The Ossining GOP has a new leader, and an bold agenda

I am honored to accept this appointment as chairman of the Ossining Town Republican Committee.

Four years ago, Peter Tripodi knocked on my door, campaigning for town council. At the time I was an intern for Ossining Supervisor Catherine Borgia (D) and, as such, was caught off guard by Pete’s enthusiasm, his passion, and his unrelenting drive to better Ossining and to reign in government excess. It was a remarkable contrast: there was Borgia, who wasted away taxpayer time and resources actively managing Sandy Galef’s campaign during her nominal “working hours,” and then there was Pete, a Republican willing to work hard for our town. Awoken, I never returned to Borgia’s office. And had I not met Pete that day, I would never have retained my interest in local politics.

That was four years ago. This year, Ossining residents are faced with a choice—whether to allow government bureaucrats to expand, to dramatically expand, the tax base and provide the government with hundreds of millions of dollars of additional, taxable property valuations, or whether to vote for John Perillo, Mike Milner, and Aaron Spring, and choose to put an end to the Total Town Revaluation and to demand accountability and fiscal restraint from our government.

I believe that Ossining residents will reject the reassessment. As chairman, from now until election day, my primary mission will be to inform Ossining residents that they do in fact have a choice with regard to the reassessment. Ossining residents deserve a choice, because we’ve seen the alternative.

In Scarsdale, which completed its version of our “Total Town Revaluation” last year, their reassessment added over $1.1 billion in taxable value to the property rolls. $1.1 billion! That’s an increase of 19% in just one year. And this isn’t coming from some Republican politician or some anonymous blogger—this is straight from a January 26, 2015 article published in the New York Times.

The Democrats say they won’t tax this new market, but we know better. We know that every opportunity government has to increase taxes, every opportunity the government has to surreptitiously raise revenue, ten times out of ten, the government will take that opportunity. You know how the saying goes: “if you give a mouse a cookie, the Democrats are gonna tax you the hell out of Westchester.”

The Democrats have the audacity to suggest that their proposal will be “revenue-neutral.” The Democrats in Scarsdale told their residents the same thing; today we know that that was a lie. Even if the reassessment were revenue-neutral for the one year, 2016, the year of implementation, the town will take in a windfall in 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020... for every following year to come the government will collect more in taxes, significantly more, than if we were to stop the property tax reassessment.

As chairman I will work, with diligence and dedication, to build an organization strong enough to take our message, our vision for Ossining, door-to-door to as many residents as possible. And, together, we can kill the property tax reassessment.

Some of you might be interested in what I believe. I believe that you and I have a moral obligation to hold the line—to never give an inch to Goliath government—to forever retain faith in the virtue of the individual over the collective—to, to quote the USMA Cadet Prayer, “choose the harder right, over the easier wrong.” The easier path is to leave Ossining. The easier path is to say, “enough of high taxes, I’m moving to Jersey.” Or to Pennsylvania. Or to Florida.

For our organization, the easier path would be to cease to exist. Today we hold no seats on the Town Board, and we haven’t held a seat since Peter Tripodi decided against running for reelection. We haven’t held the Supervisor’s office in decades, we have a dramatic disadvantage in voter registration, and, this year, thanks to disingenuous yet enthusiastic Democrats always eager for litigation, thanks to a partisan judge and a partisan court, our candidates won’t even be on the ballot on the Republican Party line. The easier path would be for our organization to close.

But we choose the harder right.

We choose Ossining.

And, this year, on November 3rd, I’m confident that Ossining will choose to vote for John Perillo, Michael Milner, and Aaron Spring, all running on the Conservative party line, and all endorsed by the Ossining Town Republican Committee.