Analyze THIS.

Law Office of John J. Tormey III, Esq.
John J. Tormey III, PLLC
1636 Third Avenue, PMB 188
New York, NY  10128  USA
(212) 410-4142 (phone)
(212) 410-2380 (fax)
jtormey@optonline.net
https://www.tormey.org
 
Tuesday, August 6, 2024
 
VIA U.S. MAIL and E-MAIL
Martina L. Cheung – President, S&P Global Ratings
Standard & Poor’s Global Corporate
55 Water Street
New York, New York 10041 USA
 
To:
anna.uboytseva@spglobal.com
anthony.polanco@spglobal.com
benjamin.gallovic@spglobal.com
bianca.gaytan-burrell@spglobal.com
blake.yocom@spglobal.com
centralratingreq@spglobal.com
charlene.butterfield@spglobal.com
charlotte.perry@spglobal.com
christian.richards@spglobal.com
diana.cooke@spglobal.com
dylan.lindow@spglobal.com
eastratingsreq@spglobal.com
alex.tomczuk@spglobal.com
eden.perry@spglobal.com
felix.winnekens@spglobal.com
geoffrey.buswick@spglobal.com
heather.mcardle@spglobal.com
jane.ridley@spglobal.com
jennifer.boyd@spglobal.com
jennifer.garza@spglobal.com
john.sauter@spglobal.com
joshua.travis@spglobal.com
kaiti.vartholomaios@spglobal.com
krystal.tena@spglobal.com
lauren.freire@spglobal.com
martina.cheung@spglobal.com
matthew.martin@spglobal.com
media_relations@spglobal.com
melissa.stoloff@spglobal.com
michael.mooney1@spglobal.com
michael.ryter@spglobal.com
mona.elfar@spglobal.com
moreen.skyers-gibbs@spglobal.com
randy.layman@spglobal.com
ratings.request@spglobal.com
robert.otter@spglobal.com
stephanie.megas@spglobal.com
steven.waldeck@spglobal.com
timothy.barrett@spglobal.com
tyler.fitman@spglobal.com
victor.medeiros@spglobal.com
 
VIA U.S. MAIL and E-MAIL:
IR@dnb.com
mcabeed@dnb.com
Customerservice.at@dnb.com
Customerinquiries@dnb.com
Anthony Jabbour, Chief Executive Officer
Dun & Bradstreet Corporation
[Re: Case #00374501]
101 John F. Kennedy Parkway
Short Hills, New Jersey 07078 USA
 
VIA U.S. MAIL and E-MAIL:
tips2@bloomberg.com
contactus@bloombergsupport.com
Michael Bloomberg, Owner
Bloomberg.com/Bloomberg Finance L.P.
731 Lexington Avenue
New York, New York 10022 USA
 
VIA U.S. MAIL and E-MAIL:
usaclientservices@fitchsolutions.com
alayna.francis@thefitchgroup.com
eleis.brennan@thefitchgroup.com
Ian Linnell, President
Fitch Ratings
300 West 57th Street, 38th Floor
New York, NY 10019 USA
 
VIA AIR MAIL and E-MAIL:
marketingops@thefitchgroup.com
fitch.connect@fitchsolutions.com
emeaclientservices@fitchsolutions.com
Ian Linnell, President
Fitch Ratings
30 North Colonnade, Canary Wharf
London, E14 5GN
UNITED KINGDOM
 
VIA U.S. MAIL and E-MAIL:
clientservices@moodys.com
ir@moodys.com
Amy Zhao, Lead Analyst - Regional PFG
Northeast Moody’s Investors Service, Inc.
7 World Trade Center - 250 Greenwich Street
New York, New York 10007 USA
 
VIA U.S. MAIL and E-MAIL:
pulsesupport@moodys.com
Robert Weber - PFG Northeast
Northeast Moody’s Investors Service, Inc.
7 World Trade Center - 250 Greenwich Street
New York, NY 10007 USA
 
To:
lloyd.pepperl@moodys.com
alex.greenwald@moodys.com
joshua.doppelt@moodys.com
howtogetrated@moodys.com
 
Re: CUSIP Base #720798 – The Village of Piermont, New York – Municipal Bonds
 
Dear Sirs/Mesdames:
 
I am an attorney in New York. I am a citizen and resident of the Town of Orangetown, and the County of Rockland. Yet I represent no client in this matter. I only write you as a concerned citizen - and as a known adversary to the Village of Piermont, New York, its current Mayor Bruce Tucker, and their egregious environmental practices. The Village of Piermont is also located within the Town of Orangetown, New York.
 
Through use of a studiously-opaque village government, Mayor Bruce Tucker and the Village of Piermont, New York are in the process of trying to sell-out the Village of Piermont to shady real estate developers threatening taxpaying residents with grave environmental harm, when Tucker and Piermont really should be working to remediate the constant flooding in the village instead. Some Piermont residents have even taken to re-building on stilts because of the flooding.
 
My request herewith is that you and your respective offices please carefully re-examine and re-analyze any current bond rating that you may maintain for the Village of Piermont, New York – and also, consider the within information in connection with future Piermont bond ratings. I base this request upon the following specific reasons, with citations for your respective analysts:
 
Reason #1: Mayor Bruce Tucker and the Village of Piermont, New York just announced a drastic six-point-nine percent (6.9%) tax increase after first voting to exceed the otherwise-applicable tax cap. See “Incorporated Village or Piermont, Board of Trustees Meeting”, April 16, 2024 Minutes, at:
https://cms9files1.revize.com/piermont/document_center/Agendas%20&%20Minutes/2024/Minutes/BOT%20Meeting%20Minutes%20April%2016%202024.pdf

https://unhandpiermont.blogspot.com/2024/08/watch-as-mayor-bruce-tucker-blows-away.html

https://unhandpiermont.blogspot.com/2024/08/piermont-do-you-speak-succubus.html

Reason #2: Since Year 2017, Piermont Mayor Bruce Tucker has put the Village of Piermont into a negative Net Position of (US$7,600,000) - that is, US$7,600,000 into the hole - from an original US$800,000 surplus. Tucker has purposefully redistributed the wealth of unsuspecting village residents into crushing and overstuffed long-term pension and other obligations, thereby mortgaging the collective futures of future generations of Piermont residents:
https://unhandpiermont.blogspot.com/2024/07/he-spent-it.html

https://unhandpiermont.blogspot.com/2024/08/piermont-do-you-speak-succubus.html
 
Reason #3: In a recent July 30, 2024 “interview” with well-known local planted propaganda publication the Rockland County Business Journal (RCBJ), Piermont Mayor Bruce Tucker nevertheless admitted to Piermont’s current financial distress for which he obviously did not adequately plan:
 
“‘[E]verything hit at once’, the mayor said. ‘We’re dealing with sticker shock on insurances, inflation, [sic] huge retirement mandates by New York State’.”
https://unhandpiermont.blogspot.com/2024/08/piermont-do-you-speak-succubus.html

https://rcbizjournal.com/2024/07/30/piermont-mayor-bruce-tucker-talks-about-controversy-engulfing-his-village/
 
Reason #4: When questioned if he would use a portion of a puzzling US$3,210,196 “unassigned Fund Balance” (presumably) to offset the new and imminent tax hit to Piermont taxpaying residents, Mayor Tucker replied that he would only be using US$216,000 of that Fund Balance because, in his words:
 
“Bond counsel recommends not to take from the fund balance because it will affect the Village’s credit rating. [Emphasis supplied]. The credit rating decides the rate of interest the Village will pay on Bond (Capital) items. Currently the Villages[sic] S&P rating is AA+.”

