WHITE PLAINS CITIZENETREPORTER SETS RECORD VISITS FOR YEAR 7,017,658 VISITS! 2,098,003 VISITORS MADE 6 VISITS A DAY EVERY DAY. 63,330 UNIQUE VISITORS MADE 133,730 VISITS IN DECEMBER. WPCNR AVERAGED 17,284 VISITORS A WEEK, VISITING 31,270 TIMES.

Hits: 782

WPCNR POLICE GAZETTE. From the White Plains Department of Public Safety. March 31, 2022:

Several distraction type larcenies have recently been reported in neighboring jurisdictions along Central Avenue. Perpetrators are targeting female motorists. Acting as “good Samaritans” they are alerting victims to possible problems with their cars such as a missing lug nut or low tire pressure. As they “assist” the victim with the issue that they themselves created, accomplices are removing valuables from the interior of the car. If you are approached by anyone regarding the safety of your vehicle, mind this information, safeguard your valuables and notify police if you feel there is something amiss.

Hits: 549

The White Plains Public Library is looking for Program Facilitators to develop and lead interactive STEAM/maker projects for teenagers in the White Plains area. Programs will be held inside the Library or outside on the Library Plaza, Monday – Thursdays, from 1:00-4:00 pm, throughout July and August.

Each facilitator will plan and develop four projects (one each day Monday-Thursday) focusing on STEAM skills for students in grades 6-10. We are open to all ideas:  Are you an artist and wish to share your talents? Do you have DIY skills and work on maker projects?  Perhaps you have knowledge of environmentally friendly practices that could be turned into learning experiences?  Are you an engineering student that can help educate students and bring engineering concepts to life?  These are just some examples of the kinds of facilitators we are looking for.

These projects can be simple or complex. They can also be in the form of a challenge. Projects can be built by hand or completed on computers. If hired, you will work with Library staff to bring the projects to life.  Be prepared to discuss project ideas, as well as supplies or materials needed to make your project(s) happen during the interview process. (Note: If any software applications are being used they should be free or open source.) You can apply to teach more than one program. Salary will be based on experience.

Application Submission

Please email your resume and program idea(s) to 

Erik Carlson, ecarlson@whiteplainsny.gov

Hits: 558

WPCNR REALTY REALITY. From the Building & Realty Institute (Edited). March 29, 2022:

A privately commissioned study has found that there isn’t any data from recent large
multifamily developments in suburban Westchester communities to
substantiate the fears of a surge in student enrollment expressed by
local opponents of development.

The study maintains not only have these projects
been harmless to the districts, they have also brought
financial surpluses which have been to the benefit of
existing students and existing residents.

The Welcome Home Westchester campaign retained the firm
4ward Planning Inc. to conduct an analysis of what happened within
Westchester County suburban school districts both in terms of
enrollments and in terms of school taxes and school budgets when
large multifamily developments opened. The results were released today.

The study looked at multifamily developments of 100
units or more that were built in Westchester County towns and
villages within the past ten years.

Editor’s Note:

The study does not analyze multi-family projects in Westchester cities Yonkers, New Rochelle, Mount Vernon, White Plains and Peekskill where apartments are routinely over 100 units, according to the Executive Summary of the report.

Multi-Family Housing Development Impacts in Westchester County
Part One: School District Enrollment is available at
welcomehomewestchester.org

Speakers at Tuesday’s press conference included Timothy Foley of
the Building and Realty Institute (BRI), Todd J. Poole of 4Ward
Planning, and Anahaita Kotval of Lifting up Westchester.

“For most parents, there’s no more important investment than their
child’s education, and it’s no wonder that so often this becomes the
lens through which residents look at the question of housing needs
in their community. But as with so many other ghost stories and
fearful predictions about what would happen to a community
should they permit building the housing we need in Westchester,
there’s very little true math behind the prediction.

“Even worse,
there’s almost never an attempt by neighborhood defenders to run
an after-action analysis to learn which public hearing predictions
were true and which were false,” Timothy Foley, CEO of the
Building and Realty Institute (BRI) said.

“As every good math teacher will tell you, sometimes you have to
show your work to get the right answer. With the release of this
after-action analysis by 4Ward Planning, Inc., showing not what
might happen but what DID happen when multifamily housing was
built in our communities, we hope to start a new conversation
about how building the housing we need doesn’t just avoid harm to
school districts but provides a real financial boost to the benefit of
students, residents, and taxpayers.”

Key findings from the report include:

● These recent housing developments did not have a major
impact on school enrollment.
● In none of the multifamily residential projects with at least
100 units examined did children associated with the
project and enrolled in the local school district equal or
exceed one percent of the school’s total enrollment.
● In all cases, the projects generated a net positive financial
benefit to the school taxes, even after taking into account
the costs of educating enrolled school children living in
the multifamily housing.

“Housing and economic development are inextricably linked; and
where quality housing becomes challenging to find, local
employers will be challenged to retain and recruit talented workers.

Our study demonstrates that newly developed (and much needed)
multi-family rental housing in suburban areas of Westchester
County offers net positive fiscal benefits to school districts without
straining enrollment capacities,” Todd J. Poole of 4Ward Planning
said.
“There have been a number of studies across the country
demonstrating that multifamily housing developments do NOT
create financial or capacity burdens on local school systems.
However, the BRI/Welcome Home Westchester study is particularly
meaningful as it focused specifically on the effects of recent
multifamily developments in Westchester – and confirmed that
there has been no negative impact on our schools from such
developments. As a result, one of the key concerns raised by those
opposed to multifamily housing has been conclusively addressed,”
Anahaita Kotval of Lifting Up Westchester said.

Hits: 283

WPCNR TECH TACTICAL. From the Malwarebytes Newsletter. March 28, 2022:

On Monday, the White House told US business leaders to toughen up their cybersecurity defenses against a potential cyberattack from Russia.

“The Biden-Harris Administration has warned repeatedly about the potential for Russia to engage in malicious cyber activity against the United States in response to the unprecedented economic sanctions we have imposed.  There is now evolving intelligence that Russia may be exploring options for potential cyberattacks.”

Since Russian forces begun their attack against Ukraine on February 24, the US government and cybersecurity community have raised the possibility of a cyber arms conflict. The day Russian troops set foot in Ukraine, the Administration released a statement saying the US is prepared to respond to Russian cyberattacks if it comes to that.

“If Russia pursues cyberattacks against our companies, our critical infrastructure, we are prepared to respond. For months, we’ve been working closely with the private sector to harden their cyberdefenses [and to] sharpen our ability to respond [to] the Russian cyberattacks as well.”

In a business advisory, the FBI warned that US critical infrastructures, particularly entities within the financial, water, and energy sectors, are likely to be targeted. In fact, the FBI has already seen some abnormal “network scanning activity” from multiple IP addresses based in Russia, with an early stage of reconnaissance, a means to find vulnerabilities for potential future intrusions.

The FBI also revealed the at least five energy companies and at least 18 other US companies in different sectors (information technology, financial service, defense industrial base) have been subjected to these scanning activities.

With all this in mind, what should organizations be doing? Inspired by the Shields Up initiative, a campaign set up by the US Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), here’s a list of things that business leaders can do to prepare.

• Update your systems. Your IT teams should prioritize patching vulnerable software that is currently being exploited.
• Change passwords across your networks. This is to ensure that any previously stolen or leaked credentials will no longer work when when used to access certain resources within your business network.
• Install good security software and make sure you keep it up to date.
• Create multiple backups of your data. It’s the key to bouncing back from a ransomware attack as quickly as possible, especially when done right—something one school district found out the hard way—and you want to avoid paying cybercriminals. And while we’re on the subject of backups, test your backup procedures, too.
• Require the use of multi-factor authentication (MFA) wherever you can.
• Educate your employees. Ensure that they know common threat tactics, such as social engineering ploys, that may be used against them. Lower your company’s threshold of reporting incidents, so if an employee notices that their computer or phone is starting to show unusual behavior, such as crashing or suddenly running slowly, they should report it.
• Keep an open line to your local FBI or CISA Regional Office. CISA has opened 24/7 reporting avenues via report@cisa.org and (888)282-0870 and encourages business organizations to report cyber incidents they may encounter.

You can also read about four key cybersecurity practices businesses can adopt when there’s a threat of “cyberwar”.

The Administration has made clear that the US government will do what it can to protect US businesses and critical infrastructure. But it also said they can’t defend without the help of the private sector, which owns and operates most of the big businesses and infrastructures the country relies on.

In the statement he made on Monday, Biden concluded:

“You have the power, the capacity, and the responsibility to strengthen the cybersecurity and resilience of the critical services and technologies on which Americans rely. We need everyone to do their part to meet one of the defining threats of our time—your vigilance and urgency today can prevent or mitigate attacks tomorrow.”

Hits: 430

861 NEW CASES LAST WEEK. LOW TEST QUANTITIES MEAN MORE CASES MAY BE OUT THERE.

WPCNR CORONA VIRUS MONITOR. From the NYS COVID TRACKER. Observation by John F. Bailey. March 27, 2022:

Covid cases in Westchester County declined 3% from the week before over the last 7 days of March, ending the week with 861 persons tested positive for covid, compared to 890 last week, 582 three weeks ago and 754 four weeks ago. 

