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WPCNR CAMPAIGN 2017. From the White Plains League of Women Voters. October 23, 2017:
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WPCNR CAMPAIGN 2017. From the White Plains League of Women Voters. October 23, 2017:
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WHITE PLAINS WEEK
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THE TOO QUIET WHITE PLAINS MAYORAL RACE
PREVIEW OF THE WHITE PLAINS BALLOT
THE THREE PROPOSITIONS ON THE BACK OF TPETER KATZ, JOHN BAILEY, JIM BENEROFE
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THE ASTORINO-LATIMER HASSLE–HE SAID HE SAID.
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PREVIEW OF THE WHITE PLAINS ELECTION BALLOT NOV. 7
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THE HOSPITAL FOR SPECIAL SURGERY MOVES IN
NEW APARTMENTS ON NORTH FERRIS AVENUE AND NORTH KENSICO
NEGLIGENT GENOCIDE IN PUERTO RICO–CAN WE GET PROFESSIONAL ABOUT BRINGING PUERTO RICO BACK? A LITTLE URGENCY PLEASE!
AND OF COURSE–TRUMP THE PRESIDENT– THIS WEEK
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WPCNR STAGE DOOR.Theatrical Review by John F. Bailey. October 16, 2017 UPDATED 10-18-17:
White Plains Performing Arts Center became Broadway bigtime this weekend with the arrival of a most friendly Ghost
It’s got a contemporary Broadway Phenomette , Natalie Weiss of Dear Evan Hansen and Steven Douglas master of the male lead, Sam Wheat in the Ghost national tour, are a couple you will love at first sight, their chemistry is that good!
The lovebirds stir memories of how love feels when Ms. Weiss makes that old/new/feeling of first love stir irresistibly in fond memory with her technicolor voice effervescing and shining like diamond facets of emotions in composer Bruce Joel Rubin’s show starter:
Here right now, here right now
Here right now is where we make it
Everything we’ll ever need
…for once it feels like it was always meant to be
As long as we stat together,
We’ll just keep getting better till
It it really doesn’t matter what comes after or before
When I’m with you there’s
No confusion everything is clear
When we’ll have weeks
And months and years whatever
We were meant to be together,
You were sent to me forever
Good, isn’t it?
Makes me want to take Brenda Starr on a date. Wait until you hear Ms. Weiss, as Molly the artist, sing it and Mr. Douglas playing Sam Wheat echo her lyrics standing up to Ms. Weiss’s consummate coloratura runs of new love’s heights in an intricate duet as they putter about their new Brooklyn loft. This song made me tear up, hopeless romantic that I am.
The devotedness of the couple is demonstrated when Mr. Douglas doo-wops Unchained Melody, the old Righteous Brothers’ close-dance classic. Mr. Douglas hits all the falsettos and the deep depths of bass with quiet desire of this classic song of longing. He masters the doo-wop style, and I know my doo-wop. His getting down on his knees just melts Molly.
Dropping by their loft apartment is the scene stealing Wayne Shuker as Sam Wheat’s righthand man in Mr. Wheat’s mutual fund businees, Carl Bruner. Carl does everything for Sam, and wants to do so much more. Shuker gives the Bruner personality a J. Pierpont Finch attitude about him. Sycophantic, efficient, hard-working, offering to do more and more,so much more. (Finch is the conniving character in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, the role that made Robert Morse famous.)
Morning in NYC: the show steps it up with choreographer Lexie Fennell Frare’s intense rush hour scene of New York commuters, lead by Mr. Shuker (above, right) and Mr. Douglas in a syncopated, up tempo mass commuting scene that uncannily (this is an uncanny show)matches the exact pace of how rush hour commuters walk to their jobs in Manhattan and singing New York is not all romance and loft apartments:
More and More
This is the life New York
This is the time we’re given
Its fight or flight, New York
Cause it’s the way we’re driven
This is the score, New York
This is the destination
Where it takes more, New York
You need the right equation
…this is always such a brush
Sending millions with one touch.
As they prepare to go out that night, Molly suddenly broaches the idea of marriage to Sam in as it turns out is ironic but highly significant, she asks him if he loves her. He says “What do you think?” He sings:
I say it with my eyes,
When I hold you close at night,
When I make you scrambled eggs,
When I tell you silly jokes,
When I turn out the light.
She answers:
Sometimes you need to hear it, Sam.
I need to hear it.
Or else you begin to fear;
Begin to fear it isn’t true
So I can really feel it,
So I can really feel it’s true.
