Inside the Dramatic Turnaround of Ramapo

When I first took office and I met with the county executive to introduce myself, he said, he said, um, uh, you know, your town is is kind of like the North Korea of Rocken County. Don't be the North Korea. And I actually said, well, I think we're more like the Israel of Rocking County. [Music] None of your business, Oshi. None of your business, Michael. It's the None of Your Business podcast hosted by Michael and Oshi. This week's episode is brought to you by Gem Enrollments. Gem Enrollments is a provider of benefits where if you have a company that you have employees and you want to provide their extra benefits or they want accident insurance uh what do you know about gem enrollments? Well, I'll tell you this. Any company that has 50, 100 or more employees, most of your employees are there strictly for their health benefits. It's critical for them. And you want to make information about their insurance as accessible for them as possible. Gem Enrollments is a concierge health benefits enrollment company. They make sure that your employees are taken care of, that they're heard, that they're seen, and that all of their needs are met when it comes to insurance. They provide this service for so many organizations, and they can for yours, too. Reach out to a Prime Source expense advisor to learn more about GEM enrollments and all their benefits. And now, back to our program. Welcome back everybody to another amazing episode of the none of your business podcast. I'm your host Michael Greenfield. Joined with me is Ushi Schwarz and today we have an amazing amazing guest, the CEO of Ramipo, the town supervisor, the man himself, Mr. Michael Spect. Welcome to the program. Thank you. We are so excited to have you here. Just a quick uh promo drop. Uh we're backed by the Prime Source production team and we'd love for you guys to like, subscribe, comment, get involved, tell us the kind of questions you like to hear. You know the Mr. respect answer, you know, tell us the kind of things that you want us to talk about and we will sometimes pay attention. Yeah. Not too much, a little bit. Yeah. When it makes sense, right? When when it when it's, you know, uh, Michael, uh, Mr. Town Supervisor, what what what do we call you? Michael. Michael. Michael is perfect. That's okay. Michael. Mike. Yeah. So, your honor, your eminence, your majesty. Your majesty. Yes, that does make sense. You have an amazing background. I know uh very little of you, but the little that I do know is very very impressive. Uh I know you were a former prosecutor. Yes. And um I I know that you're a town of Ramipo lover and uh maybe by uh forest, I don't know. Did your wife make you get into this? She did. She did. She did. She made me get into the town. I grew up in Havstra, North Rockland. And I met my wife in 1990. I got out of law school. She got out of college. And uh my mother will always take the credit because she was reading back then. You didn't have the internet. She had the Journal News and they had a thing uh Jewish singles volleyball tomorrow night at uh uh a synagogue which is no longer there in Suffren said I'll go. I went I met my wife and we wind up I went back the next week. I uh asked her out. We began dating. We got engaged and then we had to decide where we were going to live. She grew up in uh what's now in the Torma neighborhood. Uh but she always called it Suffern and she loved the town. and she had interned when she was in college for uh supervisor Herb Reeseman who was a legend. And I said, "Do you want to live in Havstra? Do you want to live uh by you?" And she said, "We have to live in Ramipo. I I don't want to live anywhere else." I said, "All right. I I didn't know then anything. Uh one town was the same as another." I said, "And you were in love." I was in love. And I said, "It's 15 minutes away from where I live now." And you haven't stopped taking orders since. No, that hasn't changed. She's the real supervisor here, is she? She is. She is. Somebody She's the supervisor's supervisor. The other day, somebody came in and they were unhappy with something that one of our departments did. And they asked, "Who do I complain to? Who's above?" And they said, "The supervisor." And they came to my office and they didn't like what I said. And they said, "Well, who is above you?" I said, "Karen, I'll give you her number, but she may not pick up." Oh, I'm curious. What was the what was the complaint? Let me hear what people are complaining about. Uh, they went to the town clerk's office and they wanted a copy of an old record from 20 odd years ago that they said they had asked for then and they never got. And the clerk said, "We have no record of you ever asking for it, but either way, it's a new copy." Okay, boring. I thought it would be a little bit more exciting. No, it was very, very boring. It was over $10. Well, why don't we start with just first of all, what the heck does a town supervisor do? Great question. What is your role? What is your responsibility? I think the way you said it as CEO of of the town is the best way. I'm the chief executive of the town of Ramipo. I'm the person who has the responsibility for the town, responsibility for the town's finances. We have a finance director who reports directly to me, but ultimately I'm the one who signs off on the finances. I direct all the departments with the exception of the highway department because we have an elected highway superintendent, Fred Brin, who we work together. We're a great team. Uh, but he controls what his department does, although we provide the funding for his department. So, it's a little complicated there. So, let me just let me understand this. Let me just break this down and I want to dumb this down a little bit for guys like me. So, let's assume you have a bank account. Okay? The name of the bank account is registered to Tanoramo. You're the you're the officer of that bank account. You're in control of it. And that money comes from all taxes that are paid into it which ultimately goes to the bank account and there's hundreds of millions of dollars in there potentially at a time and then you're the one who authorizes and you say all right this is approved this right and you're you're allocating where the money goes and you don't like is there a board is there like we have a town board there's five members myself and four elected town council people and uh we set the budget every year we vote on uh uh on the budget which has allocations for different projects, different departments, salaries, things like that. And then throughout the year uh ultimately I have to prove every week the checks that are issued. I have to sign off on payroll. Uh I have that responsibility. Uh you know, we have a finance department that does all the the accounting and the and the leg work, but ultimately they present it to me every week and I have to approve it and sign off. But the overall large spending is uh done with the approval of the town board. I'm curious, by the way, besides payroll, what what's a big expense that town? The biggest what's the number one expense? Um, right now, uh, well, payroll is big, of course. Uh, right now we have we're spending a lot of money on infrastructure upgrades because we went many years without putting in sidewalks, without fixing the roads, and we've been doing that. So, uh, we're spending on installing sidewalks. I just got off the phone an hour ago about putting in a new sidewalk. uh that's been long awaited and we're looking to do uh traffic improvements, turning lanes, uh stacking lanes, uh street lights, things like that. So, that's a big expense. Uh our police department is a big part of the budget, both salary and just operational expense because we have a large department. We have about 110 officers and we could probably hire a few more and still be, you know, within what we need. Um this is the Ramipo police. Ramipo police. So, there could also be like the town police. Yeah, we're the town. So, we have that, right? And then the the Rambo police is the highest order in department. We have Rambo is unique because we have 12 villages in the town and the villages have a lot of independence. They set their own local laws, their own zoning, their own land use approvals. Two of them have police departments, Spring Valley and Sovereign. So, we don't do policing in Spring Valley or Suffer unless they're asking us for help for backup. But the other 10 villages and the unincorporated town, Muny and the other unincorporated areas, we're the police. So that is a big expense. Uh that takes the biggest part of our budget. Highway is a big part both salaries and fixing potholes. You know uh uh people love to complain that that potholes need to be fixed and when we wherever we learn of them we go out and we do it. But there's a cost material. Every time I go over a pothole I curse your name. You do that damn supervisor. Never mind though. Some of those some of those may be state or county roads. You know, by the way, funny funny you should say that. In the town of Ramipo, I've experienced that if I get pulled, by the way, you've gotten pulled over ever in the town of Ramipo. Has that happened? Um, can't imagine someone pulling you over who you pay their paycheck to. No comment. But you know the police here, they are like, you know, Ushi was mentioning a minute ago. So there's Ramapo police, which is the town. Then villages have their own police. Two of our villages do. Yeah. Which ones? Yeah. Suffren and Spring Valley. And those are the two older villages that were established uh in the 1800s probably. Interesting. Yeah. And they were there they were always more independent because if we look at it geographically Spring Valley is at the intersection of uh Route 59 and Route 45, two major state roads and train station was there. So it became a commercial area shopping and then you had the bungalow colonies then that were there years ago. So that was always his own little village. And then Suffren is in the intersection of 202 and Route 59. and also a train station. So their transportation hubs, their shopping hubs. So they kind of grew up organically and the town kind of came into being around them. So they always had their own um their own police. The other villages for the most part came about in the uh latter part of the 20th century and a lot of them were created as zoning villages. They were created because they unfortunately some of the villages wanted to keep people out. So they created it to pass restrictive zoning laws and that's changing and we have great relationship with our villages now. We all work together. Uh but so Spring Valley police chasing someone down the road, comes into another town. Yeah. He doesn't have to pull over. No, he can keep going. Hot pursuit law. You can keep following. Oh, that's what it's called. Hot pursuit. Yeah. New York hot pursuit. Police in hot pursuit of a of a wanted criminal or suspect could cross the uh municipal lines. So they have no jurisdiction beyond their confined territory. Well, they they do and they don't. A New York a police officer in New York is a police officer throughout the whole state. So cop goes on vacation to Buffalo and he sees a crime being committed could act as a cop. But generally the right practice is to to defer to the local authorities and uh call in and and say I'm a cop from out of the area and I saw this and that happening. It's a way to avoid problems. If you don't mind clarify something for me. I'm on the Palisades. I'm going from New York to New Jersey. That's separate. That's the Palisades