It was reported in the November 15 edition of theEllenville Journal that the Ulster County Department of Social Services is considering a one-year pilot pro­gram that would be housed on the fourth floor of the newly opened Ellenville Government Center.

In response to this, outgoing Wawarsing Town Supervisor James Dolaway wrote an open letter to the residents, property owners and homeowners of the town of Wawarsing, which he read at the November 15 town council meeting. Among the items mentioned in the letter, which appears on page 3 of this issue, Dolaway raised concerns about an increased tax burden on vil­lage and town taxpayers based on the county's rental of the Ellenville Government Center and increased costs for employee travel time and mileage. However, it ap­pears that there are additional concerns that Dolaway feels need to be addressed before either the village or the county sign off on the proposal.

Ulster County DSS Funding

In a subsequent interview, Dolaway said that his chief concern is the way in which Ulster County handles its funding for social services in contrast to any other county in New York State. He explained that in every other county, the cost of social services is dispersed so that every county resident pays a similar share.

"But what Ulster County does is if five people in Wawarsing are getting social services that cost is not spread thought the county. Fifty percent of it is charged back to the township. We have a budget line in our bud­get where we pay the county fifty percent. So if they [Ulster County DSS] spent $180,000 dollars last year it was actually $90,000; $180,000 was collected by resi­dents of our township and $90,000 of it was charged [by Ulster County] back to our township."

Ulster County Department of Social Services Commissioner Roberto Rodriguez, a proponent of the Ellenville pilot program, responded to Dolaway's assertions, admitting that Dolaway is correct about the 'charge back' issue but not with respect to the programs that Rodriguez has planned for the satellite office.

"He [Dolaway] is correct when it comes to 'safety-net costs'. Yes, Ulster County is the only one that charges back to its towns the costs associated with residents that are from their respective towns. That is separate and apart from this proposal."

"I am going about it differently," continued Ro­driguez. "He currently has people eligible and under-served. You can make the same case for the county but I can't go by that. Nothing that is being done on the El­lenville site is connected to safety-net funding."

But Dolaway reiterated his case, saying that social services costs in neighboring counties are absorbed by county taxpayers as a whole, rather than charging the indi­vidual municipalities that have DSS clients back 50%.

"That means that the $100,000 [DSS] spent in Orange County is spread throughout the entire county. You live in Goshen, Montgomery, Walden? Wherever you live doesn't matter; you are going to spend the same dollar. What happens here is in Ulster County the county says, 'OK, we have ten residents from Wawarsing who are receiving that $100,000. We are going to charge back the town of Wawarsing $50,000 because ten of those residents come from Wawars­ing…They [the Ulster County Legislature] have talk­ed about changing it back. I don't see it happening because it only effects a couple of areas - Ellenville, the City of Kingston - and I guess that's why they set it up twenty or thirty years ago."

The Town of Wawarsing is currently allocating $160,000 for Ulster County DSS costs for its 2008 budget. It is an increase of nearly 50% percent from last year's $90,000.

Village Officials Respond

Ellenville Mayor Jeff Kaplan responded by saying that the DSS satellite office would not be an addi­tional expense to the county, and therefore taxpayers. "It is just a switch of a location. We are not creat­ing a whole new bureaucracy; that is just not the case."

Kaplan feels that the increased use of the EGC will create increased economic activity in Ellenville's downtown business district.

“The ability to rent and create businesses within that building is a major asset to the village and when you have an engineering firm renting a majority of the third floor and you have State Senator John Bonacic opening an office on the third floor… Now you have the Department of Social Services willing to move part of its operation down to Ellenville — these are consumers that will come out and use our village facilities, our restaurants.”

Ellenville Village Manager Elliott Auerbach added that the proposed DSS office would probably employ about six workers and that would mean, “We just brought six people into the community that will buy gas, buy lunch, buy a newspaper. So it is an economic development stimulus as an aside to everything else.”

Auerbach explained, “If we look at the social services component and say this is great, here we are, we are bringing the needed services into the community and we are going to serve the greater good of the town of Wawarsing, the village of Ellenville and all the outlying areas that may find it easier to transact business in the village rather than going 26 or 28 miles down the road to Kingston.”

Auerbach cites the Ulster County DMV bus that comes to Ellenville every Wednesday for the convenience of local residents.

DSS Commissioner Responds

Rodriguez said that three of the programs that would go into the Ellenville satellite office — food stamps, HEAP and Medicaid — do not “get passed onto the town” but that Temporary Assistance does.