I’d love to hear it everyday,
But even just this one time it’s OK
I can live that way
Then it’s night and Molly and Sam are coming out of an artshow late in the evening, when a stranger accosts Sam demanding his wallet. He tries to protect Molly. There is a scuffle. A shattering shot is heard. Shattering because Sam winds up in an emergency room and he is trying to communicate.
He doesn’t understand why he is ignored. He meets another ghost, Kenneth-Kyle Martinez whose comic You Gotta Let Go–timed perfectly– informs Sam of his new status. He is between this world and his ultimate fate.
The ritual of saying goodbye is wrenching. Sam watches Molly (Ms. Weiss above) on his grave saying good-bye, but she cannot see him or hear him. A scene wonderfully staged by Scenic Designer Ann Beyersdorfer, and lit imaginatively by Lighting Designer Matther Guminski.
Sam wanders to Molly’s apartment via subway, the A Train which roars through the proscenium of the WPPAC in a startling moving three dimensional projection (with Sam and passengers appearing inside a moving subway car. It is an effect right out of today’s high-tech Broadway productions–one of the best manifestations of a train I’ve seen.
Projection Designer Ian McClain has created an ingenious, spectacular effect, Later Sam is taught how to move objects by a ghost who haunts the A Train, played by Greg Laucella who delivers a rap number Focus with a righteous style that tells Sam the secret of channeling all his energies.
In his observations Sam learns why his wallet was stolen and learns Molly is in danger. He seeks out a medium to get a message to Molly.

At the Psychic’s: Elisha Marie as Oda Mae Brown, left in a trance, with Steve Douglas as Sam Wheat trying to get a message through, with Jaela Cheeks-Lomax right as Clara Ms. Brown’s assistant and Chloe Kostman, a customer trying to locate her husband.
Then the link to Molly appears in the outrageously over-the-top,show-stealer Elisha Marie as Oda Mae Brown, psychic healer, who uplifts the spirits with the funky Are You a Believer? She and Kenya Hamilton and Jaela Cheeks-Lomax as her assistants Louis and Clara send up The Pointer Sisters with this choreographically inspired song extolling the virtues of psychic exploration into the unknown. Elisha Marie starts to conduct a séance and hears a voice in her head, the voice of Sam Wheat.
Act II finds Molly dealing with her loss of Sam, and her show-stopper anthem beginning of her comeback from loss, Nothing Stops Another Day, acknowledges Sam, celebrates what they had and Ms. Weiss commanding all-in commanding way of wrangling the most out of lyrics lifts you up when you feel the light of her healing voice:
And so I locked myself away
Padding my heart behind a wall
I couldn’t feel it beat at all
But I’m feeling it today
Because the world keeps turning and I guess it always will
I can choose to turn around,
Or I can choose to just stand still
Either way, nothing stops another day.
I now I have to let go
Of a life I’ll never know, hard as it may be
I’m trying to understand instead there’s another life ahead.
Sam meanwhile becomes aware of why he was killed.
With the help of the comic, incredulous Oda Mae Brown, he keeps digging
Ms. Marie’s Oda Mae is reluctantly the assistant detective who unravels the mystery of Sam’s fate and ultimately lifts the lovers to an understanding, where both accept their fates in a way that sends the audience home renewed in spirit.
Ms. Marie busts a ,move that has the audience clapping along when she sings about a coming windfall, in I’m Outta Here! Ms. Marie’s perfect moves and timing as well as phrasing just sells this great number.
Ghost was a movie in 1990, based on the 1987 Wall Street scandals and was very popular :it was turned into a musical in Great Britain, ran in the West End and came to Broadway and went on national tour.
It is a great Halloween show. Romance. Mystery. Ghosts—lots of them. Laughs even more. Heartbreak healed. The surreal spiritual stylings of Natalie Weiss, whose acting is as good as her ability to move you with her sublime voice that fills the theatre, gets you deep, draws you into feelings you do not feel very often. Perhaps once in a lifetime, if you’re lucky.
Ms. Weiss has according to the producers always wanted to do the role of Molly in Ghost, and based on the performance Sunday, it’s her part.
The orchestra conducted by Music Director Stephen Ferri accompanied without dominating, and supported just right.
The show doesn’t have one great Molly, but two.
