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WPCNR WHITE PLAINS LAW JOURNAL. AUGUST 18, 2017:
The Tom Roach for Mayor Campaign Manager today announced the campaign would not appeal Judge Lawrence Ecker’s Ruling that the Milagros Lecuona slate had obtained enough valid signatures to qualify for a September 12 primary challenging the Roach slate.
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WPCNR WHITE PLAINS LAW JOURNAL. August 17, 2017:
More than 500 signatures from White Plains Democrats were reinstated when Judge Lawrence Ecker allowed for “WP” to be accepted in place of “White Plains.”
To read the ruling click: The decision reads, “…there should be no bar to the consideration of these signatures. There is only one city involved in this election, namely White Plains, and only one city that the abbreviation “W.P.” can represent in Westchester County, namely White Plains.”
The record reads “…the Court determines that plaintiff have failed to establish, by clear and convincing evidence, that respondents’ designating petitions were permeated with fraud…On the facts adduced at the hearing, the Court finds there was no danger of fraud or confusion either to the Board or to the voters.”
Christine Senteno, a spokesperson for the Lecuona campaign told WPCNR, the Lecuona campaign has not been served with a notice of appeal of Judge Ecker’s ruling from plaintiffs, Willa Swiller, Steven Walfish, Thomas Roach, John Martin, John Kirkpatrick and Justin Brasch.
Senteno said given the time constraints going up against a September 12 primary date, the campaign should know in a few days whether an appeal will be forthcoming.
The White Plains Democratic primary will be held September 12.
If Judge Ecker’s ruling stands Lecuona will run for Mayor; her running mates Alan Goldman, Michael Kraver and Saad Siddiqui will run against Martin, Kirkpatrick and Brasch for Common Council.
“We won! The Board of Elections said so. The judge said so and Milagros’ supporters say so. I worked hard walking door-to-door, standing in front of local stores, so I could collect pages of petition signatures and it feels good to know that White Plains voters will have a choice come the September 12 primaries,” said Ellen Berger, longtime White Plains resident, and Lecuona supporter.
“Of course, we are pleased with the outcome of this case because now those voters whose voices were in jeopardy of being silenced will now be heard. It is a relief that we can finally focus on engaging White Plains voters instead of isolating them with legal battles,” said candidate Lecuona.
“There is no doubt innocent mistakes were made in the way we gathered our petitions. Changes have been made so we can run an effective and efficient campaign. So many volunteers worked very hard to ensure that I was able to get on the ballot and their efforts will not be in vain. I want to thank them for their support and those who signed my petitions for their support,” Lecuona further explained
“This legal battle was an attempt to keep anyone who challenged the current power structure from speaking out. It is a shame the party bosses are so intimidated by opposing opinions that they will go through such extremes to shut down their own voters, many of whom are women and people of color. That and the FASNY issue are why I am shopping for a new mayor this election cycle,” said Yvonne Gumo,
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WPCNR PLAYLAND TOMORROW. By John F. Bailey. August 16, 2017:
Despite a sizzling July, Playland attendance through July 23 is down 14,785 from last year, or the equivalent of two big holiday weekend perfect days when about 8,000 usually come to the park, so the 22% decline could be easily made up with some big August weekends and the Labor Day weekend.
The revenue in the park is down $300,000, $5,035,345 was generated through July 23 of 2016; $4,742,020 through July 23, 2017.
The figures this year show of the 246,198 admissions through July 23, 80,910 or 32% were not residents from Westchester. Of that 80,910, 50,815 paid $30 to ride all day (plus parking) and 20,295 were spetator admissions.
Of the 246,198 admissions, 107,176 lived in Westchester County, that’s 43%. There were 66,964 residents who paid Ride All Day admissions, 12,144 who paid Junior admissions and 28,068 Spectator Admissions. Over 48,000 resident admissions chose to spectate and not ride.
Season Pass admissions, $80 resident, $90 non-resident,$35 spectator, promo season pass totaled 4,385. Group Riders at $20 numbered 34,500 and generated $690,000 in revenue.
Biggest Day was July 4 when 16,596 attended the park on a Tuesday. Next top draw was 13,687 on Memorial Day.
In 10 Saturday attendances, the average has been 5,881.
The 10 Sundays have done better than Saturdays. The average Sunday attendance is 6,943 on total attendance of 69,333.
The Beach and Pool attendance has attracted 36,726, down 23% from 2016’s 47,119 (through July 24, 2016.)
Figures provided by the Westchester County Board of Legislators.
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WPCNR WESTCHESTER TOMORROW. By John F. Bailey. August 15, 2017:
I took a roadtrip to Pennsylvania last week to visit family and had the opportunity to go across the old Tappan Zee Bridge, and got a first hand look up close and girder personal at the new Mario A. Cuomo Bridge set to open in three days in the westbound direction (4 Lanes).
