Redrawing School Boundaries and Boycotts

1.The process for redrawing school district boundaries in Westchester County is Sisyphean. It would involve obtaining the consent of the school district who would be inheriting the transferred students and payment of financial compensation from the school district who wants to send new students to another district.

It would require the consent of the State Education Commissioner.

It is a distraction from the effort to Stop The Jefferson.

It is divisive. It pits neighbor against neighbor.

It is not going to happen.

Let's keep our focus on The Jefferson and the harm it will do to everyone who lives in all our Rivertowns communities.

2. Have you been to The Galleria, The Westchester or Woodbury Commons recently? The are all owned by Simon Malls. Did you know Simon Malls is being boycotted by 2nd Amendment zealots who don't like that Simon Malls opposes guns in their malls?  Boycotts come and go. Few are successful. Most are forgettable like the silly one this past holiday season over coffee cups.

While it may be a nice soundbite to say "boycott Rivertowns Square," its success will most likely be fleeting.  Most people shop based on price and convenience. Thats why last year 20 billion dollars of furniture was sold through e-commerce on sites like Wayfair.  Feel good measures won't stop The Jefferson. As President Obama ably explained in his last State of the Union speech - our type of democracy is hard. We need to spend time studying the land use process. We need to look at the numbers JPI is relying on and show how they are faulty or misleading. We need to show up at all the meetings that will be held before the Town Board, the planning board and the zoning board. We have to guard against the well known developer strategy of wearing us down with last minute cancelled meetings or government officials and employees who keep aspects of the process hidden or hard to find as we see now with the Town's website.

That will take a lot of energy and the need to build coalitions with others in the Town who may have issues we can support in exchange.   The Jefferson poses,  as former Ardsley Mayor John Morehouse noted, an almost existential risk to our area. We need to get the best scoping document we can. We have to hold our elected officials to their pronouncements that if no material benefit is shown to Ardsley, they will not approve it. Let's not get sidetracked.

Urgent Repair Memo to the Town's Self Described Problem Solver

To: Supervisor Paul Feiner
From: Greenburgh Taxpayers
Subject: Overdue Repairs
Priority: High
January 15, 2016

1. The problems with the sound system at Town Hall have gone on for far too long. This must be fixed before the next scoping session. No more excuses. Call the A/V experts at KVL right here in Greenburgh on Saw Mill River Road - today!

2. Municipal websites were  recently ranked. Greenburgh's was one of the worst. Town residents are now seeing why. The information about The Jefferson is absurdly buried deeply in the forms and documents section of the Community Development and Conservation  Department section. Archived Town Board meetings are hidden in the "live" Town Board meetings link. This is the plastic version of open Government not the gold standard we deserve. Make the documents and links to The Jefferson easily  accessible. Fix and update the website so it looks like something from 2016 not 1992 when you first took office.

3. Your campaign literature and the sign on your car claim you are the problem solver. If so, prove it and fix these problems. Please feel free to email back your scheduled date for making these repairs.

How to Stop The Jefferson

There will always be a group of people who stand on the sidelines believing The Jefferson will be approved regardless of all the meetings, petitions, letters to the editor or promising statements by politicians.

In his recent State of the Union address, President Obama took this defeatist attitude head on:


"It’s a lot easier to be cynical; to accept that change is not possible, and politics is hopeless, 
and the problem is all the folks who are elected don't care, and to believe that our voices 
and actions don’t matter. But if we give up now, then we forsake a better future. Those with 
money and power will gain greater control over the decisions that could send a young soldier 
to war, or allow another economic disaster, or roll back the equal rights and voting rights that 
generations of Americans have fought, even died, to secure. And then, as frustration grows, 
there will be voices urging us to fall back into our respective tribes, to scapegoat fellow  
citizens who don’t look like us, or pray like us, or vote like we do, or share the same 
background.

We can’t afford to go down that path. It won’t deliver the economy we want. It will not produce the security we want. But most of all, it contradicts everything that makes us the envy of the world.

So, my fellow Americans, whatever you may believe, whether you prefer one party or no party, whether you supported my agenda or fought as hard as you could against it -- our collective futures depends on your willingness to uphold your duties as a citizen. To vote. To speak out. To stand up for others, especially the weak, especially the vulnerable, knowing that each of us is only here because somebody, somewhere, stood up for us. We need every American to stay active in our public life -- and not just during election time -- so that our public life reflects the goodness and the decency that I see in the American people every single day.

It is not easy. Our brand of democracy is hard."

Now it is our time to stand up. To stand up for our children. To insure a better future for our community and oppose the marketing gimmickry of those who claim The Jefferson is good for our community when the evidence is overwhelmingly clear its only good for the Texas developer.