The other is Molly Seidel, Custume Designer for the show whose inspired and accurate creativity in costuming the 1980s, contributes to the menace of the Subway Ghost and the mugger, makes the scenes so much more real. She dresses Wall Street: the attache cases, the gray suits with the thin ties, the clean-cut look, the sickening conformity and sycophancy and dripping greed of Mr. Shuber’s “Carl,” the menace of money is awesomely styled. Wall Street Sharks swim swindlingly through the canyons of Manhattan in the More, More, More extravaganza thanks in part to Ms. Seidel’s haberdashery. Ms. Seidel is a White Plains High School graduate of 2007, art school graduate, who now lives in Brooklyn and she designs shows.
Joseph C. Walsh I believe has probably done the best directing job of any show WPPAC has produced, including his own. He has the actors’ timing down, attitudes natural, emotions raw, and special effects executed perfectly and fast insync. Lighting, choreography, staging , scenery as real as it gets. I think he will probably tell it’s his best show ever. He may never equal this one. He should savor it.
Ghost works.
It will send you to Heaven.
It’s a Must-SEE. Go to www.wppac.com to see the 6 dates now remaining or call the box office at 914-328-1600.
Note from God: I note that WPPAC has added a matinee on Thursday, October 18, tomorrow at 2. Call now…your seat is waiting.
All pictures, courtesy, White Plains Performing Arts Center, by Kathleen Davisson.
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WPCNR FOR THE RECORD. From the Citizen Budget Commission website. October 15, 2017:
Editor’s Note: Friday the following report from an independent citizens commission was released on the Citizen Budget Commission website which was widely quoted as the basis for the reports of a doubling of the toll on the new Mario M. Cuomo Bridge across the Hudson.
However, it should be noted that the toll figure has not been determined yet by the state. Here is the copy of that report as posted on the Citizen Budget Commission website.
(The Citizens Budget Commission (CBC) founded in 1932, is a nonpartisan, nonprofit civic organization whose mission is to achieve constructive change in the finances and services of New York City and New York State government. Our mission is rooted in serving the citizenry at large, rather than narrow special interests; preserving public resources, whether financial or human; and focusing on the well-being of future New Yorkers, the most underrepresented group in city and state government. The wesbite is at www.cbcny.org)

A toll increase on the Cuomo Bridge is an equitable means of funding the project: the cost of the asset is borne by those benefiting from it through increased user fees. The State’s TIFIA loan application estimated a round-trip toll of $14 for passenger vehicles and $8.40 for commuters.12 These estimates assumed the bridge would cost up to $5.4 billion and be financed entirely by federal and state debt.13 Based on the updated estimates, which include cost savings from the design-build contract and reduced debt from the use of Thruway Stabilization funds, the new tolls would range between $9.67 and $10.61 for passenger cars using E-ZPass, and $6.74 and $7.45 for local residents with commuter toll plans. (See Table 2.)14

Based on debt service costs, it is also possible to illustrate the magnitude of a toll increase across the entire Thruway system to pay for the Bridge’s debt. Annual debt service costs for the Cuomo Bridge’s loans and bonds will average $174 million.17 A 24 percent increase on all Thruway tolls including the Cuomo Bridge, assuming no decreases in utilization, would be required to fund the increase in debt service, and the new standard toll for the Cuomo Bridge would increase by $1.19, from $5.00 to $6.19. Drivers on other portions of the Thruway, not crossing the Cuomo Bridge, would see their tolls increase 24 percent, despite not using the new bridge.18
This systemwide toll increase is both inequitable and unlikely. Though an across-the-board increase of Thruway tolls to pay for the bridge would stretch the connection between users of the bridge paying for its construction, operation, and maintenance, it would still represent Thruway tolls supporting Thruway infrastructure. Current tolls, on the old bridge, represent a significant share of the revenue generated by the entire system: nearly one-fifth of all Thruway revenues are generated by the Tappan Zee Bridge.19 The State Budget Director recently stated: “Tolls on the bridge will cover all of the remaining costs of its construction.”20What remains unsaid, and is perhaps unknown, is the extent to which the new Cuomo Bridge will support the rest of the Thruway.
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PETER KATZ JOHN BAILEY JIM BENEROFE
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THE ASTORINO-LATIMER FIRST DEBATE–VIDEO COVERAGE
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WPCNR COUNTY CLARION-LEDGER. From the Westchester County Department of Communications. (Edited) October 13, 2017:
County Executive Robert P. Astorino Thursday outlined a shared services plan aimed at savings taxpayers money.
