This Is Why Your Taxes Went Up In Monroe & Chester
On a hotter, drier planet, how your Town manages your fund balance could be the difference between life and death. But only one of two local Town Supervisors got that memo.
Happy Holidays. I see Santa Claus brought a gift to every New Yorker this week. Starting January 1st, the minimum wage for non-tip-receiving workers will increase by 50 cents.
No. That's not a joke. It's going from $15 to $15.50. Isn't life in this Second Gilded Age grand? 50 cents is all you're getting.
Meanwhile, since the election in November, Vice President Elon Musk's net worth has increased by 70 billion dollars. Not a bad return on investment, considering he spent "only" 277 million dollars to help get President Trump elected to a second term. That, by the way, is the most one person spent in American history on a presidential election. (Also, something to remember: A billion is a thousand million. So what Musk spent on the 2024 election is barely a dent in what he made since November. In fact, it's only 0.395714286%.)
Why am I telling you this? Despite the productivity of the American worker increasing since the 1970s, wages have not. Had it done so, you'd be looking at something closer to $23 an hour for a minimum wage right now. Not $15.50.
Where did all that money go?
All of that money went to the plutocrats — because America is a Plutocracy and not a Democracy — and they, in turn, used that money on lobbying to keep your wages and salaries down. They also replaced pensions with crappy 401K alternatives and have fought tooth and nail against Medicare for All. The reason? If health insurance is tied up with employment, you have more incentive to accept their increasingly crappier pay, bad hours, limited to no overtime, and no pension world that only benefits the Plutocrats. Oh, and, of course, their new post-COVID thing: Forcing you to work in an office when it's entirely unnecessary for many jobs.
Return to Office (RTO) means money out of your pocket to commute and an increased strain on our roads and transit systems, which local governments need to pay for, not them. This is a major story in Southern Orange County since we pay into the MTA but receive the least benefit. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve gone to get on the train in Harriman only to hear it’s been canceled.
Now, listen: I’m not against Congestion Pricing as a concept, but the people who should be paying it are the millionaires and billionaires who are forcing us to continue to commute into Manhattan — specifically because of their RTO initiative — when it may not be necessary anymore.
Just something to pay attention to as we enter 2025.
And remember: The entire plot of National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation revolves around Chevy Chase not getting a Christmas bonus. Something that does not exist in today's Second Gilded Age. Just like Chevy Chase's career.
Now, let's get to the news ...
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Taxes Are Up In Chester & Monroe, But Only One Town Has a Solution, And it Ain't Monroe.
Of all the Towns in our coverage area (Blooming Grove—Palm Tree—Monroe—Woodbury—Chester), I tend to ignore Chester because I know it's in good hands. I have a lot of confidence in Supervisor Brandon Holdridge.
I also don't think people appreciate how big of a financial black hole former Chester Supervisor Bob Valentine left the Town in.
Bob Unhappy Valentine's leadership was much like that of Monroe Town Supervisor Tony Cardone (aka Mussolini): Filled with corruption, using town resources to enrich himself through his business directly, Valcon America Corp — Cardone did the same concerning improvements surrounding property he owns on Lake Sapphire — and any positive financial news shared with residents was an optical illusion.
For example, both Tony Cardone and Bob Valentine pulled millions from different line items over the years to make it look like their respective towns had a balanced budget. In Valentine's case, he budgeted over $1.1M in fund balance to balance the Town of Chester's 2024 budget. This allowed him to falsely claim to Chester residents that he kept their taxes down, which isn't what happened. He just delayed the tax hike, and is now conveniently blaming the man who ousted him from office.
Valentine just kicked the can down the road into 2025, much like Cardone has done in the Town of Monroe for years. So if you live in the Town of Chester and you’re pissed off about your taxes going up? I want you to remember that it’s Bob Valentine’s fault and nobody else's.
How does this Cardone-Valentine Financial Scam work?
It can be complicated to explain, so hang with me.
Basically, because of Valentine's action in Chester, for the new Town Supervisor (Holdridge) and Town Board to keep the same level of services for 2025, they had two shitty options to choose from.
They could allocate the same amount of fund balance to balance their budget. Or they could tax residents to make up for the difference. With me so far?
The problem with using the fund balance to balance your budget is that you can't always dip into it like Cardone and Valentine have been.
Doing so puts the town in financial peril because, while you hope it will never happen … If something crazy were to occur — like, say, a big ass forest fire — There's no money in that fund balance to help cover the associated costs of managing the fire, not to mention ongoing relief efforts for your residents after. Ditto with the impacts of historic levels of flooding, which the Hudson Valley experienced last year.
In short: Your Town would be shit out of luck during an increasingly likely climate emergency.
Chester and Monroe dodged a direct hit from the Jennings Creek Forest Fire this Fall, but as we covered, multiple smaller fires could have emerged during that time, all with the same potential to ignite like the Jennings Creek Fire.
So yes, you were lucky … This time.
Now some of you might be thinking, why is that our problem? What about FEMA?
I’m glad you asked.
First, you should know that it's not true that FEMA was out of money because it was funding housing for Migrants. This was posted on Vice President Elon Musk's disinformation superspreader platform, Twitter, and echoed by President Trump and friends. It is 100% not true, no matter how many times you heard it on Facebook or Fox News. The U.S. Customs & Border Protection agency pays for housing for migrants. NOT FEMA.
What is true is that Republicans in Congress often vote against additional funding for FEMA, as 100 of them did recently, right as the 2024 Hurricane Season got started. (In their defense, some of those 100 Republicans have since claimed they were voting against other items in the bill containing the additional FEMA funding and not voting specifically against FEMA. I'm not a mind reader. So, depending on your political views, you may or may not believe these people. The point here is there are two crucial facts we need to acknowledge:
1. Climate change is real, and it’s going to cost everyone from the federal government right on down to the Town of Chester a lot of money to manage its worst impacts.