See “Incorporated Village or Piermont, Board of Trustees Meeting”, April 16, 2024 Minutes, at:
https://cms9files1.revize.com/piermont/document_center/Agendas%20&%20Minutes/2024/Minutes/BOT%20Meeting%20Minutes%20April%2016%202024.pdf

https://unhandpiermont.blogspot.com/2024/08/watch-as-mayor-bruce-tucker-blows-away.html
 
Aside from the fact that Mayor Tucker thereby waived the privilege of confidential attorney-client communications when he was unwise and ill-advised enough to read the advice of “Bond Counsel” into the public record - Mayor Tucker’s own admission of his intentional manipulation of taxpayer funds to make the bond landscape appear rosier than it actually is, should be called out and acknowledged as deception by a public official. I ask that your analysts please review the full text of the above-linked April 16, 2024 Board of Trustees Meeting Minutes for a full review of Mayor Tucker’s unabashed artifice in this regard.
 
Reason #5: Piermont Village Hall made a recent “decision” to finally release and upload to the Village of Piermont website, the multiple years’ worth of Village financial statements which Village Hall had previously sought to conceal from Piermont residents since Year 2020:
https://unhandpiermont.blogspot.com/2024/07/tell-it-to-tom.html

https://unhandpiermont.blogspot.com/2024/07/pay-no-attention-to-garmento-behind_13.html

https://www.piermont-ny.gov/government/clerks_office/financial_audits.php#outer-452
 
Reason #6: In similar vein, Piermont Village Hall purposefully failed to timely file its financial information with the Office of the New York State Comptroller (OSC), thereby preventing anyone from ever seeing Piermont’s “Fiscal Score”, “Environmental Score”, and “Health Designation” for Fiscal Year 2023 in the “Fiscal Stress Monitoring System” within the Comptroller’s website:
https://wwe1.osc.state.ny.us/localgov/fiscalmonitoring/fsms.cfm

https://unhandpiermont.blogspot.com/2024/07/that-time-when-bruce-tucker-sandbagged.html

https://unhandpiermont.blogspot.com/2024/07/crouching-tiger-hidden-garmento.html

This apparently has become an unfortunately familiar tactic by other financially-distressed municipalities in Rockland County, New York, as I am sure that your East Coast analysts are already well aware.
 
In summary, it is my belief that, at minimum, the innocent bondholders and their representatives who have relied upon any prior Piermont bond rating, deserve a re-examination and review of the Piermont Village Hall shenanigans that the Piermont residents have suffered through during the six-and-one-half years of Bruce Tucker’s malignant mayoral reign. The time to do it is now, before Piermont Mayor Bruce Tucker tries to raise taxes again.
 
I will appreciate a response from you and your offices on the above. Thank you.
 
Respectfully,
 
John J. Tormey III, Esq.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - Monday, August 5, 2024.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - Monday, August 5, 2024
Contact: Unhand Piermont!, 1-845-920-1103
 
“UNHAND PIERMONT!” TO PIERMONT NY MAYOR BRUCE TUCKER: RESIGN NOW!
QRNewswire/Rockland County, NY: 
Unhand Piermont! and Hudson Valley community advocate John J. Tormey III, Esq. are demanding the immediate resignation of Bruce Edward Tucker, the beleaguered Village of Piermont mayor.
 
Said Tormey:
 
“In Bruce Tucker’s dysfunctional six-and-one-half years as mayor of Piermont, New York (CUSIP BASE #720798), he has sold out the once-idyllic village and its residents to unsavory out-of-state real estate developers, destroyed the character and functionality of the village, mortgaged away the futures of generations of future Piermont residents with gross and reckless overspending, taken village government deep into the hole from a US$800,000 Net Position surplus in 2017 to a negative US$7,600,000 Net Position, facilitated environmental harm, and utterly failed to remediate the ubiquitous flooding of this Hudson River community thereby threatening the health, property, and safety of its residents – actually causing some of them to rebuild on stilts. Bruce Tucker’s hapless reign as mayor of Piermont is a disgrace, it will not stand, and it must come to an end immediately”.
 
“The tipping-point was Piermont’s enablement of a New Jersey developer and builder intending to construct an abysmal multi-story 14-unit residential behemoth smack in the center of the already-overcrowded historic and picturesque Village, while paving-over a former Sunoco gasoline station site that had underground gasoline tanks - all in proximity to a former Superfund site. Tucker and his feckless local government thereafter failed to properly oversee development activity at another Piermont location, leading to a harmful oil spill directly into the ecologically-sensitive Sparkill Creek. The people of Piermont need an opportunity to right their own ship, and deserve a far better captain than the likes of a Joseph Hazelwood or a Francesco Schettino”.
 
“Bruce Tucker is a former sheet and towel salesman – a home goods garmento out of Elizabeth, New Jersey – who was somehow elected by default given a dearth of other plausible candidates. He is the wrong man for the job. While Tucker will undoubtedly be voted out of Piermont Village Hall when his current two-year term is up in 2025, he needs to recognize the great harm that he has already caused the people and the Village of Piermont, New York. He needs to resign now”.
 
https://unhandpiermont.blogspot.com
https://www.facebook.com/groups/988245836121689
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61558931499740
#

Piermont, Do You Speak Succubus?: Translating From The Traster, Into The English Language.

Given that your Piermont, New York Village Hall government and Piermont Mayor Bruce Tucker have now collaborated with ignoble Rockland County faux laptop journalist Tina Traster alias "The RCBJ Succubus", to launch a farcical piece of whole cloth propaganda assaulting Preserve Piermont:
https://rcbizjournal.com/2024/07/30/piermont-mayor-bruce-tucker-talks-about-controversy-engulfing-his-village/
… it is once again time to deflate their patronizing premeditated prose, and actually translate each item of their planted fake “news” article for you, the Piermont resident.
 
These below translations are provided to you as a public service by “Unhand Piermont!” and “Get Your Hands Off Of Piermont”, whose carefully-researched communications can be found here:
https://unhandpiermont.blogspot.com/
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61558931499740
https://www.facebook.com/groups/988245836121689
 
What follows are the original individual textual passages from the fake news article written and published yesterday by The RCBJ Succubus, with each passage first identified as “FROM THE ORIGINAL RCBJ SUCCUBUS-SPEAK: …” – and then translated for you immediately thereafter in text identified as “TRANSLATION FROM THE ORIGINAL RCBJ SUCCUBUS-SPEAK INTO THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE: …”

Point. Then counterpoint. Throughout.
 
As for the planted quotations therein from Piermont Mayor Bruce Tucker alias "The Elizabeth, New Jersey Home Goods Garmento" himself, each passage attributable to Tucker is instead identified as “FROM THE ORIGINAL GARMENTO-SPEAK: …” - and then translated for you immediately thereafter in text identified as “TRANSLATION FROM THE ORIGINAL GARMENTO-SPEAK INTO THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE: …”
 
Now, without further ado:
 
- - - - -
https://rcbizjournal.com/2024/07/30/piermont-mayor-bruce-tucker-talks-about-controversy-engulfing-his-village/
 
FROM THE ORIGINAL GARMENTO-SPEAK:
“Piermont Mayor Bruce Tucker Talks About Controversy Engulfing His Village”.
 
TRANSLATION FROM THE ORIGINAL GARMENTO-SPEAK INTO THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE:
“Piermont Mayor Bruce Tucker Explains How He Completely Trashed What Was Once A Beautiful Village, In Six And One-Half Short Years Of His Dysfunctional Self-Serving Tenure”.
 
FROM THE ORIGINAL RCBJ SUCCUBUS-SPEAK:
“Proposed Development Has Cost Village Public Officials, Ongoing Litigation & A Social Media Campaign That Has Turned Personal and Ugly.”
 
TRANSLATION FROM THE ORIGINAL RCBJ SUCCUBUS-SPEAK INTO THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE:
“Proposed Development Has Given Tina Traster Yet Another Reason To Suck-Up To Low-Rent Rockland County ‘Public Officials’ For Her Own Perceived Delusional Fantasy Of Self-Aggrandizement”.
 
FROM THE ORIGINAL RCBJ SUCCUBUS-SPEAK:
“By Tina Traster.”
 
TRANSLATION FROM THE ORIGINAL RCBJ SUCCUBUS-SPEAK INTO THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE:
“By The RCBJ Succubus”.
 