 As numerous residents commented at the first scoping session, they want the children in our community that follow their children to receive the same excellent education theirs did and it would be criminal if that did not happen.

Standing up together in even greater numbers at the upcoming February 10 second scoping session- that is how we will Stop The Jefferson. 

Get involved. Stay involved  and always bring your New York values. 

Texas vs. Ardsley at The Jefferson

Here is the Vision Statement of the Ardsley School District:

District Vision:

Building on a tradition of academic excellence and success for every student, we cultivate passionate learners and informed global citizens who actively influence their world.

Here is the mission statement of JPI,  (http://jpi.com) the developer of The Jefferson:

THE OWNERS’ VALUES

• Be faithful & obedient to God
• Be respectful to & help develop all people
• Be committed to excellence
• Be committed to service
• Be a person of character
• Grow profitably

Based on the foregoing, Is it not unreasonable to ask JPI :

To be faithful and obedient to the will of the people who live in the Rivertowns who are nearly unanimously opposed to  the The Jefferson development? 

To respect our community's  fervent desire they not proceed with this mega-project of dubious merit that the elected members of the  Ardsley School Board convincingly argue will compromise its ability to deliver on its mission? 

If you agree, it is suggested you contact Mark A. Bryant, JPI/TDI's President and CEO

at  mark.bryant@tdire.com 

    Telephone Number: 972.556.1700.

     600 East Las Colinas
     Suite 1800 
     Irving, Texas 75039

or the Texas based press agent for JPI:

David Margulies
david@prexperts.net 

The First Scoping Session - a quick overview

So, did anyone explain where Council Member Ken Jones was?  Or did he just let Town Clerk Judy Beville take his place?  All kidding aside, Judy did a fairly good job of keeping the action moving and her introductions of local politicians - past and present - were enjoyable. The meeting had it all - including many powerfully emotional moments. Ardsley and the Rivertowns are a strong community.

First, the problems with the sound system have gone on for years. It remains to be seen how well the streaming video on the Town website sounds. Memo to Town Board - fix this!

A friend from Edgemont emailed me to say how he felt the meeting showed how important it is to avoid having to rely on public officials you don't vote for as Ardsley and others had to do with Dobbs Ferry.

Herb Rosenberg of Dobbs Ferry is known to those who watch (or suffer through as the case may be) Town Board meetings. Long before Chris Christie bellowed he tells it like its, Herb Rosenberg  has spent countless hours waiting his turn to speak out against wrongs wherever they occurred in the Town. His apology to Ardsley for Rivertowns Square is an example. Herb has also excoriated those in the unincorporated areas of the Town who have fought for 30 plus years to keep Ardsleyans from being able to use the Town Pool at Veteran Park (20% of which is in the Village of Ardsley).

Ardsley's current and former mayors were effective and eloquent and the School Board representatives almost singlehandedly sent The Jefferson back to Texas. We also got a nice assist from Elmsford's mayor.

Former Ardsley village board trustee Nicole Minore was extraordinary in her analysis of the issues, her passion and her ability to expose JPI for engaging in a transparent marketing scheme regarding the developer's millennialist fantasies.

Supervisor Feiner came prepared with scoping suggestion after suggestion. Ok, he was grandstanding a bit but he showed why he is still Supervisor after 25 years despite originally running on a term limits platform back in 1992.  I calculated his development mitigations at roughly several hundred million dollars.

Of course major kudos go to Dina Cardoso who got the ball rolling with her change.org petition and who has worked tirelessly on getting the word out on Facebook and in every other way.

As the folks in Dobbs Ferry (the vets from the battle of Rivertowns Square) advised, the process is long and the developer and its allies know the "wear them out" game.

As one wise resident observed, the developers seem to be able to exploit the patchwork political divisions in Greenburgh where projects span multiple borders. We must not let their divide and conquer strategy prevail.

Our ASVAC leaders made it clear that The Jefferson poses a danger to the health and well being of every citizen it serves.

The most interesting fact was that not one speaker appeared to support the project.  Even the developer didn't raise his hand when an Ardsley resident asked for a show of hands of those who favored the development.  Perhaps he was dreaming of being  in one of those canoes that float down the Saw Mill River when it floods instead of at the first scoping session.

Where is Greenburgh Town Hall? Who are the Members of the Town Board? Greenburgh History.

There is no true postal address of  Greenburgh, New York.

Nevertheless, the Town Hall has decided to create a Greenburgh, NY address to make it seem like a real place.

Some residents who live in the Town of Greenburgh but have a White Plains postal address use the unsanctioned Greenburgh NY for mail and other purposes.