police. That's the New York State Police and then you cross over you have the uh New Jersey state police. So what happens there? Can they chase me into New Jersey? Yeah, I think they can. I think they go over the line if they're right. Michael, can you please not? I have a feeling he's going to try this. Just to like really test it out. Please don't. No, you know, there's always a thing like, oh, if you get pulled over on the Palisades between exit 5 and whatever, it's okay because it's New Jersey. You don't have points, is it? Oh, it might be true. I don't know how New Jersey traffic law works. You may not get points, but something that I was saying earlier is something that I that I found interesting. I don't know if you ever had this. If you Okay, so you know, Mr. Supervisor, you've never gotten pulled over. We won't talk about it, but I've gotten pulled over. I've gotten pulled over and I've been to the court system and I find and I'm I don't want this to change but I still going to bring attention to it because find it fascinating that 90% of the tickets that you're listening to speeding and seat belts and cell phones turning into parking tickets. That's right. They turn into probably 121A I think which is parking on the pavement. Yeah. Because the idea is that unless it was really egregious and it's someone's first defense, you want to you want to you want to give them a warning. You want them to pay, but you don't want to impair someone's license because people worry about their insurance going up. They worry about losing and when they pay, they pay for a parking. It goes to the town. It goes the money goes to the village. We uh the municipality gets part of it and part of it goes to the state. I mean, and if it's a speeding ticket and it stays as a speeding ticket, then it automatically goes I believe it all goes to the state then. Ah, so it makes sense. It's a it's a compromise for all of us. It helps the courts. It helps us and and everybody makes the drive. Everybody's acting right. That's what I instituted a couple years ago because we're having long lines of traffic. It was tying up the attorneys and the court. We did what some other towns did. We did plea by mail where you get a ticket. A few weeks later, you'll get a letter from our town attorney's office saying you have a ticket. It's a if you're found guilty, it's a five-point violation, whatever it is. Uh we're offering you a plea to whatever the number is. It could be the 121 no points. It could be a reduction, two points. If you want to take it, sign the form, mail it in, and you'll get a a letter from the court with your fine. And people love that because they don't want to have to go waste a whole morning and afternoon sitting in court. How many villages are part of the town? We have 12 villages. 12 total villages. 12 total villages in the town. What's the biggest village from? Uh, good question. Uh, in terms of population, New Square is big. It's got a lot of people. Um, trying to New Square is considered its own village. New Square is own the original and they're one of the biggest. It was one of I believe it is in terms of population if not in terms of area. How many people are how many first of all how many voters do they have? I think that's more I think about 3,500 or so as far as I could remember. 3500 is is considered the biggest village. Well that's that's the voters in terms of people it's a lot more because you have a lot of kids you know. Yeah. How many people total in Rockland County? Oh in Rockland uh 300,000 and change in Ramipo officially we're about 160,000 or so. Wow. Yeah. So, we're we are we're about 45% of the population of the entire county. Wow. Yeah. We're big. We're big. We've grown. It's bigger than I thought. We went up 20% our population between the 2010 and the 2020 census. And that's just the population that was counted. That doesn't include the people that were not were undercounted in the uh in the census. Wow. I did not We're very big. Where do you think all the traffic is coming from? That's why cars in the road. Exactly. Wait a second. It's 300,0001. Somebody just had a baby. Oh. Oh. I always get people complaining and they're like, "We moved here three years ago from Brooklyn or wherever and there's too much traffic." I'm like, "That's because everyone's moving here, you know. Why did you move here?" "Well, we went to the schools. We went to this and that." I'm like, "Well, you're not the only one." I I'm just curious. You say Mazletov, and you say it very easily. It's coming out of You know, you said you went to a Jewish volleyball singles event. So, you are Jewish. I am Jewish. It's a a little known secret. I've never certainly never hid it. And I I tell people all the time, but people don't think I am. A lot of people don't think I am in the community because my last name is not obviously Jewish. It could be, it could not be, it could go either way. And uh I'm I'm not from an Orthodox background, but I I grew up in a went to a conservative synagogue in Habraw. And uh my you know my uh grandparents on one side, great-grandparents on the other side were immigrants from Eastern Europe, Yiddish speaking. My parents grew up in households where their parents, my grandparents spoke Yiddish at home and English and you know at work and in so do you know what town in you saying Eastern Europe? Yeah, I know my grandfather was from uh Lett which is Poland and he actually came here as a young man after World War I. He served in the Austrohungarian army in World War I and then he came here in the 1920s when he was in his early to mid20s I think became a citizen. My grandmother who married, she uh her parents were from Russia. They went to London and she was born in London and lived there uh in in White Chapel, the East End until she was a little girl, 5 years old or so. They moved to America and then they actually was interesting. Somehow they got jobs in a a town in a small town in Massachusetts working in a hotel there that they knew somebody who owned it. My greatgrandfather was like a handyman. My great-grandmother was a cook. and she spent her childhood as a little girl in this little town in in Massachusetts. And then they wind up moving to um uh to this New York City when she was a little bit older. So she had a uh she didn't have a stereotypical New York Jewish accent when she was young. And and we're talking back then, this is like the 1910s when she was a teenager and she was going for jobs. And she was telling me once how uh you know it was it was there was blatant anti-semitism like it was known that some places offices would not hire you if they thought you were Jewish. So because of her her accent was this New England accent and her she would go in and give a different last name. She would you know not give her last name as Solomon and they didn't there was no social security cards and ID back then. So they they took her word and and she got hired in places that were you know restricted because uh they didn't want people like her if they knew she was Jewish working there. Wow. So it could be your name was Spectlowski or it could have been. I mean as far as we know it was Spec back then too. But one of the bigger bigger challenges back in the 20s was that you know the Jewish Orthodox people didn't want to work on Saturday, right? And anybody hiring someone like if you're not working on Saturday, you were done. They weren't hiring you. You know, that was a big problem. No, absolutely. I never really when I was young I never really asked my I didn't know enough to ask my grandmother these questions and I kind of you know she passed away years ago but I kind of wish I I did what it was like back then and uh you know she started working as a teenager in 1910s 1920s and and like you said it was uh it was legal to discriminate then there was no uh are there any traditions or things that lessons learned from you know uh growing up in that environment or grandparents and that kind of thing is you always be proud to be Jewish um uh we're all you know Whatever our level of of observance, we're all one people. Uh we have to uh stick together in a positive way. Uh uh one thing my mother always said uh when I was in school and not yet in the working world, she goes, "When you get a job, if they tell you you have to work on a Saturday and you have to work on a holiday, even if you don't observe, even if you are going to go play golf on Saturday, tell them you can't. It's against your religion because you can't you can't let that become how you're defined because then what will happen is she saw that in places where she worked. If if I come in and work on on Shabas and then somebody who who is showab says I can't work they're going to say well well spect is able to work and you Jewish why can't you do it. You're setting an example. Exactly. So I've always tried to keep that in mind. Yeah. I was just going to ask, you know, a lot of Jewish identity uh stems from Israel and recently there was a little bit of something that happened with an Israeli flag or something. What happened there? I mean, I I heard something. Yeah. Well, you know, as last year, October 7th, took us all, we were all horrified. Uh we actually that day I uh I first found out about it because I got a call in the morning from our police chief, Chief Riley, who was in Israel as part of a conference by the Israeli uh um I I'm trying to remember the agency, not homeland security, but the equivalent for police chiefs from this region. He was there with about 20 uh other police chiefs from They were all there. They were all there and they were they were near uh Citro. So they were close to where everything was happening. and he called me to say just I don't know if you heard there's attacks by Hamas at that time he only knew about the rockets being launched he said my hotel I'm looking out the window and there were rockets being intercepted by the Iron Dome and their helicopters overhead and he goes I got to go they're having us go into the bomb shelter so then we stayed in touch with him he was able they were all able to get them out they got them into there were no flights leaving Israel but they got them into Dubai and then from Dubai they got uh they got back home but by that time we learned of the more of what was happening ing uh of the hundreds and then over,200 people that were massacred. So we decided in the town we we had to do something to show solidarity. So I think that Wednesday or Thursday a few days later we decided we're going to raise the Israeli flag. We went out we we got an Israeli flag from Tuvia and uh everybody knows one of the oldest stores in my absolutely I got my talis there for my bar mitzvah and my son's talis there for his wife there forever. That's a great fun fact. Yeah. Really cool. Yeah. Really cool. And we um we put the we raised the flag. We had a lot of people from the community, a lot of local uh officials show up. And at the time I said, "We're going to fly this flag in solidarity with the people of Israel and this flag stays up till all the hostages are brought home." And we meant that and it's still up. And we got push back a bit later from unfortunately very first push back. We got a few calls from uh anti-Israel people just in general uh uh in some emails. How can you fly the flag? And this is before Israel even did anything to they didn't even do anything. And people were already saying that genocide genocide at that point. Israel was just you know trying to rescue the people that were you know and uh uh and I would hang up on people or tell them you know okay goodbye you know and you know genocide or some people thought they were being reasonable. Well, if you're going to fly the Israeli flag, you have to fly the Palestinian flag, too. And they said, "No, we don't. We're not. It's not even a country. Uh, not flying it." And then we got the organized protest by Notori Carta. And that went on uh for a while, they'd come up and demonstrate in front of the town hall, five people or whatever. Cars would go by and jer them. And then and then finally, last uh after a few months, they sued us. And the lawsuit's still pending. They're alleging it's illegal to fly the a foreign flag. And their lawyer is the guy who's the lawyer, literally the lawyer for Hamas, Stanley Cohen, who uh if you look him up, he has represented Hamas, Hezbollah in court and uh uh mourns the death of uh Sinoir and uh Nisallah. Yeah. Oh, totally. I mean, there are people out there that are pro peace. There are people out there that are anti-Zionist. He is somebody out there who is pro Hamas and uh he represents them in the lawsuit. One guy, one one person who's suing us, he's trying to claim it's on behalf of the greater kidic community that uh all five of them. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And they're so non-representative of what people think. The vast majority of people in the town from all walks of life, including people that aren't Jewish, have said it's great we're doing it. Uh they're proud. They're happy to see it. And uh we're we we we think it's the right thing to do. Wow. Well, thank you for standing up for uh what's right. We're happy to do it and we uh uh I I said recently I said, "Look, if if the day comes when all the hostages are finally home, we'll be happy to take the flag down. Not that we're capitulating. We're taking it down because, you know, we we we promised we would be up for that reason. We're taking down for good reason. It it was never meant to be a permanent thing, but at the same time, it wasn't meant to be a one day thing either." You know what's amazing? I have to ask, you know, because I I I moved to Ramipo. I'm I'm a Brooklyn kid, sort of grew up in Israel a little bit, and then uh when I first came here, it was so quiet. I didn't know what to do with myself. I learned what a deer was, you know, all I knew was uh rats, you know, and sometimes little squirrels, but uh it was quiet. And then there was a lot of noise that I was hearing in the world of politics, but how it affected me also. And I'll never forget the I was just trying to figure out what's happening with my taxes because taxes were so high. Yeah. And we don't send our kids to, you know, public schools, but you're paying we're paying, you know, 80% I think of our taxes goes towards it or a very large amount. Yeah. 60% probably. Yeah. 51%. You know, that's I like to say over 50. So, you know, I went to this uh town board meeting, the school board, just to see what was happening. Some one of my friends asked me to come and join and I couldn't believe the the anger that ensued there throughout the next few years that I was watching. I mean, this is not for me, you So, um I have a brother that's in politics. He's he's one of the best in my opinion. What was the anger about? It was just it was just two different sides because what happens is when you pay for private uh when you pay for public school taxes as a resident, you have other rights other than sending to public school. Exactly. One of those things, and correct me if I'm wrong, is books. Very small amount of things. Public transportation, special special ed, special needs. So, it comes along with it. So if you as someone who pays your tax takes advantage of that but you're not taking and it's a whole fight like let's you know so people were fighting about everything and then and then came up this beautiful you know park which you know it's a nice park to look at and uh has nice events that happen from time to time. Yeah. You came in Yeah. in an era where you had to rebuild trust and you're coming in as a prosecutor, ex-prosecutor, as someone who's now fiscally responsible for so much, playing politics, building trust. What was your secret sauce? How I mean, I see what you're about just in this one story about the Israeli flag, which is giving me confidence on at least how you, you know, somewhat, you know, created trust in your environment. But what was it? What was your secret? How have you done it? What were the challenges? take me. That was probably the biggest challenge coming in because the town's reputation was at an all-time low because of what had happened and uh we had bad relations with most of the villages in the town, bad relations with the other towns, the five other four other towns in the county, bad relations with county government and it was just a matter of I think being honest, open, being a team player. Uh we had a lawsuit with Clarkstown that was a couple lawsuits that were one lawsuit with Clarktown, one with the sewer district that had been pending from before I took office. We settled them. We worked out a reasonable settlement and and were able to then move forward positively. Uh we met with the county, we met with the other towns, we met with the mayors of the villages and basically the message was we're here to rebuild. We're here to work together. It was good for everybody. We're all we're all really looking for the same thing here. Everyone always says that how did you actually do it? What was that secret source? We had to just I think part of it was just by being open by u transparency. Transparency. That's the big word that we kept hearing. You have to be transparent. So we will be we have nothing to hide. you know, with the thinking that if we're doing everything right, even if we make mistakes, there'll be honest mistakes and we're not going to hide anything. So, I I have to give a lot of credit. The other four supervisors of the towns, Clarkstown, Havar, Orangetown, Spring uh sorry, and uh Stony Point were wonderful. Uh within a few weeks taking office, they all called me up and welcomed me to the supervisor's club and and I didn't know that they did this, but every two months they would meet for lunch and work over issues and they said, "Our next meeting is coming up in a couple weeks. Can't wait to see you there." And I went in and it was, you know, it was really nobody nobody was judging me. Nobody was judging the town. Everybody was looking to build a relationship. They saw it the way I did. This is a chance to start restart a relationship. So I think by doing that, by um being honest about what our finances were, you know, when I came in, there was an issue where we hadn't had um uh uh we lost our bond rating because we hadn't had our finances audited. Uh we got that cleared up. We were able to get our bond rating back and we have a decent bond rating considering everything. Congratulations on that. That was a good deal. Thank you. Which allows us to borrow money to build the sidewalks and the streets that people need. Uh so a lot of it was just uh you know cliche Rome wasn't built in a day. I think it what we did it wasn't in one day. It was just every day a little bit more uh just to just to move the town forward. uh working with the other towns if they if it was something that uh taking a stand on an issue that affected everybody uh you know simple thing like hey everybody okay if we all sign a letter uh agreeing on an issue and yeah absolutely send the letter over and I'll sign it just being being a team player and and it paid off because I think we are all we are all on one positive team now very nice how long have you been the town supervisor since uh January 2018 so over seven years probably seven years is there like a term limit for Yeah, there's no term limit. I can keep running as long as people want me and as long as I want it. I run every two years. I'm running for re-election now. And uh How often do you run for re-election? Every two years. Every two years. Yeah. So, I'm in my fifth term right now. Fourth term right now. I'm running for my fifth. Wow. So, you're pretty good at campaigning. You're good at this thing. I've been lucky. I You keep winning. You have a nice winning streak going. Uh so far so good. I I won my first election when I had a serious opposition when I wasn't in office yet and I won pretty comfortably. second election, somebody challenged me and I won even bigger. And then my third and fourth election, I had no opposition. Uh this year, uh as my mother would say, kind of her. Uh I don't have anyone on a major line running against me. There's still time for someone to run a an independent line, but I'm optimistic that that's not going to be a problem. Who do you report to as a town supervisor? Who's your superior? My wife, Karen Spec, after your wife. I mean, great question. politically, the hierarchy, the people, the the the voters. The voters, that's really there there are government entities that are bigger than the town. There's the county, there's the state. Uh but there's no direct chain of command. Like, I don't report to the county executive. He doesn't report to the governor. We're all We all have our own jurisdictions. Uh theirs are bigger than mine. Uh mine's focused on the town, but but within the town, I am the chief executive. Uh I report to the town board. Whatever I do, I have to be accountable to the town board. They don't put me in office. I'm put in office by the voters. But, uh, you know, we have to have a majority vote to do anything. You know, uh, ter in terms of government though, do you do you need to go to a higher level of government to get anything done for the town? Meaning like the governor for Yes and no. If it's something within our our jurisdiction, no. If it's something that we need help from the state, if it's if we have a state road that's a problem and we are not allowed to fix it, we have to go to the to the state government. So, we go to the governor's office, we go to our legislators, we go to the uh Department of Transportation people, and we basically say, "Hey, our our our residents who are your residents, too, they need this fixed, they need this done." So, we'll go to the state, we'll go to the county, on county roads. I'm using roads as an example because that's the thing that always comes up, but it could be anything. It could be uh uh you know, if we have a problem with uh health department, we go to the county. So, uh, yeah, and that's more a question of just working collaboratively. Like, like going back to what we were saying few minutes ago, when I took office, our relations with the county were very strained and, uh, now it's cordial. We can call up and say, "Hey, we we have an issue. Could we meet? Could we work it out?" Uh, when I when I, uh, when I first took office and I met with the county executive to introduce myself and again, relations were strained. And he said he said, um, uh, you know, your town is is kind of like the North Korea of Rocken County. Don't be the North Korea. And I actually said, "Well, I think we're more like the Israel of Rocky County. We're doing what we think is right, but we don't get what we don't get treated that way." And he he laughed. And you you're building trust. You're doing It's interesting, but I didn't know that as a CEO, you're really not answering to anybody. I mean, we have partners, we have people that we can talk to. Um, you know, it's pretty powerful position very considering a lot of money. like if you wanted to tomorrow just go spend 100 grand to buy a brand new car from that money like what are the checks and balances of like