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Ellenville wants to see money for Sam's Point
Times Herald Record
Paul Brooks
February 3, 2006

Ellenville - The Shawangunk Ridge land deal that was supposed to take a couple of years to finish is dragging into its ninth year with no end in sight.

The state says it is working diligently to acquire the Sam's Point tract that Ellenville owned.

Mayor Jeff Kaplan said he's tired of excuses.

"We have been listening to this stuff for years," Kaplan said yesterday. "The only story we need to hear now is not even that the check is in the mail but that the check is on the desk. Just bring me a check."

The prime park land, nearly 4,000 acres, is supposed to go on the tax rolls. Once it does, the village, Town of Wawarsing, the Ellenville School District and Ulster County county, among others, start sharing in more than $200,000 a year in tax revenue. That was part of the deal when the village signed over the land to the Open Space Institute and the Nature Conservancy back in 1997. They were to transfer the land to the Palisades Interstate Parks Commission and the state.

The transfer is still mired in paperwork. The delay has cost local taxpayers about $1.5 million, according to Village Manager Elliott Auerbach and Kaplan.

Enough, said state Sen. John Bonacic, R-C-Mount Hope. He fired off a scathing letter last month to Bernadette Castro, commissioner of the state Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, which is in charge of the transfer.

"With all due respect," Bonacic said in the Jan. 17 letter to Castro, "I have never seen the State government appear to botch the resolution of an issue more than the Sam's Point issue has been handled."

"It should never have taken this long," Bonacic said yesterday.

Officials at the State Parks Office are doing everything they can to wrap up the deal, according to Wendy Gibson, a spokeswoman for the office.

The transfer has to clear both the comptroller and the state Attorney General's Office.

Marc Violette, a spokesman for Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, said the transfer is a high priority. "It's at the top of the pile," he said.

Village officials say it might be too late for action. "We want to see if we can invalidate the sale and recapture the property," Auerbach said.

"In today's market, those 4,000 acres are a lot more valuable."