In 2012, the New York State Comptroller declared that the Town of Ramapo was the most fiscally stressed township in the State. At that time, Ramapo had racked up a worst-in-the-state rating of 70.8% for fiscal stress. The Supervisor’s response to the economic crisis was both simple and unnerving: The Comptroller’s numbers must be wrong. And then St. Lawrence turned the lights off in fiscal year 2013 by failing to file the Town’s financial report in time to be included in the State’s evaluation of all the townships. Unfortunately, that had very little restorative impact on the numbers, which continued to worsen as the economic stress increased. Now in the most recent numbers from the State, Ramapo has increased another 7% for a new all-time high.


The State uses a number of environmental indicators along with the revenues and costs to make these predictions. These environmental indicators are even more depressing than the tax-revenue shortfalls. Here’s what the state sees in Ramapo:


Where do we go from here? Well, it seems that Christopher St. Lawrence and the lapdogs on board as council members are completely comfortable with their strategy for the best way out of a deep hole–just keep digging. Yesterday, at the Ramapo Town Board meeting, St. Lawrence, Brendel Logan-Charles, and Pat Withers voted to spend $350,000 on a full-size ice rink to be installed out at that great sucking money pit called the Provident Ballpark. Add the additional costs for refrigeration units and generators and another half-million taxpayer dollars will soon be shoveled into the abyss. Guess they forgot about the losses from last year’s ice-skating debacle at the Park.