Pols Scrap over Trump Park Signs

Donald Trump donated 436 acres of land in Yorktown and Putnam Valley to the state in 2006 after he was unable to build a golf course there.

The donation of the land, which he bought for $2 million and valued at $100 million, was announced at an event which Phil Reisman of The Journal News said included a catering tent, bottles of Trump Ice-brand water and a TV crew.

Trump got a tax write-off. The land never became a park, but it got named as if it had, with signs for Donald J. Trump State Park along the Taconic Parkway and at entrances.

At one point the billionaire threatened to sue to get the land back because the state wasn’t using it as a park (he hadn’t given any money for its upkeep and it was a victim of budget cuts during the Great Recession) but that went nowhere.

“And all these years later, those huge Trump signs remain. In a way they are indicative of the Trump strategy, which is to loudly tout the brand and give little of actual value in return,” Reisman wrote in a July column in The Journal News.

The signs along the Taconic stopped being just an historical anomaly and started being an irritant to some when Trump began running for president.

Now local politicians are facing off along party lines, according to the Putnam Daily Voice.

A letter from a Brooklyn Democrat to Gov. Andrew Cuomo asks for the park to be renamed because Trump’s campaign is inimical to New York values. (Perhaps State Sen. Daniel Squadron was tired of looking at the signs to a nonexistent park while driving back and forth to Albany.)

State Sen. Terrence Murphy (R-Yorktown) took immediate umbrage, saying it’s the Democrats’ fault the park was closed in the first place.

Assemblyman Steve Katz (R-Yorktown) called the proposal an absurd political sideshow.

Assemblywoman Sandy Galef (D-Ossining) said: first, it’s not a park.

Second, she said, why does the state Department of Transportation have signs pointing motorists to a park when there isn’t one? She’d like them taken down.

Putnam Valley Supervisor-elect Sam Oliverio, a longtime Putnam County lawmaker, said he didn’t think it was right to change the name because after all Trump had donated the land and he does live in Bedford.

Read the complete Putnam Daily Voice article here.

Read the complete Reisman column here on lohud.com.

PHOTOS/flickr, “TrumpStatePark001”. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikipedia