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.

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ON

THE DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY

THE FORUM ANALYSIS

CON ED’S REVENGE — A DRACONIAN DELIVERY CHARGE HIKE AND OUR REPRESENTATIVES SAY NOTHING NOTHING NOTHING NOTHING.

ASHLY BROWN REPORTS ON THE JOB FAIR

SLOW BREAKING NEWS: ACTIVITY ON ONE WHITE PLAINS HOLE IN THE GROUND!

AND MORE

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WPCNR THE POWER STORY. From the New York State Public Service Commission. June 19, 2019:

There will be two sets of Public Service Commission Hearings in Proposed Edison Delivery Charges for Natural Gas and Electricity Delivery on June 25 in Yonkers at the Public Library and June 26 in New York City, the Public Service Commission announced Monday.

The new Con Edison Rates are proposed to take effect January 1, 2020. Consumers should note the rate for actual supply of natural gas and electricity depends on the going rate and demand on the plants supplying the gas and electricity.

The proposed rates, according to Con Ed are as follows:

The Hearings are

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WPCNR COUNTY CLARION-LEDGER. June 17, 2019 From the Service Employees International Union 32BJ:

On Monday afternoon at 3:30, members of the Westchester Board of Legislators will join workers and union leaders to announce proposed changes that would close loopholes in the county’s Displaced Service Employees Protection Law.

Legislator Kitley Covill, one of the primary  co-sponsors of the changes, said:

“The law has worked for the most part to protect workers and give them an avenue for redress when new employers fail to retain them, or give them the information that the law requires.  However, loopholes in the law also have allowed projects to be divided so as to sidestep requirements under the current law.  These changes we’re proposing will address that by lowering the threshold for covered contractors from 15 to 5 employees, and add other new protections to help Westchester’s working families.”

First passed in 2013, the law was intended to correct a jarring inequity for workers who clean, secure and maintain office towers, malls and other commercial buildings. As employees of cleaning contractors, these workers are subject to sudden job loss when a property owner replaces one contractor with another. The law helps mitigate that unexpected loss by providing a temporary, 60-day period of job protection. The original law closely mirrored similar laws in New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Montgomery County, Maryland.

The proposed changes would address problems of transparency and fairness, and close loopholes that allow some employers to skirt the law. (For example, the current law states that contractors must employ at least 15 service workers to qualify for coverage – a number often far below the number of workers needed to clean a medium-sized office building, thereby allowing some employers to avoid the law.

“The county’s displaced worker law created an important cushion so that janitors, security officers and others who live on modest paychecks wouldn’t suddenly find themselves unemployed,” said Lenore Friedlaender, Assistant to President of 32BJ SEIU and union leader in the Hudson Valley.

“This important fix to the law would stop some employers from trying to evade their responsibility (to current workers) by creating tiny companies that can skirt under the (15 employee) threshold, and it would provide the clarity needed for good faith communication between the employees and employers. We are grateful that a bipartisan group of legislators is tackling this issue on the heels of our Justice for Janitor’s Day celebration in the Hudson Valley. We held that celebration in front of 1 & 3 Barker Street, a building where five longtime, hardworking women suddenly lost their jobs when low-wage Zobber Janitorial came into the building last fall.”

“I lost my job from one day to the next,”

Said Gabriela Silva, a former cleaner at 1 & 3 Barker Street. “I have rent to pay, children to support, and I depended on my paycheck. It was a shock to my family and we are still struggling.”

“This is not a Republican or Democratic issue; it’s an issue about protecting our communities,” Westchester County Legislator David Tubiolo said at the rally.  

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PCNR THE SUNDAY  BAILEY. By John F. Bailey. Republished from The CitizeNetReporter of June 17, 2007:

My father gave me four pieces of advice in life: Always drive an air-conditioned car. Always centrally air-condition your home. Stay out of court.

And don’t sit in traffic.

Always take the service road on the Long Island Expressway. (He would have loved a Garmin.)

In retrospect, his advice has served me well.  I am always comfortable. I sit out traffic delays in comfort. I have not made lawyers rich.

Charles F. Bailey

My Dad

Pleasantville, NY

1918-1986

He was not an emotional man. He was a banker and always wore suits to work. I have fond memories of going to meet him when he got off the train in Pleasantville – when  the train tracks were at grade with Manville Road.

I was most impressed as a young child by how he always smelled of coal cinders when he got off the train – like commuter’s cologne.

Sadly on today’s electric trains you do not get that. And you always heard those steam engines coming. You could see them: Clouds of very busy and industrious black smoke streaming at the horizon down the line. He’d get off the train.

My mother would move over and he’d drive the old Hudson Hornet home. He always spoke quietly. Never raised his voice. Drank scotch and soda in the winter. Gin and Tonics in the summer and he smoked Philip Morris’s, Marlboros, then Kents.

He set up a Lionel train set in our basement – perhaps our unspoken connection. When I was sent in by train for the first time to meet him at the office during Christmas time, He’d have his secretary greet me at Grand Central Terminal which still is a very big and scary place.

He would take me to lunch at Jack’s Monte Rosa restaurant on 49th Street – which I thought was a very great place. When I first went to it with him, I was a little disappointed that it was not more glamorous but I was really impressed that Jack the owner greeted him by name. I thought that was great that my Dad was greeted with respect.

When I first started working in Washington, D.C. in 1968 I ate regularly at a restaurant below the television station WMAL-TV where I worked, it was called Marty’s Italian Village.  Marty, the owner (who looked like Humphrey Bogart, the only thing missing was the white sport coat) started calling me when I came in around 7 PM, ‘Hi John, how are you?” People would look at me. They thought I was big.  I liked that. Feeling big in my small world.

When my father came to visit me in Washington where I worked. I took him around town. I told him when he got off the plane. “Hi, Dad, welcome to my town.” I wanted to impress him. We’re always trying to impress our fathers.

Another Father time was when my Dad came out for Dad’s Day at college. I mean this was a big thing to me. He watched me do play-by-play of a football game from atop the press box in 15 degree weather. It was cold. But he watched. Acted impressed. He hated cold weather.

Another time he impressed when I lost a job where I was working at the television station that I had been being considered for. And I told him how unfair it was, he put things in perspective: “Puggy, he said,  “The film manager wasn’t going to put you in as his Assistant if you were going to be bucking him all the time.” It put things in perspective. No false sentiment. No making me feel better, he was tough enough to teach by being realistic while telling me not to feel sorry for myself.

Then later in my career when I was fired out of a job completely blindsided. He again intervened, saying to me he thought what the agency head had done was a terrible thing. I needed that at the time.

He also, in a very supportive move, told me if I could make $1,000 a night writing a free lance direct mail package, I should keep trying to do that.

Dads are there to say the right things to you at the right time. Sometimes it is not always the right thing, but they try. Often, if you’re lucky, as I was, they say the right thing. And not the wrong thing.

With my father, who was not really my father, since I was an adopted child, it was never all about him, it was all about you.

When I bought my first house in White Plains. He never criticized the house. But when I sold it, he complimented me, “I think it’s great how you came out of it (the crummy first house).” They’re personal trainers.

The good ones  train you to run a race. If you stumble, no one hurts more than they do. When you succeed, no one is prouder.

They know what you should do, but they can’t tell you, because you won’t do it if you’re a kid.

But the more subtler of them tell you any way in hopes it will sink in to the rebellious offspring mind. My dad was subtle.

Another fond memory: My father took me camping once at a friend’s cabin in Pennsylvania. Funny thing was there was such a great comic collection we wound up sleeping in sleeping bags on the porch of the cabin. That was funny.

Another time when I was being threatened in college over a position at the radio station, I asked him if I should just abdicate and assign a play-by-play position to the person who was being forced on me. He advised me to “stick to your guns,” so I reported the threat to the Dean.

The position was compromised, but I was never threatened again.  He never shared my love for baseball and sports. In fact he never played catch with me all that well.

I mean I could have made the big leagues (pipe dream) if he played catch with me more. But that’s a small criticism.  I wish I had more of his financial acumen. But I do not.

As you grow into your 30s and 40s, little things they say to you you begin to understand. My father never struck me, but always disciplined me with quiet words. I have not always been that way as a parent myself, being somewhat volatile. I wish I had his even temperament. He always asked me to take care of my mother. And the only time he really got mad at me was when I had made my mother upset with me.

He was a little like John Wayne in movie roles in the way he disciplined, I remember he would say admonitions quietly. Such as when I got an F in an English course at college. He told me, that was the last F I would get at Ohio Wesleyan, because the next one he would stop paying my tuition.

That had an effect. And that was when tuition was only $3,000 a year.

So, on Father’s Day, I think of him as I do every day of my life. I become more like him every day. He is always lingering in the background of my thoughts. I do not know what he would think of what I am doing now.  But, he’d say — “If that’s what you want to do. Do it.” He also would say, “You have to make yourself happy.”

I also think, even today of what advice (laconic as always) he’d give me in a situation. And I wish I could discuss property taxes with him.

I especially have to salute him, because I am an adopted child. That alone makes me appreciate his love and acceptance with a sense of awe to this day.

You never outgrow your need for Dad.

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