FROM THE ORIGINAL RCBJ SUCCUBUS-SPEAK:
“Since 2018, Piermont’s Mayor Bruce Tucker has had a sweet ride –”
 
TRANSLATION FROM THE ORIGINAL RCBJ SUCCUBUS-SPEAK INTO THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE:
“Since 2017, Piermont’s Mayor Bruce Tucker has put the Village’s Net Position 7.6 million dollars into the hole from an original US$800,000 surplus, while redistributing the wealth of unsuspecting village residents into crushing long-term pension and other obligations in a manner that would make Che Guevara proud, thereby mortgaging the collective futures of the next three generations of Piermont, New York residents into veritable oblivion”.
https://unhandpiermont.blogspot.com/2024/07/he-spent-it.html

FROM THE ORIGINAL RCBJ SUCCUBUS-SPEAK:
“… the 66-year-old retired textile factory owner…”
 
TRANSLATION FROM THE ORIGINAL RCBJ SUCCUBUS-SPEAK INTO THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE:
“… the 66-year old former towel and sheet salesman out of Elizabeth, New Jersey and a state university in New York…”
https://www.linkedin.com/in/bruce-tucker-39b008104/
 
FROM THE ORIGINAL RCBJ SUCCUBUS-SPEAK:
“… has worked tirelessly as a full-time, but part-time paid, civil servant and in return has held onto his seat for what is now his fourth two-year term.”
 
TRANSLATION FROM THE ORIGINAL RCBJ SUCCUBUS-SPEAK INTO THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE:
“… has worked tirelessly to flout the interests of the Piermont residents that had previously elected him in good faith and looked to him in vain for leadership, all for the benefit of shifty real estate developers and his own personal self-interest, and to the rank detriment of the Village of Piermont itself”.
 
FROM THE ORIGINAL GARMENTO-SPEAK:
“The first design was not anywhere near ready to fit in with the village and the developer got the message”, the mayor said.
 
TRANSLATION FROM THE ORIGINAL GARMENTO-SPEAK INTO THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE:
“What is amazing is that Piermont Village Hall, the Piermont Board of Trustees, the Planning Board, the Zoning Board, and I, all coddled and encouraged the developer since as far back as Year 2021 - and every 'message’ we gave the developer was that the developer was welcome to run roughshod over the Village, its environment, and its residents as long as the developer paid Village Hall the requisite dollar-amounts”.
https://cms9files1.revize.com/piermont/document_center/Department/Planning%20&%20Zoning%20Board/Planning%20Board/Plan_Board_Documents/2022/5-9-22/Piermont%20Developers%20LLC%20Package.pdf
 
FROM THE ORIGINAL RCBJ SUCCUBUS-SPEAK:
“But the Village’s passage of a rezoning plan along Main Street last March that gives wider berth to a proposed 14-unit apartment complex’s land-use approval process is causing a ‘seven-year itch’, so to speak.”
 
TRANSLATION FROM THE ORIGINAL RCBJ SUCCUBUS-SPEAK INTO THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE:
“Aside from the fact that there is more to Marilyn Monroe than the mere application of peroxide alone, the ‘Seven Year Itch’ is the itch of recognition that, when you elect a towel salesman, you get a towel salesman - just like if you elect an HVAC dude or a fisherman, you get an HVAC dude or a fisherman”.
 
FROM THE ORIGINAL RCBJ SUCCUBUS-SPEAK:
“Are Village residents ‘breaking up’ with Tucker, or is the daily drum of vitriolic criticism on Facebook limited to a small subset of neighbors who live close to the proposed development?”

TRANSLATION FROM THE ORIGINAL RCBJ SUCCUBUS-SPEAK INTO THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE:
“Do I, Tina Traster, think that the constant uploading of primary original documents to Facebook and the Internet is exposing the fraud that is Piermont Village government and Bruce Tucker’s mayoral reign, while at the same time rendering obsolete and worthless my fake and sycophantic ‘Rockland County Business Journal’ website? Don’t answer that. It’s a rhetorical question”.
https://unhandpiermont.blogspot.com
 
FROM THE ORIGINAL RCBJ SUCCUBUS-SPEAK:
“Can this once-happy ‘marriage’ be saved? Is it even in danger?”
 
TRANSLATION FROM THE ORIGINAL RCBJ SUCCUBUS-SPEAK INTO THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE:
“Can a piece-of-dreck faux news article on the Internet possibly be more overwritten than this RCBJ one? Don’t answer that, either. It’s also a rhetorical question”.
https://rcbizjournal.com/2024/07/30/piermont-mayor-bruce-tucker-talks-about-controversy-engulfing-his-village/
 
FROM THE ORIGINAL RCBJ SUCCUBUS-SPEAK:
“For now, the answers to these questions remain unclear.”
 
TRANSLATION FROM THE ORIGINAL RCBJ SUCCUBUS-SPEAK INTO THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE:
“For now, I, the RCBJ Succubus, have no idea what I am talking about, particularly because I never learned how to do any real original research through FOIA, FOIL, and OPRA – as opposed to my simply collaborating with corrupted anti-environmental low-level Rockland County public officials to plant digital stories on their respective behalves like an online Al Samuels”.
 
FROM THE ORIGINAL RCBJ SUCCUBUS-SPEAK:
“But for the first time in his tenure, Tucker finds himself amid a barrage of controversy in a negative social media campaign that has cost the Village its Planning Board Chairman and a Board Trustee, and has tied up the Village in litigation over its zoning amendment.”
 
TRANSLATION FROM THE ORIGINAL RCBJ SUCCUBUS-SPEAK INTO THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE:
“Wait a minute. Let me, the RCBJ Succubus, be more accurate. A ‘social media campaign’ is not what excised disgraced former Board Trustee Rob Burns – the Piermont voters did, and rightfully so. Sore loser Rob Burns then quit in disgrace, took his little ball, and went home to play in his own sandbox. Moreover, while former Piermont Village Planning Board Dan Spitzer quit in shame a number of weeks ago, there were several reasons for that. Sure, Dan Spitzer was uncomfortable reading on the Internet about his Client Nine Luv Gov brother of black socks, trench coat, Ashley Dupré, and folded-courtesan-into-luggage infamy. Sure, Dan Spitzer was trying to escape public life before anyone blogged the plaintiff’s opening statement in the Jones medical malpractice case that pre-rehearing initially led to a US$56 million dollar jury verdict before later monetary reduction:
https://www.nydailynews.com/2019/08/12/paralyzed-woman-wins-56-million-verdict-against-rockland-doctors-after-botched-spinal-surgery/
https://casetext.com/case/jones-v-jones-62673
But the real reason why Dan Spitzer skipped out on his government post, was because he saw the inquiries to federal and state law enforcement officials flying around on the 447-477 Piermont Avenue debacle, he knew it was a dirty real estate deal, and he wanted to appear like he washed his hands of it. So he bugged out faster than you could say ‘Kevorkian’.”
 
FROM THE ORIGINAL RCBJ SUCCUBUS-SPEAK:
“Debate over whether the “Central CBM (Central Business Multi-Use)[sic] zoning district was a sound policy decision has metastasized into an indictment on just about every decision the village has made or is making, whether it relates to issuing filming permits, an oil spill, [sic]finances.”
 
TRANSLATION FROM THE ORIGINAL RCBJ SUCCUBUS-SPEAK INTO THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE:
“This is understandable when the ersatz public official making the decisions is nothing but a former towel salesman out of Elizabeth, New Jersey”.
 
FROM THE ORIGINAL GARMENTO-SPEAK:
“I had no sense that this was going to be so controversial”, said Tucker, referring to the CBM Zoning, which was promulgated to allow greater density and to bring the entire historic downtown district into zoning compliance.”
 