Either way, if you are using a GPS to get to Town Hall, it may be the case that it will not recognize "Greenburgh" as the Town or City.

In such event you should plug in:

177 Hillside Avenue
White Plains, NY 10607

While we are on the topic of Greenburgh, the members of the Town Board who will be acting as the lead agency tonight are:

Supervisor Paul Feiner who lives in Boulder Ridge. He is a 25 year incumbent and everyone has an opinion about him. He is an avid cyclist and is frequently in Ardsley on his way to the South County Trail.

Town Council Members:

Diana Juettner - also a 25 year incumbent, an Ardsley Village resident who is the chair of the social sciences department at  Mercy College in Dobbs Ferry.

Francis Sheehan - a long term Hartsdale resident who owns an undeveloped property in the Ardsley School District and who is a lecturer at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Mr. Sheehan also headed the Town's Comprehensive Plan Committee.

Ken Jones, the newest member, an attorney who lives in the Parkway Gardens area of unincorporated Greenburgh. Mr. Jones' family has long roots in Greenburgh.

Kevin Morgan, a retired Greenburgh police detective who lives in North Elmsford (covered by the North Elmsford Fire District) area of Greenburgh.(Pocantico Hills School District).  Mr. Morgan  is now an investigator for the Legal Aid Society.


All of the above elected officials are voted for on at large basis - meaning all voters in the incorporated villages and unincorporated areas vote to elect members of the Town Board.. There is no form of district representation in Greenburgh. The term of the Supervisor is 2 years, while a council member's term is 4 years (so in any given year the Supervisor runs along with 2 of the 4 council members either as a team or separately.

A number of years ago a federal lawsuit was brought challenging this system to the extent voters in the unincorporated areas felt if was not right that villagers (who are 55% of the town's population) can elect  all the Town Board members who spend 99% of their time on issues concerning the unincorporated areas and thus the villagers, could have, if they wanted to complete control over the town board to the detriment of the minority of taxpayers in the unincorporated areas. The court rejected this argument saying that as villagers still pay a small tax to the Town for various services, to deny them the vote would be taxation without representation. The court also said unincorporated areas always have the remedy of creating their own villages if they want to opt out of this system. Prior to the lawsuit, in 1967, Edgemont (then mostly known as Greenville)(Greenville Fire Dept,,  Greenville Shopping Center) ) sought to incorporate. The vote failed by a 3 to 1 margin. In the late 1980s, the Mayfair Knollwood section of unincorporated Greenburgh also sought to incorporate. The then Town Supervsior rejected the petition as racially biased as the borders for the proposed village seemed to deliberately cut out the African American residents who lived in the Greenburgh Central School District  near the Mayfair Knollwood area (The Mayfair Knollwood neighborhood is served by the Valhalla School District which is partly in Greenburgh and partly in an adjacent Town  because as was  explained in a prior post, the School District lines are almost 200 years old),  The basis for the unsuccessful incorporation attempt  by Mayfair Knollwood was caused in part by the Town agreeing to place a homeless shelter on the Westchester Community College Campus which was one mile away from any home in Mayfair Knollwood. The shelter, which was championed by a young Andrew Cuomo, is now closed. Here is a link to the New York Times article about Mayfair Knollwood controversy: . http://www.nytimes.com/1988/11/10/nyregion/metro-matters-in-westchester-it-may-become-not-in-my-village.html?login=email

Edgemont leaders have in recent years discussed incorporation by its area (essentially a school and fire district)  but issue goes back almost 100 years. Several key factors keeping the idea alive including the fact that Edgemont pays approximately 30% of the Town's taxes but has no representation on the Town Board and local zoning and planning issues are decided by boards dominated by people outside of Edgemont or by perceived directives from Town Hall such as in the case with the Sprain Brook Nursery (also in small part in the Ardsley School District) or the Dromore Road development on Central Avenue near the Greenbrugh Nature Center. Edgmonters also feel they run a pretty good school district, so they can probably run a better government than Greenburgh which when it comes to land use issues has made many mistakes such as with the Frank's Nursery site, the Shelter site (now closed but previously generating 1.2 Million in rent a year for the Town's "A" budget (which is the budget villagers pay for)  and the Fortress Bible Church case causing the Town to pay millions of dollars in damages (for which there was no insurance)  for violating the Church's First Amendment rights to develop their property.  This case will undoubtedly be brought to the attention of any court should JPI challenge any land use decision by the Town Board with respect to The Jefferson. 