you know in a nursing home right there's the state will send in an inspector you know once a year twice a year and they'll show up spontaneously uh the federal uh government will send people in as well separately right um so and that's kind of sort of keeping you honest that's the order that they perform right who's doing that for the town who who comes in to audit what's going on well we do get audited every year in By who? By the state. We have an outside agency uh an outside firm uh of uh auditors, CPAs and they audit us and then that has to get filed with the state controller and we put it on our website. It becomes public. So if there is a problem then we would hear from the controllers's office and uh they're not shy about letting us know and certainly in the the days before I was supervisor they were on top of us. Uh so we have to so in terms of fiscally we have to be accountable that way. Uh but the bigger thing is we're accountable to the public. This is the information error where everything we do is out there. Somebody wants to know what's in our budget or what resolutions we pass, they go on our way. What is the budget? What is the budget? Our budget's about 132 million every year roughly. Uh so it's it's a lot. Uh it's a big budget. Uh we put it out there. There's multiple meetings worth discussed. Uh workshop meetings with the town board and then there's a hearing on it and then it's voted on. But I also have to be accountable to the town board. Now, the $100,000 car, for example, if we had in our budget, if the town board approved a budget that said $100,000 for a car, I could go out and order it uh because it's been approved and budgeted for. If we if it's not that specific, something like that, uh an expense over a small amount, I'd have to go to the town board and put a resolution on authorize the town to buy a $100,000 car. And you you could bet there'll be questions, why are you buying $100,000? So, is there a place we could go as a resident of Ramipo? Can we go online somewhere and see exactly sort of the uh the Expensify list, you know, like where you spent the money? Like we had $140 million this year and this is where the money went. Well, you can go to ramapo.org which is our website. We have all of our budgets that have been passed uh for the last number of years certainly since I've been supervisor online. Uh we always have there's a multi-step process with the budget. We the beginning budget is the tentative budget or called the supervisor's budget where I propose the budget to the town board that gets presented to them. They look at it, they ask questions, they make changes. It then becomes the preliminary budget. And once it's the preliminary budget, we have a public hearing on it. We let people come in and give their opinions on it, which everybody has, which everybody has, although most people don't come to meetings. So, usually we find out a month later somebody will say, "I can't believe you approved this budget with this." And did you go to the meeting? No, I was busy that night. and then we vote on it and we vote and then it becomes the final budget. All those budgets from preliminary through permanent are online. Uh in terms of what we actually spend through the year, uh anybody could do a freedom information law request, a floor request, they could email it to our town clerk's office and the town clerk will respond and they'll say, "How much uh give us any uh uh copies of uh uh payments made for uh police cars for 2004?" And we'll provide it. And they release that information. We release it only for somebody who's very bored, somebody that has nothing else to do and wants to read over the stuff. We don't release it if it's personal information. We're not going to release somebody's personnel file. Is there a savings account for the town? We have everything that comes in gets spent. Uh no, we we is there investments like uh we can't have investments, but we we do have fund uh fund balance and accounts. Uh we have multiple bank accounts. Town finance is a little bit convoluted because of all the villages. So some villages use different services than others from the town. So it affects the taxes. Uh you know like like two villages we mentioned don't have police department have their own police departments. So we don't bill them for police services. We don't tax them for police. Uh some villages have their own water comp um uh their own highway companies or their own sewer companies. So the village themselves tax them. Exactly. And then they pay for it. They get the revenue and they have that expense. That's right. Uh so it all depends. So what your taxes will be depend on what village or whether you're in a village at all. Are we considered a rich town, Ramipo, as I'm talking about in the state of New York or even in our surrounding states? I'm not talking about across the country, but five, six states right around us. Like where do we stand as far as being well off or we're a struggle in town? Good question. I think overall we're we're considered fairly well off except we have pockets of poverty and uh I don't know how it averages out. I know we are eligible and uh to get um uh community uh block development grant money because we do have uh areas of poverty in the town. So that's a good question. I don't know how you'd sum it up, right? Well, you have a good credit rating. We have a good credit. We have a strong tax base and that's something the uh the uh uh S&P when they give us the credit rating look at that we have a secure tax base and it's growing every year. So, uh, if you look at, uh, being a a rich town in that level, absolutely. Wow. Is there an entertainment budget for the town? Uh, like, do you allocate funds so you can give the town a good time? Throw a party, a big block party, a barbecue, something. We have some money for special events. So, we'll do things like we just had uh two weeks ago uh we did a uh safety carnival at uh Clover Stadium or baseball park and the town funds that everything going on. We funded it. Uh we had uh the county came in on it too. Uh in terms of funding, we basically we did the publicity for it. We had police there, fire. Uh but isn't that a private entity? The Boulder Stadium? Oh, well, we own it. The town owns it. The town owns it. So, the town built it. The town built it. The town paid for it. Town paid for it. We we have a rock a Ramapo Local Development Corporation was a which is a quasi uh uh public uh entity that the town owns. Uh the directors of the of the RLDC are myself and the town board members. We we serve Exofficio as directors. So it's like a townowned um uh entity, I guess. and uh that owns the the stadium uh and what about the teams that are playing team is a private entity and private they so when they when you buy a ticket to the Clover Stadium for a game that goes to them they get not all of it we get part of it too you do get part of it so we have a we have a revenue sharing agreement with them we get money from the parking we get money from the concession stands you go to buy a hot dog we get part of it so are we are we uh losing money in this proposition every year as a town or are we are we on a surplus there I would not say We're at a surplus. Yeah, imagine that. We are paying the debt service for it. Uh even though it's owned by the RLDC, except a small part of it owned out right by the town. The town by agreement with the RLDC pays the debt service on the bond. That's a big amount every year. And in addition, uh it does to be honest, it does operate at an operating loss every year. We've managed to cut the loss. So you're supplementing. You guys are covering. We have to. The way we see it, it it's we can't go in with the expectation it's going to make money. We go in with the understanding that it's like a park. Uh, our parks don't make money. Our parks are there for recreation, for people to enjoy. They cost money because of equipment and maintenance and labor, but we look at the ballpark that way and we get more use out of it. So, we had this carnival there, the safety carnival. We had hot solar there. We had Spring Hill and Feist DMS. We had uh Rampo Police, Rocking County Health Department, other agencies were there and we made it fun. We taught the kids about how to walk across the street safely and how to get off the school bus and look both ways. I've attended some of those events with my kids. Yeah, I think it's great. And by the way, for the local community, it's awesome. We appreciate it cuz we go to games. It's very on a Sunday. It's cheap tickets, 10 bucks to get in. Family event. Yeah. Yeah. And if I if I splurge and I go to $30, I get VIP, right? I get the all the way at the bottom. It's a good time, you know, but not everybody, you know, would love it because not everybody's benefiting from it. And it's a big expense, I imagine, for the town. What other splurges is the town doing like Clover? We did uh actually I think that was in the fall uh collode. We did a big carnival in Wler Park. We have bouncy castles and uh cotton candy and all sorts of stuff. So that's a big public event. Um we'll do things like that. Um so I don't know if we call it entertainment of the budget, but we we call it special events. What is something that you as the town supervisor, ever since you've had this role, what is something you're very proud of that you've done that you can really pinpoint and you can say, you know, I think that we're excelling in this area that other towns can really learn from us, you know, take a page out of our book. What's something that we can all be proud of? Something that you've done, you know, on behalf of the comm bealf of the entire village town. Uh, I think right off the top of my head, and it's not a glamorous thing, but I think it's something that affects a lot of people. I'm just going to say the number of sidewalks we put in over the last few years. Like I said, we couldn't do a lot when I first took office because of the financial issues and we didn't have the bond rating. We couldn't go out to bond and we didn't want to we didn't have the money to spend out of pocket and sidewalks are not cheap. But we've put in miles of sidewalk uh in the last few years and it's one of the things that people I think are very happy about. When I see people on the street, I get people come up and say, "Oh, thank you. I live on Francis Place and thank you for the new sidewalks or my kids love it. they they get to, you know, walk to school without worrying. It's it's really gratifying to see just this morning we have a sidewalk um in the suffering rampo area on Craig Road. Not like we have a need for sidewalk. More and more people from the community have moved into that neighborhood over the last couple years and they're walking to Shaw. They're walking to the park nearby and there's been a big demand for it and we had and there were some challenges because one is the layout of the road is a little bit difficult but also it goes through different municipalities. It goes through Armont a village. It goes through Suffren a village. And we're trying to figure out a way to get everyone on board. And it's kind of hard with three different municipalities with different needs, different budgets, and they're smaller villages. They don't have the Do you contract third party companies? We do. We go out for bid and we hire. You go out for bid and you hire outside contract. We follow state bidding law on that. Where do you guys get your toilet paper from? I think Costco or Amazon. I don't know. Whatever. I just want to say thank you for keeping our kids safe, by