The plan, recently approved in a bi-partisan vote of 29-0 of county municipal leaders, could save taxpayers nearly $6 million over the next few years. Astorino today discussed the plan with the backdrop of the Fire Training Center in Valhalla, one of the county’s most important shared service initiatives, where Westchester’s fire departments conduct emergency training exercises.
In approving the shared services plan after several forums, three public hearings and hundreds of hours of input, leaders endorsed 12 ways – mostly information technology initiatives – to save money by eliminating redundancies and increasing efficiencies in government. Initiatives agreed to include having the county assist some localities with IT management, document scanning and storage and technology and software purchasing, among others, that can reduce costs on a local level. View the report here.
“It was completed with cooperation, collaboration and communication,” Astorino said. “We know that sharing services is not a silver bullet. The way to reduce taxes is by growing the economy, controlling costs and eliminating state mandates. But by working together, we are able to find additional savings and provide services more cost-effectively.”
The Shared Service Forums were chaired by Astorino and included representatives from nearly all of Westchester County’s municipalities who discussed ways that local governments can continue to cut costs, notably through sharing services with the county, and lobbying the state to stop passing down its costs.
“The county’s Fire Training Center, run by our Department of Emergency Services, is one of the most vital and cost-effective shared services programs that we can provide to both career and volunteer firefighters – and the people they protect – throughout Westchester County,” said Astorino. “Can you imagine how expensive it would be if all 58 fire departments had to pay for 58 different emergency training centers? The cost would be prohibitive, the training less effective and lives would be put in jeopardy.”
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WPCNR POLICE GAZETTE. From the Office of the Westchester County District Attorney. October 13, 2017:
Westchester District Attorney Anthony A. Scarpino, Jr. announced Thursday that Mount Vernon, New Rochelle, White Plains and Yonkers are now designated as “Hub” Courts.
The “Hub” Court designation will make drug treatment courts accessible to individuals who suffer from alcohol and drug dependency and military veterans who have had run-ins with the law. Their cases can now be transferred to the “Hub” Courts.
“During my campaign for District Attorney and now under my administration, it was important to keep the promise that these courts would be created to offer non-violent offenders and military veterans’ access to intensive court-supervised treatment and tailored services that might not be available through their own town and village courts. The goal of these drug treatment courts is to reduce incarceration and recidivism and hopefully give these individuals a path to a new life” said District Attorney Scarpino.
The Westchester County Drug Court Enhancement Project, under the direction of Ninth Judicial District Administrative Judge Alan Scheinkman, will coordinate the efforts of Westchester County drug court programs currently operating in Mount Vernon, New Rochelle, White Plains and Yonkers.
Supported by a federal grant from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), the New York State Court System’s Ninth Judicial District, which encompasses Westchester County, is launching this new drug court initiative in the County to focus on the unique needs of two populations: individuals with opioid use disorder and justice-involved military veterans. The Westchester County Drug Court Enhancement Project aims to enhance the delivery of clinical and other services to these target populations, including the provision of medication-assisted treatment (MAT), where appropriate, to Westchester County Drug Treatment Court participants.
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WPCNR STAGE DOOR. Theatrical Review by John F. Bailey. October 12, 2017:
From the moment, Devon Perry struts in as saucy 15 year old Annie Oakley as contestant in a marksmanship competition to secure Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show a performance at the Wilson House on the vaudeville circuit, she wins you over, as she wins the rakishly rugged cowboy Marksman champion, Adam Kemmerer’s Frank Butler – with determination, innocence, and being-true-to herself ‘tude.

Adam Kemmerer and Devon Perry as Frank Butler and Annie Oakley. All Photos Courtesy Westchester Broadway Theatre by John Vecchiola
Perhaps one of the first career women in America to earn a reputation in the late 19th century, Annie’s character in Ms. Devon’s talents, is one of the first true life heroines of American women. She never compromised and still won the man she loved on her terms.
The Irving Berlin masterpiece of a musical, Annie Get Your Gun, (perhaps his most consistently entertaining spectacle with every song a show stopper) hit Broadway like gangbusters in 1946 and ran for 1,147 performances. Audiences went out humming and toe-tapping and above all feeling so good hearing songs that mirrored their own hearts. It’s stampeding through audiences at Westchester Broadway Theatre’s living Hall of Fame for Hit Shows. What a score:
Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better, Doin’ What Comes Naturally, There’s No Business Like Show Business, They Say It’s Wonderful, I Got Lost in His Arms, I Got the Sun in the Morning and the Moon at Night, The Girl That I Marry, and An Old-Fashioned Wedding.