Those who oppose incorporation argue a village of Edgemont would lose access to the Town Pool and perhaps privileges at the Hartsdale Public Parking District in Hartsdale. Others feel they moved to Edgemont to focus on its top tier schools and a village government would divert energy from that paramount concern.

Getting Ready for the January 13, 2016 Meeting at Town Hall

This coming Wednesday will begin the public process under New York State's Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQR) with respect to The Jefferson. The Town Board has determined that it is what is known as the "lead agency" for the project. The lead agency is responsible for making key SEQR determinations during the review process.

Technically Wednesday night is the start of what is known as "scoping the DEIS."

Scoping is a process that develops a written document ("scope") which outlines the topics and analyses of potential environmental impacts of an action that will be addressed in a draft environmental impact statement (DEIS, or draft EIS). The purpose of scoping is to narrow issues and ensure that the draft EIS will be a concise, accurate and complete document that is adequate for public review. The scoping process is intended to:

· ensure public participation in the EIS development process;

· allow open discussion of issues of public concern; and

· permit inclusion of relevant, substantive public issues in the final written scope.

If you look at the Town's website (under forms, and in the section for the Department of Community Development and Conservation), you will find the proposed scoping document prepared by JPI, the developer of The Jefferson.


In contrast to that rather standard list of items set forth in their scoping document, linked below is a comprehensive letter (the Letter") The Village of Ardsley sent to the Mayor of Dobbs Ferry when that village was preparing the scoping document for Rivertowns Square. While some of the issues are specific to Rivertowns Square, many of the issues and impacts are similar as the location is nearly the same.


http://www.ardsleyvillage.com/sites/ardsleyny/files/file/file/vn_rivertownssquarelettertomayorconnett.pdf


Please take the time to review the Letter to understand what should go into a detailed scoping document that will insure this project is properly and completely evaluated by the lead agency, The Town Board of Greenburgh consisting of Town Supervisor Paul Feiner and council members Diana Juettner, Kevin Morgan, Ken Jones and Francis Sheehan.


It is anticipated that The Village of Ardsley will submit a document such as this from its consultants. The Town Board itself has also hired top flight consultants to assist it in the SEQR process.

Understandably emotions will be running high, but the best course of action is to stick to the issues you want studied and take the high road. You are there to help the Town Board. They already know there is widespread opposition to The Jefferson.

And we want to thank JPI for bringing the Rivertowns and School District community together in a manner rarely seen.

Greenburgh 101 - Part 2 - Fire Protection

If you live in one of the incorporated villages in the Town of Greenburgh and own your residence, your property tax bill will have a relatively small charge of several hundred dollars due the Town of Greenburgh (note, the Town of Greenburgh acts as a collection agency for School and County Taxes which are a separate charge). This Town Tax  portion paid by a villager goes to what is called the "A" budget of the Town of Greenburgh which provides a number of small but important services to all residents of the Town of Greenburgh  (i.e., those living in both unincorporated and incorporated areas of the Town) such as road striping, dog licensing, advanced life support, townwide property reassessment (those folks who visited your home a few months back looking for extra bedrooms and asking about kitchen renovations) and the salaries and benefits of the Greenburgh Town Board members (the Town Supervisor and four council members).

The A budget is a small budget compared to the much larger "B" budget which covers all the services for the unincorporated areas of the Town.

Of course, village taxpayers get their own "B" budget tax bill equivalent from their own local village government to support refuse collection, road repairs and maintenance, recreation, debt service and most significantly police services which is the largest budget item in most village budgets.

So what about fire protection services - who pays for those?  Unlike the unincorporated areas which are primarily covered chiefly by paid professional unionized firefighters over three fire districts - the oldest being Greenville (which generally covers Edgemont from its firehouse on Central Avenue near the Candlelight Restaurant), Hartsdale (which has locations on Central Avenue (next to Fountain Diner) and West Hartsdale Avenue) and Fairview (which also has two firehouses with one on Dobbs Ferry Road near Elmwood Golf Club). All combined, the paid (or taxable fire districts) cover approximately 73% of unincorporated Greenburgh.  Attempts at consolidating the three districts have been very polarizing over issues of local control, unequal tax rates and varying degrees debt service in each district, overtime, and levels of staffing and the fear of job loss.

If you live in an area covered by one of these paid professional firehouses, you have a separate charge of thousands of dollars for fire protection on your tax bill. However, not all unincorporated Greenburgh residents are served by these three fire engine companies.  Instead, there are seven areas of unincorporated Greenburgh directly served by fire protection districts under contract between the Town of Greenburgh and in the case of  The Jefferson site, which is in the Chauncey Fire Protection District which is protected by the all-volunteer Ardsley Engine Company headquartered on Ashford Avenue in the Village of Ardsley. Boulder Ridge is another unincorporated area served by the Ardsley Fire Engine Company under a contract with the Town (Boulder Ridge is in the South Ardsley Fire Protection District.

