I am proud to report to you that in our first year in office we have delivered on our principal campaign pledges, returning school monies to the schools, eliminating full time benefits for part time elected officials and cleaning up theTown's purchasing practices.  This last measure has enabled us to reduce Town expenditures by over 20% andTown taxes by 17%.1660 making our Rye Town community one of a handful of communities that helped to contribute to the creation of the world's first modern experiment in self government - the United States of America.

While I am proud of our achievements to date, I fully understand that the more difficult and pressing challenges are still in front of us. Westchester County is still the highest property tax county in the nation!  Our overwhelming tax burden is progressively pricing seniors and young people out of our community. We fully understand that the unending increases in property taxes continue to pose a serious threat to the well being of our communities. We therefore intend to work with local community leaders to explore ways to more fundamentally reduce your tax burden. 

We continue to view as our most important challenge restoring life to our lagging local democracy, where voter participation rates rarely exceed 30%.  We believe that if America is to be strong and we are to affect the kind of change that is necessary to reduce your tax burden, we need to improve citizen participation.

As a first step toward better understanding voter complaints and concerns we would ask that you fill out the questionnaire on the link below and send it to me at our town offices.  That address:

Supervisor Joe Carvin
Town of Rye
10 Pearl Street
Port Chester, NewYork 10573.

Many thanks for your help in making RyeTown a model American community.