Ms. Perry plays Annie very believably from age 15 to grown-up, from tomboy to a lady who can handle herself, a man, as well as a gun, only coming to realize, You Can’t Get a Man With a Gun.
She mugs and threats, and laments about, frowning, with pouting lip, and determined shake of her head at the end of Act I when she delivers this humorous Berlin classic. Ms. Perry sells all her songs solidly. You’re a man, you want to sweep her up and take her out on the town. You’re a woman you hope fervently that Ms. Perry’s feisty little heroine gets her man.
Kemmerer as Frank Butler, the Buffalo Wild West Show top draw for his marksmanship prowess hitting clay pigeon after clay pigeon and dozens of trick shots, is stunned when Perry, the 15 year old Annie Oakley hits more targets than he does.
Annie despite being awestruck by the rugged Mr. Kemmerer, does her job refusing to be awed by the romantic feelings she’s feeling. Frank, though is enjoying his life as “I’m A Bad, Bad Man” with the pick of woman-admirers. Kemmerer has swagger, the rough edge of the legendary cowboy image and is not the typical pretty boy baritone, singer without swagger who have played this role in the past.
Annie agrees after beating Frank to join the show Buffalo Bill’s Wild West and go on tour.
Traveling east on the Overland Train, Frank and Annie, (Kemmerer and Perry) duet on They Say It’s Wonderful (one of my favorites in this show). You first hear Perry’s ability to phrase a song with heart, that you just cannot help listening to.
Ms. Perry delivers the goods: wistfulness with vibrato that is so right, a voice to haunt a moonlit night. Kemmerer, a confused Frank Butler transitions from no nonsense woman-wrangler to a man who has just realized something so wonderful has happened to him. It happens that way.
The Wild West Show is not doing well, and the scheming manager of the show Kilty Reidy as Charlie Davenport (left above) (who gets loads of laughs with perfect timing), convinces Buffalo Bill (Gary Lynch), (right above) to merge his show with his competitor Pawnee Bill.
Frank is annoyed at Annie getting top billing in the show, and decides to jump to Pawnee Bill’s show where he is expected to wow the debutantes of New York. Sarah Cline who plays one of the debutante-investors does a very winning pitch to Frank, and Ms. Cline doubles in acid catty jealousy as Dolly Tate, the number one assistant to Frank in the show who resents Frank’s infatuation with Annie.
When he meets Annie again in New York at the elegant Hotel Brevort his old feelings for the “Little Sure Shot,” Sitting Bull’s Indian name for her, return.
But, true love does not go smoothly as their Annie and Frank’s egos continue to keep them apart. However Marshall Factora as Chief Sitting Bull (providing timely hysterical lines throughout) devises a way. What is the solution to bring this romance to Happily Ever After? Will Annie miss her shot at happiness? Spoiler alert: Annie Oakley and Frank Butler were married for fifty years.
Other show-stoppers—The No Business Like Show Business Number, (so good you love it twice); and of course the Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better where Perry delivers the signature Ethel Merman song with a style all Perry’s own with shining confidence and efervesence! The romantic leads Perry and Kemmerer have a lot of cute fun with the contrapuntal duet An Old Fashioned Wedding where each sings different lyrics to the same song. She has big plans he has small. Conflict erupts. Its’ charming as any wedding planner knows.
This show really moves. The scenes are quick. The intrigue ingeniously silly. The clashing egos of Annie and Frank classic “Battle of the Sexes.”
Richard Stafford has directed and choreographed this production flawlessly packing it with wonderful real West, turn-of-the-century costumes and cowboy outfits; dancehall girl outfits, crafted by Costume Designer Kara Branch. Making the dance scenes with action daringly put on collision courses the style of the show puts you into fading West period of the 1880s.
The WBT orchestra directed by Shane Paris, with John Bowen, James Mack, Jordan Jancz, Brian Uhl. Steven Bleifuss handles Irvin Berlin classics with gusto, flare, humor, notes that linger and never override the big singing of Kemmerer and Perry. Perhaps their most impeccable performance. The Irving Berlin music is so exciting in this show, it is so easy to overplay because it’s fun. They never overplayed.
Annie Get Your Gun plays for the next month through November 27 at WBT. Go to the website www.BroadwayTheatre.com for showtimes, and remember you get dinner with tickets. I loved the pork loin—real Wild West and tasty, just like Delmonico’s. Or dial the boxoffice at 914-592-2222.
There’s No Show Like Annie Get Your Gun
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