When you approach it for the first time leaving Westchester particularly on Friday evening, will traffic be smoother or worse?
Will the sharp swing northwest to mount the new grade up the bridge cause more slowdown or less? Remember the backup that always happens now because of the insane Tarrytown exit? That is still going to be there.
Will drivers run into a slowdown due to the S curve down hill from the 100 foot higher new bridge lanes? Drivers have to swing left going down a curve then swing right to motor onto the unchanged westbound thruway lanes, and we knowhow that backs up every day of the week, don’t we?
I certainly do not wish the bridge a bad first outing, but the real test will come when the Eastbound new bridge span opens.
Because the new span is approximately 100 feet above the old causeway leading up to the present bridge, drivers will have a steeper climb (though straighter. That climb up the incline has the potential to back up the new eastbound lanes more. The “S” approach onto the new eastbound causeway with the eastbound old thruway lanes swinging left, then swinging right in an S, that is really I think going to slow that eastbound morning traffic way lot. The long curve in one direction and a soft one that follows on the present bridge really does damage to vehicle speed.
But the reason I do not think the traffic speed will improve any eastern side opens, the hapless bridge has no ability to get its 4 lanes of eastbounders past the impass of the three lane I-287 eastbound merge. You’ve got 4 lanes going into three. You got new bridge old highway combination. No fix in sight for years. No express bus exclusive lane in sight.
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WPCNR WHITE PLAINS TOMORROW. By John F. Bailey:
With the recent zoning changes to the Transit District in the public hearing last week, a heads-up is in order for the White Plains City School District to pay attention to the possibilities of what 5,000 apartments on track to be constructed in the next five years.
The sites are on Westmoreland Avenue; at the White Plains Pavilion site (now demolished); on the site of the White Plains Mall, at 55 Bank Street (probably due to open next fall); at the corner of Mamaroneck and East Post Road; at Hamilton Avenue and North Broadway; on the former Good Council property on North Broadway, and on the Grid Properties site on the former Sholz property; and a new apartment building recently started at Maple and DeKalb Avenues.
If 10% of those 5,000 apartments have one child after they move, that is 500 children all arriving in the district. You can see what happens if 20% have a new child, that means1,000 elementary aged children in 5 to 10 years. 30% means, 1,500. If half the families moving into those 5,00 that is 2,500 students filling the elementary schools. The average elementary school in White Plains now is filled to the brim at 600 students. Unless the persons moving in have no children, let alone not bring any into the district, the district has to monitor the population trends as the apartments fill up.
The Westchester County birth rate per 1,000 of population as of 2013 was 11 births 1,000. If 5,000 move into the new apartments, using that measure the district can expect 605 new kindergartners in the school system at the least. That’s a new school full of youngsters.
Common sense tells you the district has to start considering whether to expand the current elementary schools or build at least two new ones, or maybe three, that is over a $100 Million in construction for three schools.
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WPCNR VIEW FROM THE UPPER DECK. By Bull Allen. August 9, 2017:
I’m sitting in the Ebbets Field Gondola where Red Barber and Connie Desmond sat and broadcast Dodger baseball on WMGM 1050, and Red gave Vince Scully the chance to broadcast Dodger games, and the rest of course, is history.
I’m looking back on the echoing green of memory of a ballpark, a culture, a feeling that baseball destroyed back in 1957, when baseball allowed the Dodgers and the Giants to move to the West Coast.
When I was a kid, Gussie Moran the tennis player (of all people), Ted Brown and Marty Glickman did Baseball Extra on WMGM, and on WOR-TV there was Happy Felton’s Knothole Gang where Felton hosted different groups of little leaguers on every telecast.
Hilda swung her bell from the upper deck when the Dodgers were rallying. The one game I saw in Ebbets Field was from the lower leftfield deck. I swear you were close enough to Frank Robinson the leftfielder to see the sweat on his neck. And the Dodger lit up Warren Hacker.
No uniforms were whiter than Dodger home whites. The field was so colorful. The banked rightfield wall with its colorful billboards The pennants flapping from the “Schaeffer Scoreboard” and the noise. The catwalks you had to walk on into the upper deck. The park was edgy.
The fans loved the Dodgers. The players: Gil, Duke, Campy, Skoonj, lived in the neighborhood around the ballpark, I think. They were our players. They played for us.
But Walter O’Malley the owner of the Dodgers destroyed all that when he did not like the Little Bandbox on Flatbush and Bedford. He wanted a bigger ballpark. New York City refused to build one for him, but Los Angeles would. And San Francisco would build one for the Giants. Ever since baseball instead of serving the communities it plays in has used the communities, blackmailed them, and rarely given back.
Baseball now just takes.