TRANSLATION FROM THE ORIGINAL GARMENTO-SPEAK INTO THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE:
“I knew full well in advance that the CBM Zone was calculated to rape the land to the detriment of the Piermont taxpayers, residents, and voters - and to the advantage of the sketchy monied real estate developers with whom I routinely cavort. Yet I didn’t care at the time, because, given how asleep the Village residents were until Year 2024, I was pretty sure that I could get away with it. My only regret now is that I am not getting away with it”.
 
FROM THE ORIGINAL GARMENTO-SPEAK:
“The mayor said the proposed downtown development would add tax rateables[sic], get rid of an unsightly dirt patch that’s been used as an ad hoc parking lot for years, and provide housing aimed at millennials and empty nesters to the village.”
 
TRANSLATION FROM THE ORIGINAL GARMENTO-SPEAK INTO THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE:
“Speaking of 'unsightly', you should see the photos of me in the toga... And aside from the fact that ‘empty nester’[sic] should have a hyphen between the two words, (but what is The RCBJ Succubus after all - a writer?) – I could not possibly care less whether Village residents have adequate parking. I am desperate for any ratables because I already mortgaged the futures of the next three generations of Piermont residents with crushing long-term obligations, putting the Village’s Net Position 7.6 million dollars in the hole.
https://unhandpiermont.blogspot.com/2024/07/he-spent-it.html
Moreover, I intend to keep selling-out the Village to sketchy developers to build as much multi-story housing as possible while I watch Piermont slowly flood away into the Hudson River. What do I care? I’m aging out and retiring anyway, and this is how I retire along with my aging-out buddies in Village Hall”.
 
FROM THE ORIGINAL GARMENTO-SPEAK:
“What has shocked the mayor most about navigating his first significant controversy has been relentless ad hominem attacks on a Facebook page called “Preserve Piermont”, accusing him of enriching himself or enacting laws in secret, particularly when proposals and adoption of the zone change were noticed and voted on in public hearings.”      
 
TRANSLATION FROM THE ORIGINAL GARMENTO-SPEAK INTO THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE:
“What has shocked the mayor most is that Village of Piermont residents actually woke up to the pattern of malfeasance that he and his Village Hall cronies have perpetrated upon them for years – particularly after Tucker made sure to conceal the Piermont financials from the Village website for a four-year period from Year 2020 to Year 2024, while propagating an opaque website otherwise that communicated little of anything of value to the taxpaying villagers paying for it”.
 
FROM THE ORIGINAL GARMENTO-SPEAK:
“‘Listen, I can take criticism’, said Tucker, who has lived and raised a family in the village for 34 years. ‘But the worst of it is the vitriol on Facebook. If people disagree, I’m more than willing to discuss it. But to start accusing us of unsubstantiated inappropriateness, of kickbacks, of being paid off by developers, of not holding public hearings, making personal attacks – this is just dishonest.”
 
TRANSLATION FROM THE ORIGINAL GARMENTO-SPEAK INTO THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE:
“What is actually 'dishonest' is a towel salesman out of Elizabeth, New Jersey pretending to know how to preside over a village of 2,500 people and its finances. What is actually 'dishonest' is a mayor purposely failing to remediate flooding in a village just so that it can be further exploited by developer friends for the maximum amount of time before all those individual Piermont houses ultimately need to be put up on freaking stilts.”
 
FROM THE ORIGINAL GARMENTO-SPEAK:
“Preserve Piermont Facebook was founded in March; it has more than 600 members… Piermont, a picturesque village on the Hudson River with a population of 2,500 residents, has long been a peaceful but pricy enclave that avoided the media’s glare. Mostly, the once working-class village that began gentrifying three decades ago, is comparatively expensive and exclusive compared to much of Rockland County. Notably, its downtown district rarely has vacancy signs; the village is a magnet for area residents and day trippers in search of awesome Hudson River access, coastal beauty, a dining scene, shops, galleries, and a touch of history. The Victorian village played a major role during World War II when more than a million troops marched from Camp Shanks to board vessels destined for Europe, earning the nickname ‘Last Stop USA’… For his part, Tucker is proud of his record. In citing his accomplishments, he lists closing the Piermont Pier Park to motorized vehicles on Sundays from May 1 to Sept. 30, creating Gair Memorial Park, formation of a traffic committee, passing a ‘Do Not Knock’ law, and securing grants for raising and repaving flood-prone Ferry Road. The Mayor’s administration has also taken a lead on becoming an environmentally-forward community, created a plastic bag-free policy via a Reusable Bag Law, banned Glyphosate (an herbicide) on village-owned property, converted street lighting to LEDs, tightened up an AirBnB law to prevent ‘ghost blocks’, created a rental registry, and has taken steps to protect the seawall and completed $100,000 in storm drainage improvements on the Erie Trail.”
 
TRANSLATION FROM THE ORIGINAL GARMENTO-SPEAK INTO THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE:
“Aside from the fact that The RCBJ Succubus cannot decide whether to capitalize the phrase “The Mayor” or not, throughout this article, (but what is she after all, a writer?) – I, Mayor Bruce Tucker, fully realize how beyond specious a notion it is that I have somehow protected the environment of Piermont while it visibly becomes Venice-Italy-On-The-Hudson, given that 447-477 Piermont Avenue is planned to pave over a former Sunoco gasoline station site that had underground gasoline tanks, and given that I just almost paved over the Village baseball field – but hey, I screwed in some new light bulbs, and at least no one is knocking on your door in the middle of the night trying to buy your house at a deep discount yet, right?”
 
FROM THE ORIGINAL RCBJ SUCCUBUS-SPEAK:
“The village also approved a marijuana dispensary in the commercial district along Route 9W to ‘bring revenue to the village to offset rising costs and taxes’.”
 
TRANSLATION FROM THE ORIGINAL RCBJ SUCCUBUS-SPEAK INTO THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE:
“Because there’s no better way to ameliorate the dangerous road conditions of Route 9W than to put a weed shop right on it.”
 

FROM THE ORIGINAL GARMENTO-SPEAK:
“Part of Tucker’s Piermont ‘honeymoon’ with village residents is owed to the board’s feat of 1 to 2 percent annual tax increases for six consecutive years. This year, however, Piermont jolted residents with a 6.9 percent tax increase because ‘everything hit at once’, the mayor said. ‘We’re dealing with sticker shock on insurances, inflation, [sic] huge retirement mandates by New York State’.
 
TRANSLATION FROM THE ORIGINAL GARMENTO-SPEAK INTO THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE:
“What ‘hit at once’ is the collective realization by Piermont residents that their Village government is being run by the equivalent of white-collar criminals – although as long as I, Bruce Tucker, am around as mayor, the collars are also available in percale as well, after a quick cell phone call to Elizabeth. Moreover, get used to 7% annual tax increases and worse, while I and my mayoral successors will scramble in vain to dig Piermont out of its negative 7.6 million dollar Net Position hole, and its pulverizing long-term pension and debt obligations. You have me to thank for that inimitable brand of fiscal management”.
https://unhandpiermont.blogspot.com/2024/07/he-spent-it.html
 
FROM THE ORIGINAL GARMENTO-SPEAK:
“And while the village’s May 31, 2023 year-end fund balance is more than $3.2 million – three times what it was when Tucker took office — financial challenges lie ahead.”
 
TRANSLATION FROM THE ORIGINAL GARMENTO-SPEAK INTO THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE:
“A 'fund balance' is an illusion when your Village's Net Position is actually US$7.6 million in the hole. 
https://unhandpiermont.blogspot.com/2024/07/he-spent-it.html
And saying to The RCBJ Succubus that ‘financial challenges lie ahead’ for taxpaying Piermont Village residents, is like Exxon Valdez Captain Joseph Hazelwood firing up the ship’s P.A. system to alert crew preparation for some choppy waters”.
 
FROM THE ORIGINAL GARMENTO-SPEAK:
“When prices increase like this, there are only two ways to keep taxes down: either reduce services, which I don’t want to do, or increase rateables”[sic], the Mayor said.
 