“The biggest expense is rent,” explains Rodriquez. “We help people with rent. I would think that, especially under the circumstances now occurring in Ellenville, it is very good that we are able to help people and keep them housed.”

The DSS Commissioner Rodriguez was surprised that Dolaway was against the move to Ellenville, saying that Dolaway had initially been a supporter.

Rodriguez said he assessed the area’s need and that he had met with Auerbach, Dolaway and Wawarsing social services worker Jean Craft and, “I came away with the sense that we needed to increase our presence there. I went about having discussions with the village and the state and basically put a proposal to open up an office in the government center.”

Rodriguez went on to say that, “The basis for the office is for a comprehensive operation where we could make decisions there as opposed to getting applications and getting all that back here [Kingston] for processing.”

With regard to operating expenses, Rodriguez indicated the Ellenville DSS office would cost “about $50,000 to start up. We are not done identifying everything.” The proposed budget for the Ellenville DSS office, obtained from Ulster County, puts the total cost for the office’s set up and yearly expenses at $57,605.07 with the local share estimated at $19,439.77 while New York State would pay $9,362.76 and the federal government would chip in $28,802.54. Rodriguez says he not asking for any additional funding, saying that the office expenditures are, “coming out of my existing budget.” Rodriguez also said that New York State is willing to underwrite the cost of wiring the offices that DSS would use on the fourth floor.

Rodriguez added that Ellenville was “the first endeavor” and that he was looking to replicate similar satellite operations in the towns of New Paltz, Shandaken, and Lloyd although Rodriguez did admit that the Ellenville program would be larger in size and scope than the proposed sites in other Ulster County towns.

DSS vs. NIMBY?

Another concern raised by Dolaway is that some people might move to the area to get social services.

“My belief is just because of the human nature in it,” said Dolaway, “people tend to go where they can get services and end up living there. If we thought the village of Ellenville was going to provide this service locally these people — instead of living in Hurley, or town of Ulster outside the city because they don’t want to live in the city of Kingston — will say you know what, ‘Wawarsing is a nice place to live, I’ll rent an apartment down there, social services will pay for it and pay for the heat and the end of the day the local home owner has to pay these costs.’ It will induce people to say, ‘Gee whiz. I can live in Wawarsing, apply right down the street even if I don’t have a car, and I can hitch hike my way into the Village of Ellenville and apply for these services very easily and that will be charged back to the town.’”

Ulster County Legislator Mary Sheeley called the idea a NIMBY or ‘Not In My Back Yard’ attitude, saying, “I heard a legislator say that and I said, ‘Are you kidding me?’ Yeah, people are going to come running and we are going to be a welfare town. Give me a break.”

Sheeley says she remembers a similar line of thinking when there was a proposal to put affordable housing in Kerhonkson.

“This lady was arguing with the supervisor at the time [Dr. Richard Craft] and she said the same thing — that people were going to come running to Kerhonkson because we had this housing there. Finally at one point, Dr. Craft, because he is not a politician stood up and said, ‘Madam, please. I can assure you that people will not be running down the road with their mattresses on their heads to move to Kerhonkson if we build this housing.’”

Sheeley then asked, “Why shouldn’t services be available here? We always hear that there is nothing available in the southern end of the county and when we get something it’s, ‘Ah, I don’t want that.’”

Sheeley referred to the ordeal that some DSS recipients must go through to get to Kingston for services as a, “horror story,” and cites a lack of good transportation and language boundaries as major obstacles to Kingston-based services.

Kaplan echoed Sheeley’s comments saying, “Here is an opportunity, finally, for the county to fund a major operation down here. They are also talking about sending down other entities from the county and renting the fifth floor; that would be even more clerical people down here and more people that are potential consumers. So far, the positives outweigh the negatives. It is hard for me to understand why Dolaway would feel so negative about it… You have people that are disenfranchised by the system that are left with the obligation of doing things that other people don’t have to do which is to have to travel so far to get the assistance they need. There is a lot of benefit to the community. When added into the equation of this it really is a no-brainer.”

Dolaway feels that the satellite office will encourage more low-income people to move to the area, increasing the tax burden on local residents.

“We have such a tax structure that is killing us because we make it so easy to collect these services — not that some people don’t deserve it, they do deserve it.” Dolaway raised concerns about efforts to abuse the social services system and what effect it could have on Wawarsing.

“There is so much fraud in the system that you and I pay for as property owners. Now we are going to entice people to say, “Well gee whiz, if you want to apply for these services you can do it right here in Wawarsing, you don’t have to bother going to Kingston.”

“It will cost us money at the end of the day,” Dolaway warned.

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