Hands across the Hudson Valley

Westchester County Executive George Latimer, a Democrat, has started a program to welcome county executives from other Hudson Valley counties to visit with him at the County Office Building in White Plains and make televised appearances to brief Westchester residents on key happenings and policies in their counties. This is in addition to the routine interactions county executives have in the normal course of dealing with government and political issues that spill across county lines.

“We have different political party affiliations but that doesn’t stop us from working together,” Latimer said on March 27, before introducing Orange County Executive Steve Neuhaus, a Republican.

”I’ve been county executive 10 years now,” Neuhaus said. “When I came in it was very, very difficult and we were struggling with revenues. We are predominately funded by sales tax and then it breaks down to revenues coming from state and federal governments and fees as well as, obviously, property tax. We have the lowest tax rate since 1963. I’m going to do my State of the County Address in mid-April and I’m going to use my personal house as an example to show people where the property taxes have gone down.”

Neuhaus explained that as a result of his military service, currently as an officer in the Navy Reserve assigned to the Pacific Fleet, he’s been able to adapt certain organizational techniques used in the military to analyze the effectiveness of county government.

Neuhaus said the Legoland theme park has been a success for Orange County, producing $1 million in revenues just from the hotel/motel occupancy tax.

“They have really brought a lot of attention,” Neuhaus said. “We’re seeing spin-off tourism attractions, not only hotels coming but other types of theme parks. We’re seeing adventure theme parks looking, kicking the tires on bringing in a dinosaur park, so all these things are bringing not only revenues but jobs and attention to our county.”

Neuhaus said that he and other elected officials have concerns when they look across America and see the violence and destruction that have become regular features.

“We constantly, constantly train for all sorts of apocalyptic type of events,” Neuhaus said. “Last year on election day we did a full-scale active shooter drill in one of our schools. The schools were closed so I could bring in administrators, teachers to watch how an active shooter scene actually plays out.”

Neuhaus said that the county is doing a campaign to train anyone for free in how to do cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and to administer the drug overdose treatment NARCAN.

“We are super proud of what we’re doing in emergency management,” Neuhaus said.