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Politics & Government

Town Supervisor, Council Candidates Debate

The four candidates for Orangetown Town Council and two contenders for Town Supervisor candidates met in a debate sponsored by the Our Town Wednesday in the Orangetown Town Hall.

With less than three weeks until Nov. 8 elections, the Our Town hosted a debate and candidates forum Wednesday at the Orangetown Town Hall for town and county candidates.

Candidates for Rockland County Sheriff, Rockland County Legislature and candidates running unopposed for other positions were allowed to get up and make statements as to why they should be voted into office, but no questions were asked to them. The main portion of the evening, however, were two debates.

One featured the four candidates for two open seats on Orangetown Town Council: Democrats Elijah Reichlin-Melnick and Robert Dell and Republicans Paul Valentine and Tom Morr. The other featured the two candidates for Town Supervisor: Republican incumbent Paul Whalen and Democratic challenger Andrew Stewart.

The debate, which was moderated by Our Town founder Arthur Aldrich, was made up of questions by the Our Town staff, as well as audience questions submitted that night at the venue.

The four candidates actually all agreed on a number of topics. All said having department heads make cuts for their own departments was a step in the right direction in terms of budget cuts. They all agreed that all villages in Orangetown should be given a fair share of the tax revenue, which could be helped by better correspondence between the town and villages.

“There is a lack of communication between the villages and Orangetown,” Dell said. “I want to establish a liaison to represent the board. It would be a good start to open up lines of communication.”

When project labor agreements were brought up, some candidates said it’s a case-by-case basis on whether to use them or that it should follow what the taxpayers want. Valentine, however, came out passionately against PLAs.

“The PLA is un-American,” Valentine said, adding that the town board shouldn’t be picking sides, and instead should do what’s best for the entire community opposed to a select group of it.

Valentine was once again on his own when the other three candidates all agreed that the town should keep funding non-profits. Valentine said while they’re great organizations, he’s not a big proponent of the town board taking taxpayer money and deciding where to divvy it up to. Reichlin-Melnick said giving the money to non-profits is taxpayer money well spent.

“These agencies do great good,” he said, adding they can reduce the cost for other organizations by taking kids off the street and out of trouble, amongst other things.

They all said they could do away with benefits for part-time town employees, although Moore said judges and attorneys for the town should keep their benefits.

The biggest disagreement of the night, however, came in the closing statements, when Reichlin-Melnick accused Morr of buying his way onto the Republican, Independent and Conservative lines. Even though he had given his closing statement already, Aldrich gave Morr a brief moment to respond to the accusations.

“Every candidate that gets the Conservative line, every candidate that gets the Independent line gives them $1,000,” Morr said. “It’s not for them to go out to dinner with when they go to Florida. They spend it on advertising.”

Reichlin-Melnick added he wanted more transparency in the government, and would want to send a tax receipt to taxpayers in the town breaking down what their taxes are going toward.

In the supervisor debate, Stewart also supported more transparency. After Whalen said the numbers he saw earlier this week show that for the first time in more than 30 years, Orangetown would have a less than two percent tax increase for consecutive years, Stewart took issue with it. He said the less than two percent numbers don’t factor in the refund to Pfizer, which would bump the tax increase up to . Whalen said that increase was from the previous administration, not his.

One issue Whalen came down hard on was providing town employees with cars, which he said he’d like done away with. He said he has a car from the town, but would much rather have a car of his own choosing that he could just add a police radio in and get reimbursed for mileage. Stewart agreed, saying that would also be a good way of keeping a record of where employees are going during the day. Whalen actually asked to respond to Stewart’s point, which led to Stewart to ask Whalen if he knew Stewart agreed with him. Whalen did, and wanted to use the time to tell Stewart to organize a petition to get rid of cars for town employees, and he’d support it.

A few questions at the two candidates dealt with the environment, and any environmental legislation they think should be brought into Orangetown. Stewart said he’d like to see more energy efficiency in all future developments, possibly legislation about leaf blowers not only because of the noise pollution but because they pollute the air as well. He said there were other items  he couldn’t get to in the allotted time.

“It’s not anything grandiose,” he said. “They’re small things that can improve the quality of life.”

Whalen said he’d be willing to listen to any and every suggested legislation that could help the environment and improve Orangetown. He also said that since so many of the town council candidates were in favor of cutting benefits, that could be the money used to help the environment.

“We could take the benefit money to lower energy cost,” he said. “We can be a model.”

The other speakers at the event were:

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  • Orangetown Superintendent of Highways candidate Jim Dean, running unopposed
  • Rockland County Sheriff candidates Lou Falco, Tim O'Neill and Matt Brennan
  • Rockland County Legislature District 10 candidates Harriet Cornell and York Kleinhandler
  • Rockland County Legislature District 16 candidates Eliot Tozer and Andrew Wiley, who will be on the ballot with incumbent John Murphy
  • Rockland County Legislature District 17 candidates Nancy Low-Hogan and Guy DeVincenzo
  • District Attorney candidate Thomas Zugibe, running unopposed
  • Orangetown Town Justice candidate Pat Loftus, running unopposed

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