaccurate claims:
| Feld
Campaign Claim |
Fact |
"created
waterfront environmental trail” |
This project
was substantially funded when Feld became mayor. Planning was
in the works for years. |
“established
recycling in schools and businesses” |
Recycling
in schools and businesses and homes in Larchmont was underway
long before Feld became Mayor. |
“spearheaded
flood mitigation and infrastructure improvements’ |
Thousands
of dollars of grant funds had been awarded for storm water runoff
improvements before Feld became mayor, but nothing has been
done. No infrastructure improvements have been done so far. |
“established
farmer’s market” |
Before
Feld became mayor, permission was granted to a company to organize
a farmers' market at the train station. |
“ardent
environmentalist” |
When it
has mattered, Feld has cut corners in environmental protection.
Click
here for more. |
“surplus
of $2.3 million” |
The correct
figure is $2.1 million. But Larchmont has maintained a surplus
reserve of around $2 million for more than a decade. The surplus
has not changed significantly since Feld became mayor. |
“economic
development” |
Feld has
done nothing about economic development. She promised to improve
the business district around the railroad. But nothing has been
done but re-submitting a grant application written five years
before. |
“entered
a public private partnership to decrease airplane noise” |
This
vote took place before Feld became mayor. Read the news
article about the meeting.
The Village
Board voted to appropriate $15,000 to help the Quiet Skies
Committee of WRAIN, a private voluntary organization, to advocate
for airplaine noise reduction.
No actual
reductions in airplane noise have been accomplished. |
A
major campaign consultant for the Feld campaign is Stevens,
Reed, Curcio and Potholm which ran the Swift Boat attack
ads in the 2004 presidential election. According to the
campaign's July and October expenditure reports filed with the State
Board of Elections, this firm (or a related firm at the same address)
has been paid $214,961 for television ads.
Fiscal
Reform and Property Tax Control?
When Feld says
she's for legislation to cap annual local school tax increases,
shouldn't she also honestly disclose that she flunked her own test
in two of her three budgets as Larchmont mayor?
While Feld
says she's for capping school tax increases at 4% or 120% of the
CPI, she doesn't disclose her own village tax increase for FY 2006-2007
of 4.5%, and this year's increase of 5%. As mayor - she exceeded
both the 4% limit and the CPI cap.
Candidate Feld
is saying: "Do as I say not as I do!"
Furthermore,
in those years, the rate increases for nearby Village of Mamaroneck
were about a half-percent lower. Mayor Feld claims to be a fiscal
reformer, but instead she was a tax-and-spender.
And the "Albany
made me do it" excuse doesn't work. Let's study the numbers. For
the most recent Larchmont budget approved in May, the typical "Albany
mandate" target - employee benefits - actually declined. The
big increase - accounting for about 2% of the tax increase - was
in the "Contingency Account" which went from $119,000 to $260,000.
Albany
didn't mandate this expensive plan. Feld hatched this plan on her
own.
So Feld flunks
two tests for an Albany reformer. She's not a fiscal reformer and
she's not candid with the voters about her own record.
Here's some
examples of lack of candor about her financial record:
- Why does
she not tell you that she increased property taxes over 15% in
her two years-plus as mayor of Larchmont?
- Why does
she not tell you that in earlier years, as a village trustee,
she voted for increases of 6.5%, 8.5% and 7.7%?
- Why was
there such a huge boost in the “Contingency Account,”
which more than doubled from $119,000 to $260,000?
- How can
she profess to be in favor of lower taxes when, just as energy
prices went through the roof, and local people lost their jobs,
she personally chose a paid fire chief, whose cost will now be
about $175,000 a year, and added new paid firefighters, while
repelling the Village’s volunteer firefighters?
- When no
union in Larchmont had received a 4% raise in living memory, much
less a cash stipend, she gave the paid firefighters a contract
with 4% annual increases and also gave them $3,500 extra for doing
inspections the firefighters were supposed to be doing already.
- How can
salary costs in Larchmont’s “new” fire department
be almost 33% higher than for the Town of Mamaroneck, which is
almost five times the geographic size of Larchmont, and has almost
twice as many residents?
- How is it
that she now has two expensive co-heads of the Public Works Department
for its 15 employees, when there had always been only one?
- How does
it reduce property taxes to increase spending on consultants by
40% during her term?
- Why does
Larchmont still not have an engineer on staff? She complained
about this in 2006.
- Why has
the salary cost for a Village Treasurer almost doubled to $150,000?
Cooperation
with other Munipalities to Save Money?
How can Feld
claim municipal cooperation when she ended the 25 year practice
of Larchmont sharing a Treasurer with the Town of Mamaroneck? This
year Feld hired that person for the Village only, effectively tripling
Larchmont’s cost for that employee - from about $50,000 to
$150,000.
How can Candidate
Feld profess cooperation when she rejected the idea of consolidating
the Larchmont fire department with the Town of Mamaroneck, which
would have saved residents somewhere between $400,000 and $1,000,000?
Instead she hired a paid fire chief that costs residents $175,000
annually.
Today Larchmont
Village spends $400,000 more - that's 33% more - on paid firefighter
salaries than the Town of Mamaroneck Fire District, which protects
almost twice the people and property and almost five times the space.
You can read
more about this at FeldFiasco.com.
