To the Editor:

As many people know, I recently sued the Village of Potsdam over the doubling of water-sewer charges for apartments. But before I did, I met with the mayor and administrator to explain how this wasn’t a matter of selfish-self interest, but about the sheer stupidity of inadvertently putting village housing at a cost disadvantage to town and surrounding community housing.

In trying to explain the difference between “Growing the tax base by incentivizing business and people to live in the Village vs the Town or elsewhere”, it was as if I was talking to a wall.

Greg Thompson, Ron Tischler and Steve Warr truly have no concept of how economics works because they have no interest in any new information conflicting with whatever preconceived notions of municipal finance they already have. Simply put, the three of them have no concept of how self-defeating their hopelessly non-thought-out policies are!

And given that their comprehension of micro-economics amounts to “we can make up for dam losses and our continuous losses of taxable property to the hospital & other tax-exempt entities by just taxing our residents more”, should it be any wonder that the village is suffering long-term financial decline?

Last week I had an opportunity to meet with both Monique Tirion and Will Pena, two people running for the Village Board, and it was like a breath of fresh air.

They “got it”.

The solution to Potsdam’s tax and economic problems is not taking as much as you can from everyone already here, but about enticing new people and new businesses to set up inside the Village and thereby growing our tax base!

They get it!

From what I’ve experienced, and I’m not being hyperbolic, Steve Warr and Ron Tischler either don’t have the brainpower or simply couldn’t care less about bringing the Village back from economic despair and insane taxes. In fact, their policies are, and have been the cause of our economic slide!

And everyone who reads this paper knows what I think of Greg Thompson’s utter lack of any intellectual or diplomatic capacity or even competence at his job.

I cannot possibly encourage people enough to vote for Monique Tirion and William Pena for Village Trustees on Nov 2.

And as Will Pena is not on the ballot, he told me his motto is “Pen In Pena.” I couldn’t agree more.

Bryan Wolofsky, Montreal

Editor’s note: Bryan Wolofsky owns the Swan Landing and Meadow East apartment complexes in Potsdam