the way. That is That is the That's a big deal. It's a big deal. Yeah. I live, by the way, by 306. Oh, yeah. There's no sidewalks where I live in my part. And actually, it's pitch black over there. Oh, that's a very dangerous. There's no street life either. Sidewalks are coming in uh uh from Edison Court, I think, up to Biola, but you're up past there. Way past. I'm closer to 202. You're in the village. You're in in Pomona. That was some Pomona. I'm like a little past Wesley coaster. Yeah. Yeah. The challenge is And I remember moving in and hearing these people fighting and it's just so interesting to me. It's like we're not putting in sidewalks. You don't ruin the authenticity of our big of our town. We don't want people walking up and meanwhile kids, god forbid, are getting hit by cars. So like you got to face the reality. Years ago when and this probably the early 2000s, I remember uh the supervisor then was very happy because he got a grant from the state to put sidewalks in a particular neighborhood. And the people came out and they said, "We don't want sidewalks. We don't want to change the character life." And and sadly a lot of it was we don't want those people walking here. They're going to move here now if they can. Exactly. I have to be honest with you by the way in 19 in the 80s early 90s when they put sidewalks on West Maple when all the a lot of people living there they were not happy about it either really they were not because it changes the one thing that now the people need it this week's episode again is brought to you by Gem Enrollments an employee benefits program could you explain to our audience what an employee benefits program is gem enrollments is a concierge benefits enrollment program for your employees they don't charge you anything for this service they are a supple implement to your HR team. They will personally manage very critical information for your employees about their benefits one by one. Make it very accessible for them. Any information that they need, they reach out to gem enrollments and they take that off your plate. And as always, reach out to a prime source expense advisor to learn more about gem enrollments. And now back to our program. One thing that didn't change about Ramipo that keeps getting better are the parks. I have to tell you, I love the parks. I love hiking. Uh it's something that's so so absolutely beautiful. Beer Mountain Park. Is that part of Rambo? No. No. But I'm just saying even all the local parks, there are so many little hidden park, Gene Levy Park. Uh what what is one of your favorite spots in Ramipo? Uh right now. Well, two uh Clark Park, which is kind of near where I live. It's near that area. I was talking about Craig Road that people are walking on. Uh so that that was the park our park growing up. Uh that was my daughter's favorite place in the world when she was in second grade. we go to parent teacher night or whatever and they have on the on the wall they had they had to write your favorite place to be and everybody's writing Disney World and this and that and my daughter wrote Clark Park and I thought that was so sweet. So I always love Clark Park. It's it's my neighborhood park. Uh that's one and the other right now Weller Park uh which is the big park right in the the heart of Muny Viola Park it used to be called. We put in a couple years ago and it's another thing I'm very proud of. We put in a new state-of-the-art playground there that you know uh has uh equipment for kids of all different abilities. Thank you for the pickle ball court. Oh, you're welcome. Pickle ball is huge. We cannot have enough pickle ball courts. Everybody wants pickle ball. Yes. And we put that park in and it's busy every day and I love to drive by and just see all the kids playing on it because it shows it gives you I want to give a shout out to Bruce the attendant. Oh, he's a great guy. He loves his job. Yeah. What do you call it? Wilder Park. Uh Wilder Park. Welder Park. Yeah, we know it as Viola Park. That's the name. It's always going to stick always park. We'll always call it Biola Park. But this guy Bruce, I don't know if you know who he is. He's been there for I don't know 30 years, 25 30 years. Been there for a long time. And he mans that park like it's his own personal playground. Absolutely. He's very very passionate about it and he's made a lot of friends over the years. You know, he's a little bit of an interesting cat, but in a good way, in a nice way. He's harmless. Well, we have a wonderful part. Michelle is our parks director, parks recreation, and she loves her work. She And it shows. So, can I tell you something? As a town, I want to confess. Uhhuh. I want to own up to something. Okay, this has been a longstanding uh I'm gonna A lot of people are gonna be very mad at me. You're not the one who wrote the graffiti in the park. No, no, that wasn't But I did something else though. I'm about to confess over here. Okay, don't send the cops to my house. But basically, the lights at Viola Park, they would shut it off at 10:00. Okay. And uh some nights they would shut off even earlier. Like if Bruce wasn't there, there was another attendant, they would bounce after like 8:00, shut the lights off. So it's a known thing. There's a bunch of people in the community that we figured out how to pick the lock in the main electric room and we would we would Why are you sharing this? I know about that light. You know why? Because they've bolted that door now. So, somebody caught on to what was happening for years. What's going on? But I think now we keep it on later. for the lights. I think we had not late enough, but yeah, it's up until about emails about it and we we thought we were going to work something out, but uh people still want it later. Uh yeah, for sure. We want till 3 in the morning. And I'm an avid tennis player. So, I played Viola Park Tennis there for for dozens of years. I've played there hundreds of times, as have many others. Shia Schiller probably played in Viola Park the most from anybody in the history of that park. He's there almost every single day. U but it is a great park. It meets so many needs. There's a lot of there's a lot of fun things to do there. Um, and that new addition that you did with the playground, it's full, man. I don't know if you drove by and if you look It's always crowded. Excellent. We actually we planned it to be a certain size and then partway through we said let's make it 50% bigger and we probably could have tripled it. We're we're looking now to put more of those in on the park. We're trying to find room. Uh we had the baseball fields uh which we want to keep, but we have to figure out a way to put more playgrounds in. We're trying to get from the county a license a release to use the property the vacant property next door which is I think county owned land that's not being used. So if we can across Maple Farms Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. So if we can get that which we think we can. Uh who owns it right now? Uh county rock. The county owns it. Right. So we would expand into that and um Smart. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. So what is the difference? I know you had some questions but my last one please. What is the difference between the county and the give away all other secrets that we do? We climb over the fences to play tennis sometimes. No, you can't climb those fences. Those are cool. Other parts that we have. Yeah. Yeah. Rocklin County. Who's the town? Who's the Rockland County Supervisor? Is there Rocklin County is the head is uh a day is the county executive. Okay. And he is the chief executive of the county and then you're the county legislature. Uh so, but it's separate. The county and the town are two separate separate entities. They run their own, right? We have home rule under New York state law. We have municipal home rule. So, we do our zoning laws, our local laws. We have our own police. Uh there is a county sheriff who has like a police force, but he's an elected official independent of the county executive, but the county executive is in charge of the county budget. His budget's a lot bigger than ours. Uh there are a lot of county roads, highways. There are county. Do we pay taxes into the county? You pay county and town and town and village and federal and federal and state. Exactly. It never ends. Does anybody else want to tax us? Anybody else? Now you know why local politics are more important. It's just unbelievable. Yeah. And we are a very high taxed. We are like level from in all departments, all areas. No question. Our property taxes are high in in our area. New York State overall and Rocken County is is high, you know. Wow. Wow. Where's your office for the for the town? Uh your headquarters, right? 237 Route 59 uh is Town Hall across from the Walmart shopping center uh across That's where your office is? That's her office. Yeah. Oh, so you go there every day. That's where your Yeah, that's I go uh every single day. My office is there. Uh you walk in the main entrance and I'm right on the left and my doors are open. I have staff members that are always there to greet people and I'm there more most timeless at a meeting or something like this. I'm I'm in the office there. What's next for you, Mr. Spec? I want to supervisor. Where do you go from here? I'm running for re-election. I hope I get re-elected. I get to do this. This is where you want to stay. I am thrilled to be here. I don't want to be anywhere uh any office except for the town, Po. And I mean that. Uh I love So no higher aspirations. None at all. None at all. Uh I am very happy to do what I'm doing. I love what I'm doing. I love the people in our town. And most days I I go home the end of the day very happy. Sometimes I get aggravated, but but more often satisfied. Uh, so I I'm very happy to keep doing this. What's the best part of your job? What do you love the most? When I hear from people how I actually help them, uh, when when actually somebody says something specific like, "Thank you. I asked you to fix the traffic light and you did it right away. Thank you so much. You put the sidewalk in. Thank you. My kids love the new playground. Thank you." Um, uh, "Thank you for, uh, even when somebody has a problem and we look into it, we get it fixed right away." Uh, or even a lot of times there are things we can't control. There are things we do that somebody may not be happy about, but we explain to them why it has to be a certain way or things that are out of out of our control. We have to tell them we can't do anything. I find as long as you get back to people right away and you you answer their question and you're not trying to hide from them, most people are happy that government even responded. They don't expect any response from government. So, you get calls on your cell phone like people reach out directly to you. Uh I I don't hide my cell phone number from people that that need to reach me, but generally I tell people call the office because that way somebody will pick up. If I'm not available, there'll be somebody to help them. There'll be a message. It's easier than calling the cell. If I see a number I don't recognize, I generally don't pick up and you know, I'll wait for the message. Uh I'd rather have people call. Speaking of cell phone, I'm curious, who's the most influential, powerful person you have in your cell phone? Oh, good question. Um uh I have our congressman. I have our state representative. Is that Mike Lawler? Mike Lawler. Um he's very accessible. I could call him or text him and he'll get back to me. He's