So we are left with this pressing issue - will we have enough volunteers to protect Ardsley or those in its fire protection zones after The Jefferson is built (on top of the Waterwheel development among the other developments in the Village)?  Will the costly paid fire districts themselves have to expand to accomodate the new developments in this corridor of Greenburgh that will be ripe for more intensive development after The Lofts, Rivertowns Square and The Jefferson are built?  Will a new firehouse have to be built to cover these areas? These issues must laid our in detail in the scoping document and the subsequest Draft Environmental Impact Statement.

Finally, here is a report from the 2013 Rivertowns Patch regarding the approval of Rivertowns Square in Dobbs Ferry:

Dobbs Ferry Fire Department Chief Neil Sweeting said he was concerned about the number of calls the development would create for the all-volunteer group.
"We feel and fear that we are going to struggle to provide the service that this complex is going to demand," he said. "Please consider that when you make a vote."
[Mayor] Connett, however, said, "I think our department can handle it."

"I Think" - cold comfort. 

Greenburgh 101 - a short primer part 1

Where do you live? In lower Westchester its not always easy to know.

You may live in the Ardsley School District but also in the Village of Hastings on Hudson as well as in the Town of Greenburgh but in the Chauncey Fire Protection District  and have a Scarsdale post office address.

Essentially the Town of Greenburgh (previously spelled without the "h") has two parts - the unincorporated areas which consists of approximately 19 different neighborhoods such as Fairview (near Town Hall) , Fulton Park (near the County Center), Edgemont (southeast of Ardsley but adjacent to the Ardsley School District's borders), Boulder Ridge, and Hartlsey (near the Ardsley High School but having a Hartsdale postal address but in the Ardsley School District) and the incorporated areas of the Town which consist of the six incorporated villages of Ardsley, Dobbs Ferry, Irvington, Hastings on Hudson, Tarrytown and Elmsford.

Why the overlap between villages and school districts? The short answer is the borders of the various school districts were created roughly 200 years ago while the villages carved themselves out of the Town of Greenburgh in the late 19th century with the last village being created in 1910 (Elmsford). Changing school borders is a cumbersome and difficult process. The same is true for creating new villages. Moreover, the trend is toward municipal consolidation and not the creation of more taxing authorities.

Some communities in Westchester have village/town/school district borders that are co-terminous. but thats rare. Scarsdale, for example, has a portion of Mamaroneck in its school district.  Having the same borders would be ideal for Ardsleyans so its residents could control the zoning and planning that takes place in the school district in a uniform manner.  But Westchester is tribal and the residents of Dobbs Ferry (10% in the Ardsley School District) are not leaving Dobbs Ferry and joining a greater Ardsley. The same is true for Hartsley residents who can use the Town Pool ( 20 percent located in the Village of Ardsley!) as they are residents of unincorporated Greenburgh which is closed for the most part to residents who live in the incorporated villages as well as take advantage of parking at the Hartsdale train station at the lots controlled by the Hartsdale Parking District. Hartsdale, by the way, is considered a hamlet - a holdover term from our British colonial heritage.

With The Jefferson, the site of the proposed development is in unincorporated Greenburgh. This means land use approvals are governed by the Town Board of Greenburgh which has five members elected by voters who live in both the incorporated and unincorporated areas of Greenburgh. Normally land use in Greenburgh is handled by its own zoning and planning boards but as the site is more than five acres, the Town Board acts as the ultimate zoning board as to whether the developer's plan will be approved.

In contrast to The Jefferson, the Lofts at Saw Mill were approved by the Village of Hastings on Hudson as its located in that Village, the Rivertowns Square was approved by Dobbs Ferry for the same reason  and the Waterwheel was approved  by Ardsley (however its mostly affordable and workforce housing because of a federal court order imposed on Westchester County which was binding on Ardsley requiring the creation of such housing in areas where it was lacking.

It should be noted that almost all local governments now require any development to have at least 10% of its units set aside for affordable housing. In fact, the concept of affordable housing was pioneered in Greenburgh (starting in Tarrytown in 1947) to address the needs of returning veterans.

In our next post we will address the members of the Town Board of Greenburgh who will be making the final decision whether to approve The Jefferson in the run up to Wednesday night's scoping session meeting.

Greenburgh Civlc Groups Face Illegal Fees for Appealing

This is a long post but an important one. We must protect the rights of our neighbors in Edgemont who are fighting to protect those of us in the Ardsley School District.  Please oppose what the Town Board is planning on Wednesday night. The rights you save may be your own. 

