Bobert,

         The people who are opposing us are not those who have lived here for 3 or more generations. Most of them have come up here from the city themselves, maybe 20 or 15 years before we did. They came up here to escape from us in their old neighborhoods and now they have to deal with us again in a new venue.

As far as the schools go, our people pay the lion's share of the school taxes in the East Ramapo Central School District. However, we all send our children to Jewish parochial schools (Yeshiva), where we have to pay expensive tuition. We have no benefits from the public school taxes that we pay, other than school bus transportation. This is perhaps the only public school district in the United States where 75% of the children attend parochial school. But we still have to pay the public school taxes.

Despite what people think, property values here have gone way up and not down. 20 years ago, I purchased my house for $200,000. If I wanted to sell today I have been offered in excess of $800,000, an increase of over 4 fold. With all the new expensive houses being built here, the tax base has gone way up so the tax rates do not have to increase as much. We are pouring a lot of money into the town tax coffers, to the benefit of those who are opposing us. So the argument that the locality has to put out more than they get back to support us does not hold water. We are paying the bulk of the taxes.

Our people make up the majority of the all volunteer local fire department as well as the local all volunteer ambulance corps.

The argument of our opponents is not so much based upon what development takes place. They are more concerned with who is doing the developing. The zoning laws are just an excuse to keep us from becoming the majority here, which we soon will be. SOL ZELLER