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General News: Mayoral Hopeful Neuman Promises Action
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| Peter Neuman is challenging the mayor in the March 18th election. |
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| Neuman announced his bid for the office to News from Cornwall and Cornwall-on-Hudson at last July's Independence Day celebration. |
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| Peter Neuman and his wife, Maryann, outside their home, which was used a location for a film crew last year. |
March 12, 2009
Peter Neuman is a big man, a retired defense attorney who made his reputation facing down prosecutors in court for more than four decades. He has done 75 free falls as a sky diver, chased tornadoes and run with the bulls in Pamplona, Spain. Now he is ready for a new challenge and wants to put all his energy to work as the mayor of Cornwall-on-Hudson. He will face Mayor Joseph Gross in the election on March 18th.
Peter Neuman is a man of action and says he would take action to get resources for the village from state and federal agencies. That’s why when he was in Albany last month he cornered the majority speaker of the Senate, Malcolm Smith, to get the village on his radar map. He said that if he had been mayor he would have attended the U.S. Conference of Mayors in Washington, D.C. and thinks that Mayor Gross should have gone there as well.
In an interview earlier this week, Neuman said that if elected, he would be sure to make the village needs known to people who can make a difference. “Mayor Gross writes letters,” Neuman said, “but you have to go knock on doors. You need to go and be heard, and make a pain of yourself."
Neuman says that if he is elected he thinks he can bring in enough grant money to underwrite the cost of maintaining the infrastructure in the village so that taxes could go down. “What bothers me most is that we aren’t getting any stimulus money,” he said in an interview earlier this week. “President Obama talked about the money that would be made available after he was elected in November, and we should have been ready with shovel-ready projects.”
He said he would also bring the force of his energy to bear on other problems the village faces, like the political clout that the village of Kiryas Joel wants to wield to get federal funds for a project to tap into the Mountainville aquifer. He says he would organize leaders from all the neighboring communities to meet with U.S. Congressman John Hall and U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand and tell them that if Kiryas Joel is promising them 8,000 votes, the other communities can gather up 20,000 votes for the officials if they oppose the aquifer project.
Neuman would tackle other problems in the same manner. He said he could settle the disagreement between local businessmen Tony Missere and Ray Yannone the same way he settled legal cases: put everyone in a room with the door closed until it gets worked out.
Neuman says that he thinks the new businesses, including those owned by Missere and Yannone, are good for the village. He likes the idea of mixed-use buildings with small stores on the ground floor and residential units above. He’d also like to see a new pier at the riverfront, not a large “Mary Powell” dock but one big enough to launch boats and to provide a place for kids to fish. He thinks a small concession stand, tucked into a corner, would mean more people could use the riverfront and endorses the idea of going to the state legislature to try to regain 48 acres just south of the yacht club that were seized by Con Edison forty years ago, then handed over to the Palisades Interstate Park Commission. That land could be used as a park, he said, or sold to a developer with restrictions, which would bring in millions of dollars to the village treasury.
If he is elected, Peter Neuman says he will study the recycling schedule and see if there is a better way to meet the needs of residents, many of whom have told him that they would like to go back to weekly pick-ups. He says he has heard from many residents concerned about the safety of the Hudson Street/Duncan Avenue intersection and he would hire a highway planner to draw up a plan for restructuring the intersection, then bring it to the state Department of Transportation for approval.
He also thinks that children in Cornwall-on-Hudson deserve more attention and he would reduce the higher fees for the summer playground program adopted last year by Mayor Gross’s administration. He’s looked into building a skateboard park for the older children and says that insurance costs have not gone up for other towns that have a park. He thinks that he could lead a fundraising effort through car washes, bake sales, and other items to pay for park.
Neuman said he would give up his $18,300 salary and add it to the general fund, then the board would vote on where it would be used. Among the areas he would like the village to explore is the installation of solar panels on the roof of the DPW building and he fully supports the plans to bring hydro-power into the Black Rock water filter plant.
He’d also like to work out a plan for residents to pay their school taxes in installments, rather than in one big lump sum.
Neuman’s said he has looked through the village budget with a fine tooth comb and is concerned that the revenue will not meet expectations and about spending like FICA taxes that he said were not increased correctly from year to year.
Neuman said that, if elected, he would bring more transparency to the job. He criticized Mayor Gross for sending out the master plan to the county planning office without the knowledge of all the trustees on the village board and said that a lot of things get done just by the mayor and his close ally, trustee Barbara Gosda. Neuman would keep the village office open from 6 to 9 p.m. once a week and once a month on Saturdays so that residents can come in to discuss their problems.
Neuman moved to the village of Cornwall-on-Hudson after spending 31 years in the town of Cornwall, but he dismisses the notion that his outsider status disqualifies him for the job. “It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been here to see the problems,” he said.
For the past month and more Neuman has been walking the streets of the village, knocking on doors to speak with residents and, he said, “having a ball.”
He talked about his early childhood in New Jersey and youth in Long Island, where he was raised by a father who worked in a machine shop and his mother, a secretary. He waited on tables and worked in construction to get through law school, then worked hard, he said, to launch a successful legal career.
He knows that his attempt to enforce the view preservation law on his village property, where he took legal action to force his neighbor to trim the trees that were blocking his view of the Hudson, was controversial but believes it was settled fairly for all involved.
He said that he and his wife, Mary Ann, are in a “happy, peaceful place.” He converted to Catholicism several years ago and finds meaning in the volunteer work he does at St. Patrick’s soup kitchen in Newburgh.
Neuman said that if he wins the election next Wednesday, there will be a lot for him to do, but if he loses, his life won’t really change. He said he’s more concerned about helping “people who really need it, people who are having really tough times” than he is about himself.
Read more about what the mayoral candidates had to say at least week's mayoral debate here.
Comments:
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I do not believe he went there to "represent" COH. But rather to learn and as a private citizen has every right to speak to other officials about his concerns for our village. If he had tried to do so and have us pay for it - then yes - I'd have a problem. I do not believe that is the case and I think his initiative should be applauded!
posted by Chuck Trella on 03/13/09 at 11:00 AM
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