TRANSLATION FROM THE ORIGINAL GARMENTO-SPEAK INTO THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE:
“Aside from the fact that The RCBJ Succubus still cannot decide whether to capitalize the phrase ‘the Mayor’ or not, throughout this article, (but what is she after all, a writer?) – the reason that I am so desperate to increase ratables has little to do with inflation, and everything to do with the fact that I already spent the Village of Piermont into oblivion”.
https://unhandpiermont.blogspot.com/2024/07/he-spent-it.html

FROM THE ORIGINAL RCBJ SUCCUBUS-SPEAK:
“Therein lies the rub: Piermont has few vacant sites on which development can take place. It is land poor. There is one pending application for development at 675 Piermont Avenue along the riverfront, though that application has been stalled because the proposed restaurant project is too dense… Apart from the gaping hole at 447-477 Piermont Avenue, there are no significant development opportunities. ‘We’re almost to the point of zero spaces’, said Tucker. ‘The fact that this is an apartment building means it’s taxed at a commercial rate’.”
 
TRANSLATION FROM THE ORIGINAL RCBJ SUCCUBUS-SPEAK INTO THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE:
“Aside from my offensively misquoting Shakespeare (but what do you want from an RCBJ Succubus, anyway?):
https://good-death.english.cam.ac.uk/to-die-to-sleep-to-sleep-perchance-to-dream-ay-theres-the-rub/
- the only ‘gaping hole’ is the gaping hole void of morality which allows Tucker to enable the paving-over of a former Sunoco gasoline station site a few hundred feet from a Superfund site - with no real environmental oversight on the proposed 447-477 Piermont Avenue project, while transmitting utter radio silence to his Piermont constituents regarding the environmental consequences therefrom”.
 
FROM THE ORIGINAL GARMENTO-SPEAK:
“According to Tucker’s estimates, a 14-unit apartment complex on .4 acres on Piermont Avenue would generate roughly $112,000 annually in tax revenue, with between $100,000 and $200,000 in one-time permitting fees. In contrast, the mayor said a $2 million, 5,000 square-foot house on the site, for example, would generate about $15,000 in annual Village taxes.”
 
TRANSLATION FROM THE ORIGINAL GARMENTO-SPEAK INTO THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE:
“Leaving aside for a moment the confiscatory hustle of US$200,000 in "permitting fees" that end up in God knows whose pocket, remember that also according to ‘Tucker’s estimates’, the Village of Piermont is in great financial shape - even though between Year 2017 and Year 2023, Tucker’s ‘stewardship’ as mayor took the Village from a US$800,000 Net Position surplus, to US$7,600,000 in a Net Position hole. He’s a low-level miscreant Madoff who has been kiting for six-and-one-half years".
https://unhandpiermont.blogspot.com/2024/07/he-spent-it.html
 
FROM THE ORIGINAL RCBJ SUCCUBUS-SPEAK:
“Residents opposed to the apartment project made their opposition known at an April Planning Board meeting when Piermont Developers LLC showed a modern, boxy, brick-and-Hardie plank multi-family building more commonly seen in urbanized downtowns like White Plains.”
 
TRANSLATION FROM THE ORIGINAL RCBJ SUCCUBUS-SPEAK INTO THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE:
“Actually, it looked like a Motel 6 or Super 8 that you would be more likely to see off of a decrepit run-down highway near Newark or Paterson, New Jersey”.
 
FROM THE ORIGINAL RCBJ SUCCUBUS-SPEAK:
“Everyone – including Tucker – agrees the building’s aesthetics sorely missed the mark and would be incompatible with the village’s historical character. The developer agreed and understood it needed to go back to the drawing board.”
 
TRANSLATION FROM THE ORIGINAL RCBJ SUCCUBUS-SPEAK INTO THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE:
“Of course, that’s not at all true. Tucker never put any statement on record firmly opposing the project, nor did virtually anyone else in Village Hall. The developer, thanks to Tucker and Tucker's Village Hall consorts, angrily retracted and then threated litigation in court papers. Moreover, Tucker and his merry band of Village Hall pranksters were the ones that brought Village residents the planned monstrosity construction at 447-477 Piermont Avenue to begin with, years ago, hoping that it would simply sail by the continued inattention of Piermont residents”.
https://cms9files1.revize.com/piermont/document_center/Department/Planning%20&%20Zoning%20Board/Planning%20Board/Plan_Board_Documents/2022/5-9-22/Piermont%20Developers%20LLC%20Package.pdf
 
FROM THE ORIGINAL RCBJ SUCCUBUS-SPEAK:
“Two weeks later, four Piermont residents, who oppose the proposal, filed suit in Rockland County Supreme Court seeking to void the village’s new zoning law and to stop the developer’s application before any approvals or permits are issued. Residents Janice Young, Laura Healy-Grznar, John Grznar, and Valentina Zitt, live within 500 feet of the project site at 447-477 Piermont Avenue where Piermont Developers LLC, also named as a defendant in the suit, seeks a Special Permit to build a 14-unit, three-story multifamily residential building.”
 
TRANSLATION FROM THE ORIGINAL RCBJ SUCCUBUS-SPEAK INTO THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE:
“Of course, the most common and predictable Village Hall propagandized talking-point, is the pretense that the objection to 447-477 Piermont Avenue is limited to four people. Yet at this point, virtually all of Rockland County wants the 447-477 Piermont Avenue project to be scrapped - while also wanting Bruce Tucker to retreat to Elizabeth, New Jersey back where he came from, to sell some more towels until his much-needed retirement”.
 
FROM THE ORIGINAL RCBJ SUCCUBUS-SPEAK:
“Zitt and Young are the moderators of the Preserve Piermont Facebook page that has become the village’s inadvertent ‘water cooler’.”
 
TRANSLATION FROM THE ORIGINAL RCBJ SUCCUBUS-SPEAK INTO THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE:
“First of all, Valentina Zitt is not a moderator of the Preserve Piermont Facebook page, but why would the RCBJ Succubus ever let facts get in the way of a good story? Moreover, whether you call the ‘water cooler’ reference a metaphor or else a simple figure of speech, it sure tells you why The RCBJ Succubus can only blog to websites of her own design in a third-rate journalism market, as opposed to working a real job at a real newspaper”.

 
FROM THE ORIGINAL RCBJ SUCCUBUS-SPEAK:
“One poster recently wrote: ‘The overarching problem is that the page has 600+ followers and is currently a vacuum for complaining and tearing people down to achieve a goal’.
 
TRANSLATION FROM THE ORIGINAL RCBJ SUCCUBUS-SPEAK INTO THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE:
“Leave it to The RCBJ Succubus to cherry-pick the most mentally-unstable-sounding and inaccurate comment on the Preserve Piermont Facebook page, out of the thousands of comments opposing Bruce Tucker that now appear there. That must have taken The RCBJ Succubus all day. But there’s one in every crowd”.
 
FROM THE ORIGINAL RCBJ SUCCUBUS-SPEAK:
“The requirement for a Special Permit is part of a new zoning law, passed in March of 2023, that created the CBM (Central Business Multi-Use) zone. Plaintiffs allege the new Zoning Law and the CBM zone are illegal and have asked the Court to declare the local law ‘null and void’. Plaintiffs also say the Village has violated the Open Meetings Law by not posting notices and meeting minutes as required by New York State law.”
 
TRANSLATION FROM THE ORIGINAL RCBJ SUCCUBUS-SPEAK INTO THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE:
“It is always entertaining to read how The RCBJ Succubus tries to pretend to practice law without a license”.
 
FROM THE ORIGINAL RCBJ SUCCUBUS-SPEAK:
“The legal dispute arose after the Rockland County Planning Department, in a series of letters, wrote the ‘local law that created the Central Business Multi-Use (CBM) District was not properly referred’ to the County Planning Department and that it is ‘jurisdictionally defective’.
 
