Dear Editor:
The Sept. 20 article “Romeo Kia says vehicle services at risk from lack of county executive’s approval of tax breaks” needs some balance.
At the Ulster Town Board meeting four days before the article was published, reporter William Kemble witnessed three residents encouraging Ulster County Executive Ryan not to sign off on a $1.17 million payment-in-lieu-taxes (PILOT) agreement for Romeo’s project. These residents objected to the PILOT because it would shift the burden of school taxes to residents of the municipalities within the Kingston school district.
In Romeo’s application to the county Industrial Development Agency (IDA), the company checked a box indicating the project would not go forward without public assistance. The company also projects annual sales at the relocation to be $32 million.
Unlike other forms of public assistance, the IDA excludes means testing or affordability testing as part of its review process. Does Romeo really need this public assistance to make more money? If it has outgrown its facility on Schwenck Drive in Kingston and wants to expand that business at a new location in the county, it’s free to do so. But why should residential taxpayers add more comfort to the margins in Romeo’s business plan by absorbing the burden of $1.17 million in tax breaks?
It seems reasonable that Romeo Kia, as one of eight businesses in the Romeo Auto Group, can afford to execute its own business plan without public assistance and fashion an in-house plan to resolve its current problem with servicing vehicles.
Vicki Lucarini
Town of Ulster, N.Y.
