Thanks For Your Leadership, Jacqueline

Jacqueline Annabi, Supervisor of the Town of Putnam Valley, was an honored guest on the “Voice of Putnam Business” podcast on February 27th and my co-host Nick D’Andrea, producer Jenn Maher and I want to thank her for the time she took to be with us. We learned a lot about Jacqueline’s career in public service and our admiration for her and her life’s work grew over the course of our time together.

Our conversation covered a wide range of topics from Jacqueline’s early days working behind the counter as a young girl in the family business to her recent effort on behalf of our towns and villages to secure a portion of Putnam County’s sales tax revenue to support their infrastructure projects. Supervisor Annabi’s leadership in arguing passionately for a new and much needed source of revenue for the local municipalities deserves our attention.

Jacqueline was the driving force in sending a letter (dated 2/3/2025) to the Putnam County Legislature, which outlined the benefits of direct municipal distribution. It was signed by the County’s six supervisors and three mayors.The letter cited a “highly successful precedent for this type of sharing from 2022 when surplus sales tax dollars were shared to the Towns and Villages” and provided examples of how the money was used for capital projects in Putnam Valley and Cold Spring. Legislator Erin Crowley, Audit Committee Member, read the letter into the record at a meeting of the Committee on February 19, which opened a discussion among the legislators about sales tax revenue in general and the possibility of sharing some of that revenue. While there was little debate about the positive fund balance that the County enjoys and the overall health of its financial position, the legislators argued about the merits of sharing surplus sales tax with another layer of local government rather than returning it directly to the taxpayers in the form of a rate reduction. Once the legislators finished their discussion, Chairwoman Sayegh invited members of the public to speak.

While every member of the Putnam Valley Town Board was in attendance, Jacqueline and Deputy Supervisor Christian Russo were the ones that spoke. She highlighted several specific infrastructure projects and the lack of property tax revenue to support them (a point also made by Patterson Supervisor Williams in his remarks), while Christian reminded the legislators about the extent to which the surrounding counties support their local municipalities by sharing sales tax revenues. Encouraged by the Supervisors, Brett Yarris, a resident of Carmel Hamlet who posts often on social media about sharing the sales tax, called the Legislature “our last hope” for identifying a source of revenues to support spending on infrastructure. Needing to move on to several other agenda items, Chairwoman Sayegh told the group that this discussion would continue at the March meeting of the Audit Committee.

Thank you and your team, Jacqueline, for educating the rest of us on the current sales tax situation in the County and for presenting the case for sharing some of those revenues with the local governments.

Nat Prentice

President, Putnam County Business Council