TRANSLATION FROM THE ORIGINAL RCBJ SUCCUBUS-SPEAK INTO THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE:
“Notwithstanding the derisive use of quotation-marks by the RCBJ Succubus, what the RCBJ Succubus is failing to tell you is that a Rockland County attorney has already affirmed to the Court that the County never received the GML referral”.
https://unhandpiermont.blogspot.com/2024/04/how-to-access-court-file.html
 
FROM THE ORIGINAL RCBJ SUCCUBUS-SPEAK:
“Zoning Amendments require review by the Rockland County Department of Planning under what is generally referred to as GML (General Municipal Law) Section 239 Review.”
 
TRANSLATION FROM THE ORIGINAL RCBJ SUCCUBUS-SPEAK INTO THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE:
“Again, it is always entertaining to read how The RCBJ Succubus tries to pretend to practice law without a license”.
 
FROM THE ORIGINAL RCBJ SUCCUBUS-SPEAK:
“At issue is whether the county received the document in a timely manner. To help prove its case, Piermont said it sent a copy of the GML to Grandview on January 10, but the receiving stamp shows a March date after Piermont adopted the law.”
 
TRANSLATION FROM THE ORIGINAL RCBJ SUCCUBUS-SPEAK INTO THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE:
“Actually, it is not at all ‘at issue’. The Rockland County attorney has already affirmed to the Court that the county did not receive the GML referral in a timely manner, and obviously Grandview did not receive the GML referral in a timely manner either”.
https://unhandpiermont.blogspot.com/2024/04/how-to-access-court-file.html
 
FROM THE ORIGINAL RCBJ SUCCUBUS-SPEAK:
“The Village says it fully complied back in January of 2023 when it mailed the proposed text amendment to the County Planning Department. The county says the village did not comply and says the local law creating the new zone was ‘not properly referred’.”
 
TRANSLATION FROM THE ORIGINAL RCBJ SUCCUBUS-SPEAK INTO THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE:
“It’s a lot more than ‘says’. The Rockland County attorney has already affirmed to the Court that the county did not receive the GML referral in a timely manner. Yet given the apparent non-existence of the ‘legal education’ of The RCBJ Succubus, The RCBJ Succubus will probably never appreciate the distinction”.
https://unhandpiermont.blogspot.com/2024/04/how-to-access-court-file.html
 
FROM THE ORIGINAL RCBJ SUCCUBUS-SPEAK:
“In late May, Rockland Supreme Court Justice Hal Greenwald halted, at least temporarily, the processing of an application pending before the Village of Piermont for a Special Permit to construct a multi-family dwelling unit at 447-477 Piermont Avenue in Piermont… Greenwald in late May entered a temporary order granting the residents the relief they sought. The order derails the application, prevents the processing or granting of any approvals, and precludes the village from holding a public meeting unless and until it complies with New York’s Open Meetings Law by making the materials available related to the application available to the public. The Court was supposed to revisit the temporary order July 8th… The parties are due in court on Aug. 21st.”
 
TRANSLATION FROM THE ORIGINAL RCBJ SUCCUBUS-SPEAK INTO THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE:
“Again, it is always entertaining to read how The RCBJ Succubus tries to pretend to practice law without a license”.
 
FROM THE ORIGINAL GARMENTO-SPEAK:
“Tucker does not understand why residents went to court, rather than await new architectural plans.”
 
TRANSLATION FROM THE ORIGINAL GARMENTO-SPEAK INTO THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE:
“Tucker does not understand how it is possible that he didn’t get away with his scheme that he and his Village Hall cronies planned so carefully over a period of so many years. It was the perfect hustle. Where did he go wrong?” 
 
FROM THE ORIGINAL GARMENTO-SPEAK:
“‘The first design was not anywhere near ready to fit in with the village and the developer got the message', the mayor said. ‘People don’t have any patience. The developer said he would redo the plans, but they couldn’t wait’.”
 
TRANSLATION FROM THE ORIGINAL GARMENTO-SPEAK INTO THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE:
“I was about to ram this thing through in April of this year before any of the residents realized it, and then BOOM!”
 
FROM THE ORIGINAL RCBJ SUCCUBUS-SPEAK:
“The residents who filed the suit and others have made it clear on Facebook and through their community activism they believe a 14-unit apartment complex will invite additional ‘unwanted’ development, as well as increased traffic along Main Street.”
 
TRANSLATION FROM THE ORIGINAL RCBJ SUCCUBUS-SPEAK INTO THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE:
“Of course, this is anathema to me, The RCBJ Succubus, given that my life’s work, if you want to call it that, is regularly kissing up to low-life reptilian members of the Rockland County business community, while planting fictitious ‘newspaper’ articles in their favor, as their supplicant”.
 
FROM THE ORIGINAL GARMENTO-SPEAK:
“But the mayor is even more distressed about a letter to the court sent by the petitioners’ attorney Brian Condon that effectively questions whether the village clerk/treasurer has perjured herself.”
 
TRANSLATION FROM THE ORIGINAL GARMENTO-SPEAK INTO THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE:
“But the mayor is even more distressed about his Village government’s most obvious point of exposure”.
https://unhandpiermont.blogspot.com/2024/04/how-to-access-court-file.html
 
FROM THE ORIGINAL GARMENTO-SPEAK:
“In 25 years of practicing law, I have never accused anyone of perjury”, Condon writes. “However, in light of the stamped document presented to this court showing that the mailing was not made to the Village of Grandview until March of 2023, I think (Jennifer) DeYorgi Maher must be questioned under oath”… Tucker said he finds the accusations distressing”.

https://unhandpiermont.blogspot.com/2024/07/erratum-notice-sec-and-federal.html

TRANSLATION FROM THE ORIGINAL GARMENTO-SPEAK INTO THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE:
“What I, Bruce Tucker, am really afraid of, is what happens to me if I get put on the stand under oath, though”.
 
FROM THE ORIGINAL GARMENTO-SPEAK:
“Jennifer is the most honest person I’ve ever met”…
 
TRANSLATION FROM THE ORIGINAL GARMENTO-SPEAK INTO THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE:
“By the way, I also hope you will support me, Bruce Tucker, in my next endeavor to become Press Secretary for the next George Santos political campaign”.
 
FROM THE ORIGINAL GARMENTO-SPEAK:
“… adding she is an EMT, alongside petitioners on the lawsuit. “There’s no honor with these people; they don’t even respect fellow volunteers. It’s unbelievable.”
 
TRANSLATION FROM THE ORIGINAL GARMENTO-SPEAK INTO THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE:
“If there’s one thing that I learned while a home goods garmento towel salesman in Elizabeth, New Jersey dealing with customer returns, it is - Blame The Victim. Always blame the victim”.
 
FROM THE ORIGINAL GARMENTO-SPEAK:
“Even more confounding to Tucker is the Judge’s decision to impose a temporary injunction… I thought the judge would by now have lifted the injunction”, said Tucker.
 
TRANSLATION FROM THE ORIGINAL GARMENTO-SPEAK INTO THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE:
“It is always entertaining to read how Bruce Tucker tries to pretend to practice law without a license”.
 
FROM THE ORIGINAL GARMENTO-SPEAK:
“Condon keeps submitting letters after the cutoff date. Our attorneys have never seen anything like this.”
 
TRANSLATION FROM THE ORIGINAL GARMENTO-SPEAK INTO THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE:
“How dare Condon win this case for his clients. How dare he!”
 
FROM THE ORIGINAL GARMENTO-SPEAK:
“The village has hired outside counsel to handle the case, Desmond Lyons of Lyons McGovern LLP of White Plains… This is the first time in seven years the village has been named in a lawsuit’, said Tucker. ‘We’ve had meetings where people disagree but nothing like this has happened in a decade.’”
 
TRANSLATION FROM THE ORIGINAL GARMENTO-SPEAK INTO THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE:
“The reason why nothing like this has happened before, is because I got away with all of it, including through COVID since 2020, in the six-and-a-half years that I faked mayoral duties for Piermont”.
 