very goodoken very much. Yeah. Um he he's in our community a lot. He's in our town at different events, you know, on a very regular basis. We love him. Uh trying to think who else. I have people in the governor's office. I don't have the governor directly on the phone, but I I could reach people. So, have you met Kathy Hokll? I've met her a number of times. Is she uh as advertised when you met her? In what way? Not in a good way. Oh, I've had great experiences with the governor, very limited contacts, but uh uh I uh we basically we are hoping to work with uh well, you got to play nice at the end of the day because you know, you're representing people and you know, you need to pull favors sometimes from the from the state. We look for grant money. Uh you're not in the business of picking fights. No, no, not really. Not at all. And right now she's promoting housing. We have a housing shortage in our town and uh spoken to David about that a lot and we're trying to do what we can to promote more housing both affordable legally you know what was defined as affordable and housing in general because the more housing we have the more the supply the lower the prices will be overall. Aren't you limited though from sewer, electric? Isn't that Yeah, we got to take into account infrastructure. So, it's it's a balance. But right now, the governor is trying to promote housing. We became under her plan, we became a uh certified proousousing community, which opens us up to get grant money that we wouldn't be able to get, which would go towards sewer and uh uh streets and things like that. So, it's a symbiotic thing. Yeah. You know, I was thinking when I I went to this carnival that you're describing earlier. I think one of our uh associates, friends, Neil Zelman, actually in Polaris and Serenity, they do something at the Clover Stadium in July usually. Yeah. National Bossy Freedman's in charge of making it work. That's great. That's always a fun event. She gets great participation. Every police first responder agency. It's a wonderful town event that they really definitely credit to them and their organization. They do an amazing job. And and I remember when I was there once and I was with some of my kids and we were learning about the different volunteer organizations in the community. So of course I agree with you. The parks are amazing and there and you know one day we'll we'll get us baseball league to play a game in that park. That's I think something that we have to pull off already has that now that you've been here. Yeah. They play their championship game for the older kids in Clover State. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, they do that. Do you want to play your championship game in there? Not necessarily. It's not a softball field. So it's we play in the Eugene Levy. We have a very Oh, good. Yeah, they're great. We have a really competitive league, an adult league. Oh, good. It's been around for like 15 years. Oh, you're one of the leagues. Michelle was just telling us that there's a number of leagues that are long-term. Yeah. Uh Yes. Well, we know you play volleyball. Anything else that you play? I played volleyball till I met my wife and then uh that was the last time. So, I'm I'm going around the the uh the carnival the and there's a lot of different, you know, volunteers and there's I see a search and rescue team. I see Aberala and I see the fire department. And I start to learn how all these organizations share one thing in common. They're all volunteers. Yeah. And now coming and growing up in Brooklyn, the fire department are anything but volunteers. I mean, they get paid. So, it changes the dynamic when you're in a community where everyone's volunteers. But then you also have to play, I guess, the politics or getting along with everyone from one to another, right? So, I'm I was always curious about a couple of things that I want to ask you. Number one is a firefighter, a volunteer firefighter, and they're in their car and they get the beep or radio, whatever it is that they have to rush to the fire department. Are they allowed to go through red lights? Uh, if they're if they're a real first responder, they generally have a siren, a light and siren they can put in their car then. Yeah. Then they But it's blue. I noticed that. Blue light. Yeah, blue light. And And they can go and you got to pull over. I don't know. You think a guy that is rushing to a call about fire is not because he's got to stop at a red light. He's got to stop at a stop sign. He better run through that red light. And if that isn't the law, we need to change that quick. So I'm happy you said emergency. People certainly can. Terms of somebody's private car, I don't know the answer. No, no, it's a priv it's a private car. Yeah, but he has lights. He's lights. If they have them, that's okay. I guess authorized lights, right? And the reason why I'm bringing it up is because I remember when I first moved in here, one of the Hatala members got pulled over by a police officer while on a call. While on a call that happens unfortunately. Yeah. By mistake or Yeah. Right. So that's why I was wondering like you have the firefighters that are volunteers. You have that you have which by the way you know growing up in Brooklyn I mean you know we didn't have then but in Brooklyn is more of you know getting locked out of a house. you know, you have something that you need help with and and they come and then they have Shamrim which is like which is separate the neighborhood watch here in Rockland County it's all one does both right do search Margaret and they do search and rescue they do you know uh yeah we just recently a couple board meetings ago we did a resolution to uh officially uh give them status with our town office of emergency preparedness to give them more recognition so they could work more in partnership with the town and that's what I was going at. Yeah, that's what I was wondering. Like, what do you do when you get a phone call? Yeah. From a police officer that says, "I just pulled over someone, but Hatsa volunteer who says, "I couldn't make it to a call and help somebody." Usually, we find it after the fact because Hatso will come and say, "This guy got a ticket and he was rushing to somebody having a heart attack." And right, our police work well with Hat Solo and vice versa. We have meetings with leadership and they, you know, years ago it was a little different relationship. Now, they're they're partners. So, generally, if a if a cop sees somebody speeding and they they don't know that they they're hot solo member and they pull them over and they and the hot solo member shows ID, they're going to and and I'm responding to a call, the cop's going to say, "Okay, good. Good luck." I mean, most hot members that I know today have so many lights coming. It's usually not an issue. It's hard to tell. It's usually not an issue. Yeah. When I when I uh years ago when I was in private practice as a lawyer, I would um uh help out solo members who got tickets in other towns. was not in Ramipo but other towns where the cops didn't really know what Holo did and they'd be responding to right so you would educate them I would go to court even sometimes show the prosecutor that look this guy's an ambulance core member he was responding to a call here's his proof and everything and hopefully get the ticket dismissed. Wow. Yeah. And you were a prosecutor. Yeah. Well, I was originally then I went into private practice as a lawyer. Yeah. But I also was working part-time for the town attorney's office doing code violation prosecution, traffic prosecution in Ramipo, but not in Well, as a as a prosecutor, you you your job was to put people away, criminals, right? What was the longest you've ever had to put someone away for? Is that I dealt with when I was in the DA's office, it was the beginning of my career. So, I had some felony cases where I didn't get murderers, I didn't get rapes, I didn't have the really big stuff because I I wind up going into private practice relatively soon. But I I did some cases, some robberies, some assaults where people got five years state prison five years and bad people, people that you know. Were you ever worried for your life? Like for yourself, you know, as a prosecutor? No. The one experience I found is that uh uh convicted and not convict uh uh serious career criminals, whatever. If they were upset anybody, they'd be upset at their attorneys. Uh they kind of figured the president was doing his job. If it's not this guy, it'll be someone else. Whereas if they were upset that they got convicted, they blamed their lawyer, public defender, or whatever that they didn't, you know, represent them, right? Yeah. Which is usually a mistake. Usually they got the best defense they could get. But, you know, people are looking to blame somebody. Wow. Yeah, that is a good point. You know, a fun fact that uh nobody really knows about you, uh, town supervisor, Misrespect. Okay. What would that be? Oh, good question. Uh, well, one, we talked earlier that I'm actually Jewish. So uh uh I I was at some event and somebody we were all lining up and and somebody to get food a buffet and this was oh you got to you know whenever there's food uh and people go mashuga and I go yeah and he goes you know what that means I go yeah crazy he goes how do you know that and I said well my growing up I learned goes how did you learn that growing up where are your parents from that they were Eastern Europe and he was like how were they did they work with Jews or something and I go no no no they're Jewish and they were they were shocked but something new uh than that uh uh not to brag, but when I was 25, I was on Jeopardy. Pay attention. Yeah. Yeah. I was on Jeopardy and I lost. You were on the Jeopardy show? I was on show. I went If I go to YouTube and I look for I could find the episode on We looked, we couldn't find it, but I could I could bring you a videotape. The old decaying video tape. We want that videoape. How did you get on the show? What did you do? What happened was I used to I came home from law school and my father and I would watch it every night and then we're watching and then they go, "We're having tryyous in Atlantic City at uh MV Griffin's Resort or whatever." So, we said, "Let's go." Oh, my parents used to love to go to Atlantic City. I said, "Let's go." So, we went whenever the day was having the tryyouts and I they had multiple levels of trying out. You did a written test first. There were a thousand people taking it and they got it down to like a 100 people that got above a certain score and then they did like a live try out where you went through a fake game and they were looking there to see that you had the personality, right? And I was young, which helped because, you know, a lot of people on it are now they have more younger people. Back then it was more middle-aged people that were on it. So, they liked that I was 25 and everything and a young lawyer. So they said, "All right, uh, you made it to the second stage." And they it got down to like 20 of us, and they said, "We may or may not call one or none of you." So, all right, I didn't think anything of it. And then a couple months later, they called me up and said, "Hi, it's so and so. Remember me from Atlantic City?" "Well, could you be on next month in uh in uh in LA?" Wow. Yeah, of course. That's I have to ask what that process was like. I mean, you got to meet, you know, the famous Alex. He was the host then. He was the host. The legend. I will say we didn't really get to talk to him. They uh they film a whole bunch of