This letter from Ian Diamond was published in The Journal News on Sunday February 26.
“When I was growing up, my family’s vernacular was peppered with Yiddish words and phrases. Whenever standard English failed to capture the nuance of a situation, we defaulted to Yiddish. When I read about developer Joseph Brachfeld’s plans, terms like “nerve,” “audacity,” and “gall” were inadequate. The suggestion that the state should pay for expansions to the congested corridor of Route 59 in Monsey? Once again, Yiddish rode to the rescue: “Chutzpah.”
Brachfeld and his spokesman Ryan Karben suggest that the taxpayers should pay to mitigate the mess that real estate developers created and profited from. The developers and their obliging Ramapo politicians overdeveloped the area and created bottlenecks and intolerable traffic. Now they want the taxpayers to pick up the check for infrastructure that will pave the way for more development, which means more profits for developers and Realtors, and more overcrowding.
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Who suffers most from this cycle of unsustainable growth? The residents. Now that the area is populated beyond its carrying capacity the developers feel entitled to ask the hardworking taxpayers to fix the chaos they created. That is chutzpah.
Tell your elected officials that you don’t want real estate developers’ hands in your pockets. Tell them enough is enough.
Why don’t the developers pony up some of their profits to improve the quality of life for the people of Ramapo?”
Ian Diamond
Sloatsburg