FROM THE ORIGINAL RCBJ SUCCUBUS-SPEAK:
“Tucker, who worked in the private sector for nearly 30 years…”
 
TRANSLATION FROM THE ORIGINAL RCBJ SUCCUBUS-SPEAK INTO THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE:
“Tucker, who sold towels in Elizabeth for nearly 30 years…”
 
FROM THE ORIGINAL GARMENTO-SPEAK:
“… said the village will get through this… I’ll get through this, the board will get through this’, said the mayor. ‘This has been very distressing. Not the fact that people are disagreeing but the personal attacks, the misguided tactics. Residents who are for development are also being attacked’… He added: ‘If I thought this one building in downtown would change the whole character, I would never have been for it.’
 
TRANSLATION FROM THE ORIGINAL GARMENTO-SPEAK INTO THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE:
“What is very distressing is that I am going to have to blow out of town now, since I will never be able to face any of these residents again after enabling 447-477 Piermont Avenue, after over-spending their flooded-out Village into oblivion, after mortgaging away the futures of the residents, and after destroying their ecosystem and habitat permanently”.
 
FROM THE ORIGINAL GARMENTO-SPEAK:
“Asked if he’ll run for re-election in 2026, the Mayor quipped: ‘Ask me in March’, adding ‘a lot can happen’.”
 
TRANSLATION FROM THE ORIGINAL GARMENTO-SPEAK INTO THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE:
“Can one run a mayoral campaign from Waymart, Pennsylvania?”

Another Piece Of Nonsense From Tina Traster, RCBJ Succubus.

 
https://rcbizjournal.com/2024/07/30/piermont-mayor-bruce-tucker-talks-about-controversy-engulfing-his-village/
Piermont Mayor Bruce Tucker Talks About Controversy Engulfing His Village
July 30, 2024RCBJ-Connect
RCBJ-Audible (Listen For Free)
Voiced by Amazon Polly
Proposed Development Has Cost Village Public Officials, Ongoing Litigation & A Social Media Campaign That Has Turned Personal and Ugly
By Tina Traster
 
Since 2018, Piermont’s Mayor Bruce Tucker has had a sweet ride – the 66-year-old retired textile factory owner has worked tirelessly as a full-time, but part-time paid, civil servant and in return has held onto his seat for what is now his fourth two-year term.
 
“The first design was not anywhere near ready to fit in with the village and the developer got the message,” the mayor said.
 
But the Village’s passage of a rezoning plan along Main Street last March that gives wider berth to a proposed 14-unit apartment complex’s land-use approval process is causing a “seven-year itch,” so to speak.
 
Are Village residents “breaking up” with Tucker, or is the daily drum of vitriolic criticism on Facebook limited to a small subset of neighbors who live close to the proposed development? Can this once-happy “marriage” be saved?  Is it even in danger?
 
For now, the answers to these questions remain unclear. But for the first time in his tenure, Tucker finds himself amid a barrage of controversy in a negative social media campaign that has cost the Village its Planning Board Chairman and a Board Trustee, and has tied up the Village in litigation over its zoning amendment. Debate over whether the “Central CBM (Central Business Multi-Use) zoning district was a sound policy decision has metastasized into an indictment on just about every decision the village has made or is making, whether it relates to issuing filming permits, an oil spill, finances.
 
“I had no sense that this was going to be so controversial,” said Tucker, referring to the CBM Zoning, which was promulgated to allow greater density and to bring the entire historic downtown district into zoning compliance. The mayor said the proposed downtown development would add tax rateables, get rid of an unsightly dirt patch that’s been used as an ad hoc parking lot for years, and provide housing aimed at millennials and empty nesters to the village.
 
What has shocked the mayor most about navigating his first significant controversy has been relentless ad hominem attacks on a Facebook page called “Preserve Piermont,” accusing him of enriching himself or enacting laws in secret, particularly when proposals and adoption of the zone change were noticed and voted on in public hearings.
 
“Listen, I can take criticism,” said Tucker, who has lived and raised a family in the village for 34 years. “But the worst of it is the vitriol on Facebook. If people disagree, I’m more than willing to discuss it. But to start accusing us of unsubstantiated inappropriateness, of kickbacks, of being paid off by developers, of not holding public hearings, making personal attacks – this is just dishonest.”
 
Preserve Piermont Facebook was founded in March; it has more than 600 members.
 
Piermont, a picturesque village on the Hudson River with a population of 2,500 residents, has long been a peaceful but pricy enclave that avoided the media’s glare. Mostly, the once working-class village that began gentrifying three decades ago, is comparatively expensive and exclusive compared to much of Rockland County. Notably, its downtown district rarely has vacancy signs; the village is a magnet for area residents and day trippers in search of awesome Hudson River access, coastal beauty, a dining scene, shops, galleries, and a touch of history. The Victorian village played a major role during World War II when more than a million troops marched from Camp Shanks to board vessels destined for Europe, earning the nickname “Last Stop USA”.
 
For his part, Tucker is proud of his record. In citing his accomplishments, he lists closing the Piermont Pier Park to motorized vehicles on Sundays from May 1 to Sept. 30, creating Gair Memorial Park, formation of a traffic committee, passing a “Do Not Knock” law, and securing grants for raising and repaving flood-prone Ferry Road. The Mayor’s administration has also taken a lead on becoming an environmentally-forward community, created a plastic bag-free policy via a Reusable Bag Law, banned Glyphosate (an herbicide) on village-owned property, converted street lighting to LEDs, tightened up an AirBnB law to prevent “ghost blocks”, created a rental registry, and has taken steps to protect the seawall and completed $100,000 in storm drainage improvements on the Erie Trail.
 
The village also approved a marijuana dispensary in the commercial district along Route 9W to “bring revenue to the village to offset rising costs and taxes.”
 
Part of Tucker’s Piermont “honeymoon” with village residents is owed to the board’s feat of 1 to 2 percent annual tax increases for six consecutive years. This year, however, Piermont jolted residents with a 6.9 percent tax increase because “everything hit at once,” the mayor said. “We’re dealing with sticker shock on insurances, inflation, huge retirement mandates by New York State.”
 
And while the village’s May 31, 2023 year-end fund balance is more than $3.2 million – three times what it was when Tucker took office — financial challenges lie ahead.
 
“When prices increase like this, there are only two ways to keep taxes down: either reduce services, which I don’t want to do, or increase rateables,” the Mayor said.
 
Therein lies the rub: Piermont has few vacant sites on which development can take place. It is land poor. There is one pending application for development at 675 Piermont Avenue along the riverfront, though that application has been stalled because the proposed restaurant project is too dense.
 
Apart from the gaping hole at 447-477 Piermont Avenue, there are no significant development opportunities. “We’re almost to the point of zero spaces,” said Tucker. “The fact that this is an apartment building means it’s taxed at a commercial rate.”
 
According to Tucker’s estimates, a 14-unit apartment complex on .4 acres on Piermont Avenue would generate roughly $112,000 annually in tax revenue, with between $100,000 and $200,000 in one-time permitting fees. In contrast, the mayor said a $2 million, 5,000 square-foot house on the site, for example, would generate about $15,000 in annual Village taxes.
 
Residents opposed to the apartment project made their opposition known at an April Planning Board meeting when Piermont Developers LLC showed a modern, boxy, brick-and-Hardie plank multi-family building more commonly seen in urbanized downtowns like White Plains.
 
Everyone – including Tucker – agrees the building’s aesthetics sorely missed the mark and would be incompatible with the village’s historical character. The developer agreed and understood it needed to go back to the drawing board.
 
Two weeks later, four Piermont residents, who oppose the proposal, filed suit in Rockland County Supreme Court seeking to void the village’s new zoning law and to stop the developer’s application before any approvals or permits are issued. Residents Janice Young, Laura Healy-Grznar, John Grznar, and Valentina Zitt, live within 500 feet of the project site at 447-477 Piermont Avenue where Piermont Developers LLC, also named as a defendant in the suit, seeks a Special Permit to build a 14-unit, three-story multifamily residential building.
 