episodes in one day. And the producers were very very nice, very cordial, but they explained in the beginning on camera, you know, you're going to see Alex when the camera stops filming for a break, he's going to go off and do his own thing. And they kind of apologize because I think his wife was about to give birth. So they say he's a little preoccupied. Don't take it personally. So we didn't really, you know, he doesn't mingle with the contest. He didn't mingle. He didn't mingle. So you know, it was a little disappointing. Where did they where did they shoot? Where's They filmed it at um the studio whatever in in LA. Hollywood. In Hollywood. You And they fly you in. No, we had to pay for You had to pay for your own flight to get there. I never been to California before. So, they don't give you any sniping at all. They gave us lunch. That was it that day. Well, you could win money. Oh, yeah. You won a lot of money. Did you win any money? I lost. I won the home game version. I won a a fax machine, which became outdated in six months. I won sententrum silver vitamins and I think that was about it. The consolation prizes. My mother didn't want me to go on it when she goes you're gonna have to pay thousands of dollars to fly out there and stay in a hotel just to lose. I just and they tell you have at least a three night stay because if you win you could be keep coming back to film. So of course I lost right away. So I had three nights there by myself. I didn't have any friends that were able to go with me. Everybody was starting their jobs and come take off. So I I did all the things that I you know I went to uh I went to Universal Studios and I went to Man's Chinese Theater and I did the Walk of Fame and all the Hollywood stuff. I rented a car and I drove around. I went to Santa Monica. It was okay, but I was by myself. But, uh, it was a great experience. My mother at first was like, "You're wasting money. You're going there." Then I've been paying and I said, "This is Jeopardy. I I never get this chance to do it again." And it didn't sink in. And then and then the night that it was on, I went out with everybody from the DA's office and we go to a local bar after work to watch it. And then my mother's at home watching it. And and this is, you know, again, before uh the internet, before anything. And I go home and she's, "You were on TV. You were on TV. Yeah, you sunk in like it really sunk in. I was on national TV and everything even though she knew. So that's great. Even if you lose by That's what I said. That's still pretty cool. Doesn't matter. Do you remember any of the answers or I forget how questions? No, the answers that you didn't remember the question to. What is I remember who is I remember Final Jeopardy. Yeah. Going into it, I was in last place, but it was close. Anybody could have won. Sure. And did you wager all your money? I wagered it all because the man I like it. I like your style was literature and that was one of my strong points. So I figured I got a better shot than average. What was the question? Question was this line of a poem by Keats is also the title of a novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald and I blanked. I couldn't think of it. I couldn't think of Yeah, I'm blanking also. What? Why are you bl Yeah. So I got the what is part and I I I just I guess something I guess something from uh the only thing by Keats I knew was OG. So, I wrote What is the thing of beauty? I thought maybe that's a novel by Fitzgerald. I don't know. It was What is tender as the night? Which I had heard of, but I didn't know that came from poem. So, uh, nobody got it, but the guy that won didn't bet a lot. He bet a few dollars, so he he went on. He stayed in the lead. Wow. Yeah. It's okay. This would be a good segue, speaking of entertainment, to get into our lightning round. So, we have something called the lightning round where I prepare a couple of questions for you. I'm just going to ask you pointed questions. You can answer as quickly as you can. We I don't think we have to time it. I think it goes it flows nicely, I think, is what we've learned by just asking you questions. So, we're going to go through that and um it's sponsored by We'll be right back. This should be an easy one for you. One book that you could not live without. Oh, that's a great question. I'm going to go with uh a book I started a series of books when I was 10 years old. I I started reading and every few years I'll reread it. It's going to sound funny, but it's The Sherlock Holmes stories by Arthur Conan Doyle. I loved them as a kid and I thought they were great stories. They're they were great mysteries. I love the character Sherlock Holmes. Logical and intelligent and, you know, able to uh uh see things other people didn't see and nice doing things for justice. Mine were Hardy Boys, by the way. Oh, I love the Hardy Boys. I never made it past the first chapter. Uh those are great. Uh and uh and there's like 60 Sherlock Holmes stories and all, so there's plenty of them. And it also it made me interested in history because I was reading these in the 1970s and 80s as a kid and they were about the 1890s 1900 era. So it got me interested in the language and the vocabulary and the culture. So I and I think if I had to pick only one book I could reread it would be that one. I always get pleasure out of it. Who's your mentor or biggest role model? Oh wow. Good question. uh in Tanoramapo. I started working in the attorney's office when I was uh uh in 1998 for the town part-time and Herb Reeseman was the supervisor and Herb was a great role model because he really it's when the town villages were being formed. There was a lot of uh uh uh uh issues and disagreement in the town and he was able to keep it together and focus on the positive. So certainly uh he would be a big one. Speaking of positive, if you were stuck on an island with Hillary Clinton or Camela Harris, which one would it be and why? Uh, I'd have to pick Hillary. I think she'd be fascinated to talk to. I think she's uh uh, you know, as a New Yorker, we'd have a lot in common. As uh uh a senator, as uh the Secretary of State, I'd love to talk about foreign policy with her. Uh, you know, including Israel. I think she's very supportive. And I think one of the things she's been doing that's been great since October 7th, she's been speaking about the reality of the of what happened during the peace process under her husband and how uh Israel was willing to uh under uh uh Hud Barack and uh was willing to really make sacrifices and the Palestinians weren't. So she puts the blame where it belongs and I I give her a lot of credit for that and I just think she'd be fascinating. A good segue to my next question is have you ever been to Israel? No, I haven't. But I want to go and I'm I'm gonna try to go this year. Uh I've had different people uh offer to go with me. You've never been? I've never been. My daughter went for the first time on a birthright trip a couple years ago and she loved it. She wants to go back. She wants us to do a family vacation there. Um we've got relatives there. My wife has a cousin that we didn't even know about two years ago and we found through another cousin and they're now pen pals and uh his uh uh nephew is in the IDF right now. and uh we're always keeping in touch and I would just uh love to go. You must go. I want to go. And you're going to love it. I can't wait. You're going to really love it. It's I'm excited for you. Me, too. Yeah. I I know you're uh you know, definitely committed to the town and I respect it and love it. You have my vote. But if you could swap jobs with any one world leader, what would it be? Oh my god. Uh that's a tough question. I can't think of any world leader. Uh any leader, any political leader, any leader, any political leader. Uh I love what I'm doing. I love uh the town. Uh uh we heard that. We got that out of the way. Yeah. If you had an opportunity to run for governor, like you had the right backing, you had the right resources, you you'd stay away. You would stay away. You wouldn't go for it. Stay away. I feel I've gotten it down to where I understand what Ramo needs and I don't have all the answers, but I have enough of them and I know the questions. If not, I don't think I don't think I the state would be for me. I don't think Okay, I'll let you go with that one. Appreciate the pass on that. If you had a guest speaker to bring to all of Ramipo to speak, you know, all the leaders of Ramipo, who would that person be? Somebody from Ramo or from outside. Anyone, anyone like a guest speaker, someone that you know, you admire his uh, you know, the way he speaks or, you know, his influence. Wow, that is his or hers. That is a great question. Your brother David is an amazing speaker and I think he would be great at explaining how politics in the city is similar and different than politics in Ramipo. What a compliment. It's true. and and housing because right now housing is on everyone's mind for or against. Michael, how does that make you feel? He didn't ask you to come speak in Rambo, but he's asking David. We're brothers, but you know, some of us have the brain, some of us have the look. I think you got both. Absolutely. But I think he would be I think he would be somebody and now he's got the he's got the role. I'll be honest with you, him living out here in Ramipo, you guys had you have to figure out how to take advantage of him. Absolutely. So, I think he would be a great speaker. What's more stressful for you, budgeting season or town hall meetings? budgeting season because it's longer and uh town hall meetings are usually fairly pleasant. Every now and then we'll have something controversial or something won't even be controversial but people will misunderstand and come in but that's couple of people and it's over within an hour or so and we deal with it and I can smile. You ever had to arrest anybody at a town hall meeting? No, we've had a somebody getting very unruly and we've had to warn people but people then sit down and you know we've had some nice police attend if we think it's going to be disruptive and that's enough usually to keep people in line. I want to tell you we're about to wrap up and it was so nice to have you on our program. I really really appreciate it and thank you Shai Glick for referring us by the way. He's a wonderful friend. If you're going to go to Israel, by the way, you should go with him. He's he would definitely be a good chaperone person to take you and he's a wonderful friend of the community. He really is. We really appreciate it. You have any questions for us? We are your constituents. We're people of your neighborhood. We're your voters. If you have a minute, what do you like about the town that we should keep doing? And what do you think we should change? I I'll let Oshi go first. You know, this is very unlike me, but I'm actually pretty happy. That's great. I have to say like I think we live in a great town. I think we have great people. Uh beautiful scenery. That's great. Tremendous quality of life. Um I almost feel bad for people that don't have what we have, especially people living in the city and anywhere in the country. Um I I think it's really awesome. It's a blessing. Thank you. I'm very very grateful for what we have and appreciative for what we have. I think it's uh amazing. It really is. I will say I do have one complaint. There you go. Change one thing. So it be the park. I have one complaint, but you know, it's not a real complaint because I actually am okay with it because at the end of the day, I understand the greater