GREENBURGH BOARD SHOWS NO SIGN OF BACKING DOWN FROM ATTACK ON CIVIC GROUPS SEEKING TO UPHOLD TOWN’S ZONING CODE

The Town Board thus far shows no sign of backing down from a proposal comdemned by civic leaders as unlawful to charge civic associations retroactively for seeking to uphold the Town’s zoning code by demanding that the Edgemont Community Council pay another $400 on top of a $500 fee that unincorporated area civic leaders say the ECC was improperly charged in the first place.

A proposal to impose these fees, first introduced last month, but twice taken off the agenda by Town Supervisor Paul Feiner after civic leaders protested that the proposal was malicious, spiteful and, because it was being proposed retroactively – without prior notice – unlawful, is back on the town board agenda for Wednesday night’s meeting, without a single word having been changed from when Mr. Feiner took it off the agenda two weeks ago.

Civic leaders say town leaders want to use the measure to punish civic groups like the ECC and the Council of Greenburgh Civic Associations for taking an active interest in the Town’s handling of important land use projects that town officials want to approve  — even though such projects might not be in compliance with the Town’s zoning laws, and such noncompliance could lead to huge costs to taxpayers down the road.

They say that even though town officials have been presented with legal authority showing the Town’s retroactive fee proposal violates case law and an opinion of the State Comptroller, neither Mr. Feiner nor any other member of the town board has bothered to discuss the measure publicly.

Nor has Mr. Feiner or any other member of the town board even bothered reaching out to civic leaders to discuss the matter.

Instead, town officials are apparently hoping that the public Wednesday night will be distracted by another controversial land use matter – one that this time town officials actually oppose — thereby allowing the punitive fee measure to be approved.

Thus, town officials expect a capacity crowd of residents Wednesday to protest a proposal to build 272 rental apartment on the former Akzo Nobel site on Lawrence Street off Saw Mill River Road in the unincorporated area of Ardsley.

By contrast, the land use proposal that prompted town officials to propose levying huge fees on civic groups that seek to uphold the Town’s zoning code is an 80-bed assisted living facility proposed for the Sprainbrook Nursery property.  While town officials have said they intend to keep an “open mind” on whether to approve the project, they’ve made no secret of their desire to give approval because of the tax revenues they think the project will generate.

Most of the Sprainbrook site is in the Edgemont School District, but some of it is also in the Ardsley School District, and the homeowners on Deer Hill Lane whose properties abut the site all live in the Ardsley district.

Civic leaders say the building inspector misinterpreted the Town’s zoning code when he held last summer that the assisted living facility does not need zoning variances, even though the site does not meet the minimum required land of four acres and is nearly a mile from the nearest state or county right-of-way. The zoning law requires that, for easy access by emergency medical vehicles, the site must be within 200 feet of a state of county right of way.

Unlike the assisted living project, town officials have publicly proclaimed their opposition to the Akso Nobel multifamily housing project.  For that reason, civic leaders expect town officials to pander to the crowd Wednesday night, as they try to dream up new and inventive ways to try to block the housing project, make it as expensive as possible for the developer to build, and impose costly delays.

At the same time, civic leaders say they fear that once the public hearing on the housing project is over, and the Ardsley residents opposed to it leave the room, town officials will use Wednesday night’s meeting to quietly exact retribution against civic groups seeking to enforce the Town’s zoning law in connection with the assisted living project.

Because the assisted living facility is expected to have adverse impacts not just in Edgemont, but also in the unincorporated area of Ardsley, and because Town officials, starting with Mr. Feiner have thus far thumbed their noses at the Town’s civic groups, civic leaders are considering distributing flyers to everyone attending Wednesday night’s hearing so that they will know first hand that town officials are planning that night to punish civic groups that, in the interest of enforcing the Town’s zoning laws, may from time to time oppose land use projects that Town officials want to see built.

They will explain to those attending Wednesday that civic associations who seek to enforce the Town’s zoning laws are volunteers with no financial stake in the proposals under consideration, that for that reason, the Town has for decades exempted civic associations from having to pay fees when they seek to challenge the building inspector’s interpretation of the zoning laws, that the Town last summer refused to allow a challenge to be filed by the ECC and the CGCA unless a $500 fee was paid, that town leaders, when confronted with the Town’s own regulations which said no fees were to be paid, initially promised to refund the money, and then, four months later, proposed to levy charges retroactively to December 23, 2008.