2. FEMA is not adequately prepared to fund an increasing number of these climate catastrophes, including those in Southern Orange County. That means your towns are going to need to spend a whole lot of money as our region gets both hotter and drier and also increasingly flooded. Otherwise, you wind up in a situation like this:
Insurance companies are less and less likely to cover victims of Climate Catastrophes. That means people are increasingly dependent on FEMA. FEMA has struggled with funding for the department and efficiently managing and dispursing those funds. As you heard in the video above, 19 years later, FEMA is still paying for Hurricane Katrina victims. So, even if you DO get help from FEMA, it's not exactly going to come on the schedule you need.
There is some good news, though. The companies that knew climate change was directly caused by their products are finally being held accountable. Despite what everyone thought — myself included — Governor Kathy Hochul did not veto the Climate Change Superfund Act. She approved it yesterday.
For the next 25 years, New York State, under this law, is projected to collect $75 billion that can be used to mitigate the worst impacts of climate-fueled events like the historic flooding we had in the Hudson Valley in 2023 and the Jennings Creek Fire in Southern Orange County in 2024. As New York State Senator Liz Krueger said:
"Repairing from and preparing for extreme weather caused by climate change will cost more than half a trillion dollars statewide by 2050. That's over $65,000 per household, and that's on top of the disruption, injury, and death that the climate crisis is causing in every corner of our state. The Climate Change Superfund Act is a critical piece of affordability legislation that will deliver billions of dollars every year to ease the burden on regular New Yorkers."
But does that mean your Town is off the hook in terms of funding disaster relief and providing community aid during one of these events? Nope.
This money is great. It's badly needed. But Towns and Villages across New York State still need to do their part to, which is what makes the fund balance so important. There may be things New York State provides them with funding for, and there may be things the local municipalities are on their own for. We all need to plan accordingly.
That Brings Us Back to Chester & Monroe’s Tax Increases
When you use the fund balance to hide your Town’s financial problems in the way Tony Cardone and Bob Valentine have, your Town Board has a choice. They can raise taxes, or they can continue to use the fund balance to make up the difference. As I just laid out for you, continuing to use the fund balance to paper over your financial problems puts the lives of yourself and your fellow residents in danger on a planet with increasingly unstable weather. In Chester’s case, Valentine had considerably drained the fund balance in 2023 and 2024. It’s honestly a miracle that both Chester and Monroe missed a similar forest fire on their own turf, given this mismanagement of their financial resources. (Like we previously covered as well, Tony Cardone and Dorey Houle routinely failed to inform residents of what was happening with these fires igniting along the Monroe-Tuxedo border. Mrs. Houle made it a point to inform only her friends on Facebook, and not all of the Town’s residents.)
For 2025, new Chester Town Supervisor Brandon Holdridge used roughly $500,000 from the fund balance, but also had to increase taxes to make up for the damage left behind by Valentine. In a statement to The Monroe Gazette, Supervisor Holdridge told us, “I'm instituting a new policy that we have to keep at least 15% fund balance in all major accounts to prevent overuse for budget balancing purchases and to have enough for a rainy day in the future.”
Unlike in Monroe, since taking office, Holdridge knew about Valentine's financial mismanagement and immediately began taking action to cut costs whenever possible. Recently, he told us about the Town’s change in Insurance Carriers (to use one example of the cost-cutting):
"The insurance carrier and broker change the Town Board and I accepted today will save Chester tax payers around $100,000 in 2025. Our current carrier/broker was proposing that much of an increase and could not get it lower. This is a huge win for our residents. It comes in just under budget for what we had in our insurance line in 2025. The Town Board and I will always look out for ways to save our residents the most and put their tax dollars to good use."
By The Monroe Gazette’s estimate, since taking office, Holdridge has cut roughly $500,000 in waste left behind by Supervisor Valentine’s administration. This puts the Town of Chester on track to eventually reduce any tax increases it may have to implement in 2026 and 2027.
Our favorite cost reduction, though, involves Al Fusco Jr., whom Monroe Gazette readers know has been gouging residents across Southern Orange County, often doing very little for the large sums of money he’s charged. Holdridge told us the fist thing he did upon taking office was to terminate the contract with Fusco Engineering & Land Surveying D.P.C., which was charging the town of Chester both an hourly rate and at least $80,000 a year in some kind of retainer fee.
That’s the good news. If you live in Monroe; however, the good news starts and ends there.
That’s because the bad news is that until Mussolini and Soft on Crime Dorey Houle are voted out of office in November 2025, Town of Monroe residents will be stuck paying their near 11% tax increase. Another term for Cardone, Houle, and Scancarello will only further imperil Monroe residents' financial health. Not to mention their health and safety. So, it can and should be said loudly and clearly every day between now and November: A vote for Tony Cardone and Dorey Houle is a vote for higher taxes in the Town of Monroe.
For Monroe residents, there's also another lesson to be observed from Chester: Whoever gets the Town Supervisor role in Monroe in 2025, much like Chester Supervisor Holdridge, is going to have their work cut out for them in repairing the damage that Cardone did, much like Holdridge is doing with Valentine.
There will not be an immediate solution.
Anyone who proposes one to you is lying. It will take a couple of years to fix, at the very least, and the person elected to that position needs to be honest with Town taxpayers throughout their campaign for office and during that first year.
The good news is that it can be done. This Cardone created Fiscal Crisis, much like the Valentine created Fiscal crisis in Chester can be fixed. The solution begins with getting rid of Tony Cardone, so that the next group of local leaders can get to work in fixing it.