My name is Laurie Ryan and I am the republican candidate for Westchester County Legislator District 9, home to Southern Cortlandt Manor, Crugers, Montrose, Buchanan, Verplanck, Ossining and Briarcliff. It would be my honor and privilege to serve you as your District Legislator.
I have lived in Westchester for 60 years, one of the most beautiful counties in the country, and yes, one of the most expensive counties in the country.
I am a retired high school math teacher of 36 years, 32 of them at Alexander Hamilton in Elmsford. I also served as an elected Board Trustee for the Hendrick Hudson School District. I have served on union negotiation teams, Strategic Planning teams, Leadership teams, Safety and Management teams, finance and budget, policy, facilities, and community engagement committees. All of these have provided me with years of experience in leadership, management, negotiation and patience.
I first decided to enter this race because of my ConEd bill, where the delivery charges have skyrocketed over the past few years. After watching legislative meetings, attending forums and asking questions to residents, I found that I have much to offer with viable solutions to many of our concerns.
So my hat was tossed and I entered this arena.
I asked the residents of district 9 what their concerns were. They can be bundled into Affordability (property and school taxes, energy costs, housing), Infrastructure (maintenance, contracts) and Quality of Life (local zoning, waterfront protection, Illegal Immigration, safety, landlord protection).
My ideas to address your affordability concerns:
I believe property taxes are essential as they pay for our law enforcement, first responders, highway, sanitation, running our local government, garbage removal and so much more. However, property taxes should not be based on assessed value, which is being taxed on unrealized gains, or whether or not you have granite countertops. I will propose a few options and ideas. The first would be to base property tax on purchase value and not assessed value. The second would be a check list of sorts. This would be based on a set cost of the services you receive from the town with such as septic vs sewer, private garbage pickup vs public pick up. While we all know how important it is to have an educated citizenry, I will also advocate for the elimination of school taxes for single family home owners 65 and older. This would allow so many of our seniors to remain in their homes.
To address energy costs I will suggest we lower the property taxes on ConEd that increased from 8 million to over 1.3 billion contingent on the company returning savings reflected in delivery charges. I also will entertain any fiscally sound plan to re-open Indian Point.
To address the increase in low income and affordable housing I will advocate for local zoning only. Each locality should decide on what they want and it should not be a mandate from the state. I believe in work force affordable housing which would include local law enforcement, first responders, teachers and school staff. This would allow people, if they choose, to live in the area in which they work. Both of these improve the quality of life.
My ideas to address Infrastructure concerns:
Yours concerns are roads, bridges and guard rails. It seems there is a lot of overlap of road state/county/local maintenance. First I will sort that out so residents know who is responsible for which road. I will demand a 10-year maintenance plan for our infrastructure. I will scrutinize every contract awarded to make sure we are finishing projects in cost effective and timely manner.
My ideas for your Quality of Life concerns:
As mentioned previously, I will fight for local zoning only to protect our home values and our beautiful neighborhoods. We should be doing nothing that decreases the value of our homes.
I have already fought against lithium battery plants along our gorgeous waterfronts and will continue to do so. Unfortunately they are necessary but they belong in industrial areas only. I will also establish a more rigorous toxic testing plan to monitor our water, soil and air that will be easily accessible and easy to understand to our residents.
While Westchester continues to advocate for the rights of renters, I will advocate for the rights of landlords.
I will fight to repeal or amend the Immigration Protection Act which limits the amount of information local law enforcement can share with federal law enforcement – that is the definition of sanctuary. All of us are safer, including our law enforcement officers, when agencies are allowed to communicate with each other. This act has created an unsafe environment for all of us. This act does not protect immigrants, it protects immigrants who are committing crimes. The priority of any elected official is to keep residents safe.
I do have a few of my own issues and those are education, and supporting veterans, kids, surviving spouses and our animals.
The WCL is composed of 17 legislators, 15 democrats, one independent and one republican. We can not continue as a one party county as we have become so politically divided that there is no one asking questions on behalf of the residents but rather rubber stamping every idea simply because it comes from their party. That is not healthy and not a representative body that cares about all of Westchester’s residents. at what happened with Indian Point! Where were the simplest of questions like where are we going to get our energy and how much is this going to cost our residents? There was NO plan and now look at the shape we are in.
I will ask questions, I will be concerned and I will represent all of you to the best of my abilty.
Thank you for reading!
Laurie Ryan