The 890 two weeks ago March 13 to 19 have spread the disease at a spread rate of  each person infected with covid 14 days ago spreading it to 1 other person, figured by dividing 861 through last week divided by 890, producing a 0.97 Spread rate 1:1.

In the middle of last week WPCNR calculated with 60, 66, 138, and 151 new covid cases through the first four days of the week totaling 415 cases or 104 new cases a day, if infections continued at 104 new cases a day the last three days of the week, the week would conclude with 727 cases. Westchester County finished the week with 169 new positives Thursday, 162 Friday and down to 115 Saturday, 446 more or 111 cases a day which produced  a total of 861 new cases for the week.

 Now, it is important to realize that not all positives infect on schedule within  a week some take longer, but the 1 to 1 ratio means  Covid did not go down dramatically, nor rise .  The worry that lurks on my part is if the county continues this trend of within 150 cases below 1,000, and socialization continues the way it is going, the disease is going to grow and spread again. But now it is definitely in a holding pattern.

Westchester is the leader in the Mid-Hudson Region of 7 counties with 123 infections a day, 861 for the week a 2-1/2 % infection rate of all tested. Orange County is averaging 40 a day, 284 for the week. Rockland County averaged 31 a day, 247 for the week. Ulster County  averaged 26 a day, 180 for the week. Dutchess County  had 22 new covid infections daily, 149 for the week. Sullivan , 35 new cases for the week; Putnam County had 69 new covid cases for the week.

The Mid Hudson Region and Nassau and Suffolk Counties had 615 cases of Covid while New York City (all 5 boroughs) reported 1,024. The 9 surrounding counties are trailing New York City in new cases by a 2 to 1 margin.

This brings up another worry on my part that not enough people are being tested.

In what is a big number of new positives for a week when the number tests actually administered averaged 4,975 per day each day March 20 to 26. The total tests for last week was 34,831, and 861 were positives for an infection rate of 2%.

 If you tested 10,000 you might find 1,722 infections (2%).  Now if you are seeing 2 % infections on very low (below 5,000 tests), this means higher levels of tests could reveal double the number of infections.

The optimistic way of interpreting these low testing quantities if people are not getting sick, not feeling sick and not getting tested so they do not go and get tested.

However mandatory testing has declined. The only place I am checked for symptoms is at my health care provider.  Masks are off in restaurants and bars. The count  of those vaccinated in the county is only 90% with at least one covid shot. Many are not getting their boosters as County Executive George Latimer said last week.

My  pessimistic view is people may if they have sniffles, a slight fever, or under the weather do not want to get tested and be positive so they do not get tested. If you feel sick with fever or lose ability to taste or smell, or even a slight cold, you should test. Why?

You do not want to be a carrier of mild covid and give it to someone else.  Others may believe they have covid but do not want to test because they do not want to quarantine.

Schools must test their students as much as possible despite the inconvenience because the infections in schools now that masks are not mandated any more by the state is a worry.

The highest number of positives last week in Westchester ended Saturday was 169 on Thursday when the second highest number of persons was tested, 6,351, a 2.7% infection rate. The highest number of tests were administered on Wednesday, the day before when 151 were found to test positive for covid, 2.2% infection rate.

This needs me, a dumb reporter to think that just maybe there are a lot more positives out there based on the infection rates and the 1 to 1 Spread rate of new infections two weeks ago keep covid cases out there and mingling.

HuffPost UK yesterday had an article cautioning that thinking the pandemic is over is not wise :

“Despite mandatory self-isolation, testing rules and face mask mandates being lifted in England in recent weeks, the pandemic still rages on.

In the past seven days, there have been more than 600,000 positive Covid cases across the UK, many among people in their 30s, with the highest rates seen among 0-18-year-olds.”

“If ‘post-pandemic’ means long Covid falling off the radar then it is not helpful, High community infection rates, which we still have, can still result in a massive burden of long Covid. That is real life and sometimes [a] devastating change to many people.”

Dr Julian Tang, a clinical virologist at the University of Leicester  said

“The idea of a pandemic being over in any one country is fickle. You could declare the pandemic over in your own country / population / region until a returning traveller or foreign tourist introduces a new variant that causes surges in new Covid-19 cases, bypassing any previous immunity, much like what Omicron is doing now across multiple well-vaccinated populations, globally. Just forget about using this term,” says Dr Tang, “Just focus on what needs to be done locally to protect people from getting severely ill – even if we cannot entirely stop them from getting infected.

“We should learn to live with Covid-19 on a daily basis instead of getting ahead of ourselves, which, as we have seen with this virus over the past two years, rarely helps.”