Monday, August 16, 2010
by Christine Yeres
The town board’s regular, televised, meeting followed the joint town board and school board work session discussion of Chappaqua Crossing. After announcements by the supervisor came a public comment period during which several residents who had witnessed the work session addressed the board on the subject of Chappaqua Crossing. Their comments follow.
Revenue from commercial versus residential
David Yeres came to the microphone. He noted that according to the developer’s projections of revenue to the town [in the executive summary of the final environmental impact statement, or FEIS], “the net incremental revenue that will come from commercial development represents 90% of all net incremental revenue. Put another way, less than 10% of the revenue from Chappaqua Crossing would come from the residential [component of the project] if [the developer] gets what he’s asking for.”
The town board, Yeres continued, “should make it a very high priority to be sure the residential component will not act as a disincentive to the developer to promote the commercial component of the project. Several years of construction [of a residential component] will make the commercial property more difficult to lease up. Finally, consider whether, if the developer has to go to the market for credit lines for the residential, it will be at the expense of the commercial, and therefore detrimental to the town. Money to the town comes from the commercial property. Consider the proposal from the point of view of whether any residential will detract from that.”
Question of recusal
Next, Michael Mullarkey came to the microphone. He asked town board member John Buckley, a real estate agent, “whether you’re considering recusing yourself from consideration of this issue [of Chappaqua Crossing].”
“That issue has been raised,” Buckley responded. “I’ve taken it to counsel [to the town board, Clinton Smith], he evaluated it and said ‘You do not need to recuse yourself from this issue.’ ” Supervisor Barbara Gerrard interjected, “There is no conflict.”
“There still may be a moral conflict,” countered Mullarkey. “It would seem to me that if a family walks into any real estate broker [and that broker says] “I can put you in a condo for $7,000 in taxes rather than $30,000 [for a single family home], the family will do a quick calculation that they’ll end up saving $200,000 in 12 years. There certainly is a moral issue here. You may choose to ignore it, but I will not.”
“I manage assets for a pension fund,” Mullarkey continued. “If I buy a security based on projected changes that are going to occur and I pay extra money because of the optionality involved in the probability that the changes occur and the changes don’t occur, then my clients and I lose money. And for the life of me, given the analysis that was given publicly by [school board member] Gregg Bresner [in the preceding work session], given the fact that the residential development of Reader’s Digest can actually wreck the school system, I don’t understand this drift toward changing the zoning on the Reader’s Digest property.”
“It seems to me,” Mullarkey concluded, “that Summit Greenfield bought an asset; there were rules on the asset they speculated they could get the town board to change; changing the rules is detrimental to the town at large—certainly to the 43% that have children, but particularly detrimental to the 57% that do not have children.”
“This is not a Q and A,” responded Gerrard. Town board member Michael Wolfensohn interjected, “Mr. Bresner has just given us this information tonight; we will take it all in and we will not ignore him or what the school board has said.” To this Mullarkey responded, “Bresner published his letter in NewCastleNOW weeks ago. Read the comments of parents of children who are in the schools. If you folks were on top of this you would have known the numbers before this meeting.”
Town-wide revaluation, condo and single-family
Betty Weitz came to the microphone and asked the board, “If one of the alternatives proposed is a revaluation of the entire town, would that mean that condominiums would be taxed as single family houses?”
“Let me clarify,” responded Barbara Gerrard. “This has nothing to do with Reader’s Digest. The board has been looking at this issue [of a town-wide revaluation] especially because of the significant imbalance in taxation on the West End of town, but it’s an issue for the entire town as well as for the county. On September 7 [the next town board meeting] we will discuss whether, under the Homestead Option, to tax all dwellings at full rate, rather than on hypothetical rental value [as condos are now taxed]. I asked the school board for a recommendation on whether they would like that to happen.”
“This puzzles me,” responded Weitz. “People who bought condos, it seems to me, had a contract with the town; they bought on the basis of condo taxes and the town [would consider] breaching its contract with them. But you are willing to change the contract with Summit Greenfield by allowing them to change the zoning for their financial benefit to residential zoning. You would be breaching a contract with one group of people to satisfy another group of people who wish to breach theirs. Is that fair?”
“We’re not going to do that, but are considering that,” responded Gerrard.
Financial stability of the developer
Ray Potter came forward to address the board. “You’re looking at a lot of items,” he said. “Here’s one more to take a look at. I’m in commercial real estate. Look at the financial stability of Summit Greenfield. Like a lot of [other entities] in 2009 and 2010, Summit Greenfield may have loan modification issues with their current lenders. I would hate, after all this angst in the community, to see you get something approved, have it get half way done, and then [see the developer] run out of money and have an eyesore. Whether you believe [the property should be] commercial, residential, or have a component of both, a look at this may shed some light on which path to take.”
__________________________
From NCNOW’s archives: For coverage of Chappaqua Crossing from June 2010 to present, with commentary from readers, click HERE.
For NCNOW’s complete coverage of Chappaqua Crossing, dating from 2007, click HERE.
Copyright 2012 NewCastleNOW.org