The flyers will explain to those expected to attend the hearing Wednesday night that most civic associations in unincorporated Greenburgh do not have the funds to launch these challenges, and that by levying these new fees, and doing so retroactively to boot, town officials are seeking to silence, deliberately, the one independent voice in Greenburgh that looks out not for the developers, but for the interests of all taxpayers.

“Town officials want to charge civic groups seeking to uphold the Town’s zoning law a fee of $6 per page of hearing transcript they haven’t even asked for, when in the past, if civic leaders want to see a copy, the Town would charge them only 25 cents per page,” said ECC president Bob Bernstein.

“This is just another case of a spiteful town government attempting to retaliate against and intimidate citizens of this Town who are simply asking as volunteers that the Town comply with its own laws. Law abiding residents of Greenburgh should be appalled by such bullying behavior,” he added.

Town officials meanwhile say they are merely trying to protect Greenburgh taxpayers from having to foot the costs of an appeal which might cost the Town several hundred dollars in out-of-pocket costs.

To place the cost in perspective, the Town has an annual budget of nearly $80 million; the building department alone expects to generate at least $5 million in revenue for 2016, and Edgemont taxpayers already pay the Town nearly $14 million annually in property taxes.

The fees the Town proposes to charge civic groups, both retroactively and prospectively, exceed what it costs to file an Article 78 proceeding in New York State Supreme Court.

The ECC and CGCA’s appeal was to the Zoning Board of Appeals, which is required by law to review appeals of interpretations of the zoning law by the building inspector. But the town attorney’s office instructed the secretary to the Zoning Board that no appeal could be filed by the civic associations without first paying a $500 fee.

Since 1976, the Town’s Zoning Board of Appeals, which hears all such challenges, has expressly exempted civic associations appealing building inspector rulings from having to pay any such fees.

The rule states, “No fee shall be required for any application or appeal made by a bona fide civic association of the Town or by any officer, department, board or bureau of the Town.”

The fee proposal on Wednesday’s agenda tries to deal with criticism that retroactive application of the proposal was unlawful by pointing out that there had been “at least” one prior instance since December 23, 2008 when a civic association was charged filing fees for having appealed a building inspector’s interpretation of the zoning law.

But at the December 16 meeting, when the revised measure was first proposed, Mr. Bernstein said that the one prior instance where a civic association was charged the fee was not a precedent that would ever justify retroactive application of an otherwise unlawful fee.

To the contrary, he said the fee in that case was imposed in order to retaliate against the Fulton Park Civic Association, which was appealing from the building inspector’s interpretation of the zoning code with respect to an application to build a housing project in their neighborhood that town officials wanted built.

“Not only did the Town impose an unlawful fee,” Mr. Bernstein said, “But the building inspector went after the president of the Fulton Park Civic Association personally by sending a code enforcement officer to her home for the purpose of revoking her certificate of occupancy. That’s the kind of despicable behavior one expects from playground bullies, not local public officials,” he added.

Mr. Bernstein said a building permit had been issued several years before for a renovation on the civic leader’s home, but that the Town’s building department staff had failed to conduct the required inspection after the renovation had been completed, and everyone forgot about it – that is, until the civic leader filed an appeal of the building inspector’s interpretation of the building code.

Mr. Bernstein said he represented the civic leader in court and succeeded in getting the charges against her resolved, but believed the situation was a clear case of over-eager retaliation by town officials who “openly mocked” the civic leader when she entered Town Hall after she filed the appeal.  He called it “a sad chapter in the Town’s history” and “certainly not one town officials today would ever want to cite to justify any action on their part.”

Mr. Feiner apparently agreed. Immediately after Mr. Bernstein spoke, Mr. Feiner announced he was pulling the matter off the Town’s December 16 agenda.

But town officials were not done.

Two weeks later, on December 30, 2015, Mr. Bernstein was notified in writing that the Town was now demanding payment of an additional $400 to cover the costs of the Town’s legal notice and for what it says is one half the cost of the Town’s typewritten transcript of the public hearing.

Even though the ECC has not asked for a copy, the Town is charging the ECC a total of $6 per page for each page of hearing transcript.

Under the prior rules, if the ECC had wanted to see a written transcript, it would have had to file a Freedom of Information Law request and pay the Town the required fee of 25 cents per page.

But Mr. Bernstein said if the Town proceeds to apply its new rules retroactively, the Town will once again be acting unlawfully.

“It used to be said that Mr. Feiner didn’t care if he was accused of acting unlawfully, that he actually taunted his opponents and told them to “sue him” if they didn’t like what he was doing, and many of them have,” Mr. Bernstein said.