Zitt and Young are the moderators of the Preserve Piermont Facebook page that has become the village’s inadvertent “water cooler.”
 
One poster recently wrote: “The overarching problem is that the page has 600+ followers and is currently a vacuum for complaining and tearing people down to achieve a goal.”
 
The requirement for a Special Permit is part of a new zoning law, passed in March of 2023, that created the CBM (Central Business Multi-Use) zone. Plaintiffs allege the new Zoning Law and the CBM zone are illegal and have asked the Court to declare the local law “null and void.” Plaintiffs also say the Village has violated the Open Meetings Law by not posting notices and meeting minutes as required by New York State law.
 
The legal dispute arose after the Rockland County Planning Department, in a series of letters, wrote the “local law that created the Central Business Multi-Use (CBM) District was not properly referred” to the County Planning Department and that it is “jurisdictionally defective”.
 
Zoning Amendments require review by the Rockland County Department of Planning under what is generally referred to as GML (General Municipal Law) Section 239 Review.
 
At issue is whether the county received the document in a timely manner. To help prove its case, Piermont said it sent a copy of the GML to Grandview on January 10, but the receiving stamp shows a March date after Piermont adopted the law.
 
The Village says it fully complied back in January of 2023 when it mailed the proposed text amendment to the County Planning Department. The county says the village did not comply and says the local law creating the new zone was “not properly referred.”
 
In late May, Rockland Supreme Court Justice Hal Greenwald halted, at least temporarily, the processing of an application pending before the Village of Piermont for a Special Permit to construct a multi-family dwelling unit at 447-477 Piermont Avenue in Piermont.
 
Greenwald in late May entered a temporary order granting the residents the relief they sought. The order derails the application, prevents the processing or granting of any approvals, and precludes the village from holding a public meeting unless and until it complies with New York’s Open Meetings Law by making the materials available related to the application available to the public. The Court was supposed to revisit the temporary order July 8th.
 
The parties are due in court on Aug. 21st.
 
Tucker does not understand why residents went to court, rather than await new architectural plans.
 
“The first design was not anywhere near ready to fit in with the village and the developer got the message,” the mayor said. “People don’t have any patience. The developer said he would redo the plans, but they couldn’t wait.”
 
The residents who filed the suit and others have made it clear on Facebook and through their community activism they believe a 14-unit apartment complex will invite additional “unwanted” development, as well as increased traffic along Main Street.
 
But the mayor is even more distressed about a letter to the court sent by the petitioners’ attorney Brian Condon that effectively questions whether the village clerk/treasurer has perjured herself.
 
“In 25 years of practicing law, I have never accused anyone of perjury,” Condon writes. “However, in light of the stamped document presented to this court showing that the mailing was not made to the Village of Grandview until March of 2023, I think (Jennifer) DeYorgi Maher must be questioned under oath.”
 
Tucker said he finds the accusations distressing.
 
“Jennifer is the most honest person I’ve ever met,” adding she is an EMT, alongside petitioners on the lawsuit. “There’s no honor with these people; they don’t even respect fellow volunteers. It’s unbelievable.”
 
Even more confounding to Tucker is the Judge’s decision to impose a temporary injunction.
 
“I thought the judge would by now have lifted the injunction,” said Tucker. “Condon keeps submitting letters after the cutoff date. Our attorneys have never seen anything like this.”
 
The village has hired outside counsel to handle the case, Desmond Lyons of Lyons McGovern LLP of White Plains.
 
“This is the first time in seven years the village has been named in a lawsuit,” said Tucker. “We’ve had meetings where people disagree but nothing like this has happened in a decade.”
 
Tucker, who worked in the private sector for nearly 30 years, said the village will get through this.
 
“I’ll get through this, the board will get through this,” said the mayor. “This has been very distressing. Not the fact that people are disagreeing but the personal attacks, the misguided tactics. Residents who are for development are also being attacked.”
 
He added: “If I thought this one building in downtown would change the whole character, I would never have been for it.”
 
Asked if he’ll run for re-election in 2026, the Mayor quipped: “Ask me in March,” adding “a lot can happen.”

- - - - - - - - - -

In response:

Letter to the Editor
July 30, 2024
 
Dear Ms. Traster,
 
I am writing to express my concern over the recent article entitled “Mayor Bruce Tucker Talks About Controversy Engulfing His Village.” This article, published in the July 30, 2024 edition of the Rockland County Business Journal, is not only biased but also riddled with factual inaccuracies which call into question the journalistic integrity of the endeavor.
 
Preliminarily, much of the article takes swipe at “Preserve Piermont.” The portrayal of this dedicated community organization as merely a “Facebook page” engaged in “relentless ad hominem attacks” is a gross mischaracterization that does a disservice to the residents of the Village – many of whom have come out to speak about current Village government and its inability or unwillingness to listen to residents.
 
Preserve Piermont is far more than a social media presence. It is a committed group of residents advocating for governmental transparency and responsible development. The “controversy” currently engulfing our Village – not Bruce Tucker’s – is self-imposed, resulting from this Village’s lack of transparency and woeful failure to govern in accordance with the wishes of its residents. To suggest that the dissatisfaction within the community is rooted in a series of personal attacks overlooks the genuine and widespread concerns of the Villagers. Our government’s actions have consistently contradicted the principles of open and honest governance, leading to a justifiable sense of frustration and disillusionment among the populace.
 
One of the most glaring issues with your article is the biased coverage of the Village’s creation of a new zoning district: the Central Business Multi-Use District. Implemented in March of 2023, this legislative act was undertaken largely without public input, knowledge, or awareness. It was also undertaken without the input of the Rockland County Department of Planning. Certain zoning and planning actions, as you are likely aware, must be reviewed by the County Planning Agency. The purpose for this is to allow for County input on impacts the action might have. These impacts, or potential impacts, range from an analysis of traffic, density, flooding, and other pertinent impacts that might be sustained by the local municipality or adjacent property owners as a result of the legislative change. Rockland County Executive Edwin J. Day also signed an executive order that requires this process be followed. A failure to follow that process prevents the issuance of permits, approvals, and, most importantly, 911 addresses.
 
Despite your article’s reference to the proposed development at 447-477 Piermont Avenue and characteristically reducing residential opposition to “four Piermont residents”, I can assure you that since January of 2024, the overwhelming majority of residents speaking at public meetings are concerned with this Village’s failure to solicit County comment for the community’s benefit and the impacts of this failure. As far as I am aware, the residents of the Village of Piermont do not look to stop development altogether. Instead, residents look to their government, and Mayor Tucker as its purported leader, to ensure that responsible development occurs while their homes and families are protected in the process. As of late, it feels like irresponsible development is set to occur at the expense of our homes and families.
 
Preserve Piermont was started to seek to hold our leaders accountable, and ensure that development serves the best interests of all residents, rather than a select few. This organization has been instrumental in highlighting the lack of transparency and advocating for more inclusive and responsible governance. As such, I call on you and the Rockland County Business Journal to fairly represent community organizations like Preserve Piermont. I urge you to provide a more balanced and realistic assessment of the situation in future reporting. By doing so, you will not only be upholding the standards of journalistic integrity but also supporting the efforts of residents and families who are working tirelessly to ensure that our Village remains a vibrant and liveable community for all.
 
I moved to Piermont in 2018. My wife and I emptied our bank and retirement accounts to purchase our home on Ladik Street in 2021. My first son was born the following year, and my second son was born this year. I am a volunteer firefighter for the Village of Piermont Fire Department, and while I am not tested or experienced, I volunteer to give back time to the community that was welcoming enough to let me become a part of it. I do not yet have the privilege, or confidence, to consider myself a true Villager because I haven’t been here half as long as the rest of our Village, or as long as Mayor Tucker.
 
But I have chosen this community as the place to build my family’s future and we are committed to doing whatever it takes to protect and preserve the unique character and values that drew us here in the first place.
 
I could only expect, and hope, Mayor Tucker will do the same.
 
Very truly yours,
 
Robert C. Zitt