good and it's not just about me. But I live on a quiet culdeac in Pomona. Very quiet culdeac. There's only like four houses on it. Yeah. And uh you know, beyond me and my surroundings also very quiet and all. Very residential. Okay. Lots of trees, no lights and all. Anyway, uh one day right across from my street on 306, I find out that a a purchase was was made. Yeah. Where the house that was right across the street uh looks like a school bought that property. And it's a big property. It's got like two acres all the way behind and bam like like they start construction immediately and all of a sudden my whole block is lined up with construction because and then I find out that the property next door also sold at another school right now. I I want to be very clear. I'm not hating on the situation cuz I love it. We need schools. We need schools. But do we really have to do it right there in that spot? Could we not have found a better spot? And it's not just me, you know, the whole the whole area always. And I understand that part of the situation is that under our local law and under I probably all the villages law. Schools are zoned for residential neighborhoods. So, you know, people always ask, why are you putting letting a school come in on our street or res? That's the code. It goes back to when, you know, you didn't have that many schools and they were meant for the public schools that kids would walk to. So, the idea is the elementary school is two blocks away from the the neighborhood where people live. But, uh we're looking now as we update our zoning law, we're looking to change it to allow schools in commercial areas because sometimes it makes more sense to be in a place where you have uh better access for traffic and parking and it's not going to affect people like you that want their live. But, by the way, I just want to be clear, I'm going on a record here, so I want to make sure everybody I appreciate the growth of course. I understand when the count is flourishing and it's a blessing. Rather more schools than less schools. So I'm happy. I'll explain the challenge in a way that you didn't know. By the way, it's kind of fascinating. I like how you're a practical thinker, by the way. And you get to explain it in a way that we understand. You know, it's a residential, you know, zoning law. It should be in a commercial. Get it done. It just makes sense. It's also safer for the kids to be in a more resial environment. Quiet. I want to first echo what Ushi was saying. Definitely. It's a safe town. It feels safe. Um, not just from a security level, but also from a diversification where we're all getting along. I love the Haitian community. I love the Spanish community. I love the Hida community. And I love how we're all getting along. It's a cliche, but we are the most diverse town. It really is. All those communities are more are all part of. It's not just that though. I grew up in Brooklyn where it's very diversified, even more you would say, but it's so on top of one another. Yeah. So here it's like you're able to actually breathe and have a quality of life with diversification. That's the key to Ramo room for everybody. Exactly. Exactly. So um you know but I would suggest one of you know things you don't have a billion dollar budget but a light rail system. Well you know we we've thought about that. We want to do public transportation. We're looking into doing a bus service. Uh we we've tossed around the air. We have a a planner in our town who came from the city, worked in uh worked in the uh in the city transportation department as a planner and he's proposed a light rail system uh using uh the old MTA uh right away that's not used anymore. Something like that. It's is not a crazy idea. Yeah. So that's what I was thinking. Sounds expensive, but uh but well grant money hopefully to answer you something that why we we uh work with the governor. We work with work with federal and I don't have to work with I could talk trash about her not you. I got to be politically correct as they say. You had a great relationship with Speaking of speaking of being politically correct of course you know I agree with you that school is important and but what you didn't know is that when the towns become incorporated years ago when they became incorporated there were certain people that lived on properties that opted out. Yeah. And they said we don't want to be corporated. We want to be unincorporated, stay in the town. So, what happened was there was a zoning law that no one knew about. Yeah. Except the schools that figured it out that you can have, you ready for this? I think two acres. Mhm. And you can build a school. Correct. Because it's unincorporated. Yeah. That's our requirement. Two or three in some of which is insane, right? You're in a residential community. You're going to have two schools side by side right now on what would be two houses. Would be two houses. It really doesn't make any sense. the the villagers, not all but a lot of them require 10 acres. What do they get for not being incorporated? Like what what did they lose out when they said in the beginning we don't want to be cor? The main thing and the main reason why most of these villages form was to have control over the zoning. But but you were able to opt out then, right? Uh as an as a land owner, I don't know if you could opt out if you're in the boundaries of a village. I don't think you're maybe it wasn't in the boundaries. They wanted to stay out of the They wanted to stay out of the boundary so they don't get the garbage picked up or whatnot, right? We we do the you know they would keep using our services and not have the village government over them. That's a fascinating thing. I'm saying for for those listeners who don't live in Rockland County, imagine living on a street where somebody has a house and knocks it down and builds a school. Yeah. On the same exact That's what you're having next. Exactly. But the beauty is that your community is beautiful. Yeah. you know, the synagogues that are allowed and you know, that's another thing that you guys have overcome as a community is, you know, allowing the churches and the synagogues to grow and the communities to grow, which is important to all of us. Yeah. And again, thank you so much. You know, we really, really appreciate you being here. I consider myself a listener number one. I'm the one that listens to the podcast. I actually have two questions. Question number one is, why aren't we utilizing Clover Stadium more? How come it's just being limited right now to just baseball? Do you have no concerts there? Well, there were some concert I bet very few. There should be more. Good question. We had concerts there years ago when it first opened. We lost money on all but one concert. Uh part of the problem is we didn't promote. We tried to promote it ourselves and we're not concert promoters. Part of the problem was every time we had a concert, the field got torn up and we had to spend thousands of dollars to rebuild the field. We're looking to do now artificial turf. Um it cost about $1.5 million. So we're looking at the finances of it. If we put artificial turf in, we could have concerts every week. You could have concerts. You can actually rent it out for more sports leagues. And we would all soccer would be big if the problem is it's not big enough the layout to have a regulation soccer field. So that keeps the professional teams away. But soccer is tremendous, especially within the Haitian community, the Latino community. Uh big demand for soccer and and the community at large. Um but if we had the field, we could do concerts. we would use a professional promoter like a Live Nation or something and get a just get like a fee for hosting it and we'd probably make money then. So that's that's a great that's a great question. My other question is what are they doing about Route Route 306? Like how are we how is that going to like it's it was at one point the main thorough fair of Muny. Yeah. Like you were able to just drive your question about the traffic. Yeah. I'm talking about I'm talking about like how is it ever going to I actually had a meeting a week ago, two weeks ago pricing. No, no, no. We had a meeting two weeks ago with the state department of transportation and we said fix it. They're not it's not in their schedule to fix. So we said to them, give us the road, we'll pay you a dollar for it. Give it to us for a year. Whatever it is, we'll find a way to fix it. We'll find a way to widen it. Do whatever has to be done. How could you widen it? All those apartments are like right up to the side. Some of them. Yeah. But some areas there could be room to take. There could be. And add turning lanes, stacking lanes. There there are things that could be done. just never go that direction. I avoid 306 like the plate. I avoid I don't go that way. It makes life a little bit difficult when you are thinking about going to that side of town. We were starting to build out this area, this side of of 202 that we really never should have to venture out to the park. Well, that's it. Even like the the um having evergreen uptown open a couple years ago was amazing. Light rail, guys. Light rail. Yeah, light rail would be cool. Thank you everyone for listening. We really appreciate it. Thank you, Supervisor, for being here. Uh before we let you go, we also have a tradition where we ask you who would you recommend? We hope you had a good time on the podcast. Sure. Who would you recommend as a good guest in that seat? Oh, great question. Uh there's a number of people I work with of the town that would be interesting. Our police chief Dan Heyman uh would be uh a great talk about about safety uh about how the police works as a community policing. I actually just want to know what kind of PBA card to have. He'll get you one. Absolutely. How long was he the police chief for? He's been police chief for it's going to be a year in June. Uh he was uh he's been with the the town almost 40 years as a patrol officer and a sergeant lieutenant captain. Uh he replaced Martin Riley who was chief for a couple years and also with a long time who retired and he was beloved. He did a great job and and Danny is a great chief. So he would be he would great be a great speaker. My chief of staff Mona Montel who's also the political guru. She would she's your chief of staff. She is. How did we not cover this? We had to wait till the end of the podcast to get to let you know. Bagels and More. Bagels and More. She's She had the first uh bagel store in Muny back in the day. Very loved. She's been a fixture in the town in government, politics, and in the community for many, many years. You know what? We'll take them both. She was the She had the party house for all the teenagers growing up. We all used to hang out over there. We run into somebody and then she goes, "Oh, you see that guy? He stayed in my house." Of course. I worked in bagels more. Oh, no kidding. Really? Yeah, sure. Small world. So, she was she's the one who um asked me if I wanted to run for supervisor and convinced me it would be a good idea. Wow. No way. Wow. Thank you, Mona. And she's, you know, got so much insight and she's a mover and a shaker. She gets stuff done. So, she'd be I think I think she'd be a great guest show. Sure. She's been also long-standing my res forever. I would tell you to call them and ask them, but I know how busy these guys are, so we'll arrange in Israel right now. It's her performance for there. Oh, beautifulness. Very, very nice. All right, that's a wrap, guys. Thank you again. This is great.