“But after Fortress Bible and a string of other losses in one court after another, I believe Mr. Feiner and other town officials should sincerely want to avoid needless legal strife and try instead to work constructively with the Town’s civic leaders who, after all, are just volunteers looking for the Town to do the right thing,” he added.

“Maybe, instead of starting off 2016 on such a sour note, the Town will reconsider and work with us, instead of against us. I certainly hope so.”

“In the meantime, residents of the Ardsley School District attending Wednesday night’s hearing should be aware of what their town officials are doing, because any attempt to extinguish the rights of civic groups in unincorporated Greenburgh will extinguish their rights too,” Mr. Bernstein said.

The Jefferson and Greenburgh Police Staffing Levels - Cause for concern?

We have commented earlier on the cavalier approach JPI is taking regarding local public safety issues.

According to the Greenburgh Comprehensive Plan (in draft but set for approval in 2016), as of 2010 the population of unincorporated Greenburgh is roughly 43,000 people. In the past five years there have been numerous new developments throughout the Town (which  is the area outside the incorporated villages of Ardsley, Hastings, Dobbs Ferry, Irvington, Elmsford and Tarrytown)  most likely pushing the population to 45,000 or more.

Despite this, since 2008, the Greenburgh police staffing level has remained at 116.

This a ratio of 2.7 officers per 1000 persons.

The Village of Ardsley has a population of roughly 4500 with 19 police officers - a ratio of 4.2 officers per 1000 persons.

This is why, among other things, Ardsley is a very safe community and police response times are extremely fast.

The ratio in Yonkers (population 200,000) is 3.6 officers per 1000 persons.

The ratio in White Plains - which is probably the closest to Greenburgh in terms of socio-economic makeup - is 3.34 (population 58,000).

Unlike Greenburgh, Ardsley has a separate ambulance service - ASVAC.

Greenburgh relies on its police for ambulance, EMT and paramedic services.

While crime has decreased everywhere, with an aging population in our area, increased needs for public safety (remember Sandy?) and the proposed addition of a number of assisted living facilities in the Town of Greenburgh, coupled with more developments like the Preserve,  the proposed Dromore Road (both in Greenburgh)  and the proposed Jefferson (also in Greenburgh), can staffing levels remain the same since 2008?

And if not, any tax benefit the developers are promising from The Jefferson will be eaten up quickly by the need to add additional police, police equipment and support staff.

This vital question (and the impact on police services in the adjacent Rivertowns)  must be addressed by the Town Board when determining what items must be studied in the draft environmental impact statement.  The time to do this at the upcoming scoping session this Wednesday night, January 13, 2016 at Greenburgh Town Hall which begins at 7:30 pm.

This is also the time to put your thinking caps on and tell the Town Board what socio- economic  and environmental impacts need to be studied beyond traffic, schools and life safety issues this mega-development will create. Again, the time to tell the Town Board whether you favor or disfavor this project will come later.

Now is the time to help the Town Board prepare a comprehensive list of impacts to be studied regarding the Jefferson including whether there is any compelling need for it.

Don't Believe The Hype

All of The Jefferson’s public relations emphasize the “proximity” of the site to highways and parkways like Interstate 87 and the Saw Mill River Parkway. There is a reason for this. JPI is trying to sell the idea of “proximity” and avoiding the word “density.” Densification of land is, of course, what multi-family rental apartment buildings like The Jefferson (where the units themselves are quite small) are about. There is nothing wrong with this concept if it is done in the right place and in the right way. Here it is being in a way that guarantees more noise and more congestion.

Although current land use planning seeks to emphasize mixed uses of land with varying types of housing choices, what is being proposed  here is a single use project of vertical sprawl in an area where the infrastructure is entirely inadequate and soon to be overwhelmed by Rivertowns Square and The Lofts.

The developer is also saying its project can be considered “bicycle oriented” because it will be near the South County Trail. Again- there is the marketing  - proximity to a bike trail.

But when we look at the details of their bike to work hoopla (JPI apparently never reading the signs on the South County Trial that it closes at dusk) or that riders must wear helmets (see the stock footage on their website showing two Jeffersonistas on their bikes without helmets below)  we see that JPI is  making no material investment in the bike trail it seeks to exploit. 

If JPI were truly interested in helping our community they would have worked closely with various local organizations like the Saw Mill River Coalition or Friends of the Westchester County Parks to determine and implement the improvements needed to turn the neglected and lackluster South County Trail into a great public facility.  They might have even contributed funds to jumpstart the County's stalled plan to join the South County Trail with the North County Trail (there is a half mile gap in Elmsford where the trail meets Route 119 near Pete's Tavern).  

Instead, they focussed their efforts on creating slick traffic videos and glossy websites that promote “proximity.”