There had been franchise shifts in baseball before the abandonment of Brooklyn USA and Coogan’s Bluff where the New York Giants played by major league baseball,
Bill Veeck shifted the St. Louis Browns to Baltimore. The Perini family shifted the hapless Boston Braves to Milwaukee. The storied Philadelphia A’s moved to Kansas City. But those cities did not support the Browns and the Braves. Brooklyn drew one million fans in Brooklyn their last year. The Giants 600,000.
They moved for money.
Baseball now has the largest attendance of any sport except soccer and sports car racing. Tickets to baseball games, concessions, season tickets are dear. But the caring for the game the way it used to be is gone, it’s just not there.
I was not a Dodger fan growing up. I rooted for the Yankees because I liked Mel Allen and the Yankees represented excellence consistency. Yankee Stadium was dignified, an environment where the men went to games in suits and ties. Ebbets Field was different. The fans were involved they knew the game, they cared. They had passion.
There was no passion in the Yankee Stadium of 1957. Yogi’s game winning homers were greeted like a opera diva’s aria.
O’Malley and his fellow carpet bagger Horace Stoneham owner of the New York Giants, sold them all out.
They started a trend:
Within 15 years the Milwaukee Braves moved to Atlanta. In four years the Washington Senators moved to Minneapolis and became contenders, leaving Washington with an expansion team, when then moved to Texas. Kansas City moved again to Oakland. The Montreal Expos on the verge of a dynasty were allowed to move to Miami. All moves to make more money.
What did the New York area get back:
The New York Mets who throughout their 55 Years in baseball (most of which have been forgettable) have tried to supplant the lovable Bums’ personality, glamorizing mediocrity, and making excuses for wrecking not one but three superb pitching staffs: The Seaver, Koosman, Gentry, staff of the 1969-73 Mets; The Viola, Gooden, Darling staff of the mid-80s, and now the pitchers of the hapless Terry Collins era, destroyed by overworking young arms too soon by pitching coaches who have never had big seasons in the big leagues.
But the old Dodgers were not mediocre and they never made excuses and they played hard.
They were swashbuckling even when they lost: Babe Herman, Van Lingle Mungo, Zack Wheat, Phil Cavereta, and of course the team that broke baseball’s color line: Reese, Gilliam, Jackie, Gil, Campy, Podres, Newk, Roger, Hoak, Gino, the Duke, Furillo, Ed Roebuck. The team did not have the glamour and polish of the Yankees, but The Dodgers had style, class, and heart.
You believed the Dodgers played for Brooklyn. When they won they brought joy to Brooklyn, when they lost, well that’s all right we’ll get em tomorrow. That was back when as a fan you wanted to win every game, even though you knew it was impossible. That was when baseball had such a grip on the young and the old, that you believed you could win. You flipped baseball cards.
So New York still misses the Dodgers. They were one of a kind. They gave fans the best moments of baseball. The executives before O’Malley built teams that lasted. We all knew it was a business, but we did not care. They were our guys.
Now, today we know all too well baseball is a business, and because we do know that, we don’t care. Perhaps some cities still do. Boston loves the Red Sox. Chicago the Cubs and the Pale Hose. St Louis the Cardinals.
When they killed the Brooklyn Dodgers sixty years ago, they killed what made baseball great: it’s heart—now baseball has no heart.
You can win by finishing second.
You can cheat.
The umpire gets no respect.
The baseball keeps getting more lively every year
The pitching is worn out
You can’t see it on the radio anymore.
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WPCNR REALTY REALTY. AUGUST 10, 2017:
July in White Plains put smiles on home sellers faces, according to figures from Julia B. Fee/Sothby’s international Real Estate
The median price of a White Plains home sold in July was $630,800, up $71,000 from July of 2016.
The average price of homes sold in the White Plains July was $664,534, up 13% from $588,933 in July of a year ago, indicating that it is not just high end sales driving the price increases.
Through the first six months of 2017, Fee/Sothby reports home sales were up 2.6% over the first six months OF 2016, 196 TO 191. An encouraging trend was it was taking 7 weeks to sell a home and sellers were getting just about what they were asking for.
Inventory is increasing at a very slow pace, giving consumers more homes to choose from, and putting homeowners the ability to hold for their price.
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WPCNR NEWS & COMMENT. By John F. Bailey. August 9, 2017:
When will the voters and the residents of Westchester County “wake up and smell the coffee,” as Ann Landers used to say?
There is one government, not two parties and both parties work to protect one another and keep themselves in power.
Here we go again:
The Westchester County Executive Robert Astorino and the Westchester County Legislature are working the tried and true “Veto Play.”
This time they are working the Veto Play with Immigrants.
Immigrants: The hardest working people in Ameria. Afraid of deportation by the Trump Administration secret police (ICE). Afraid everytime they are stopped by police. (Keep those tail lights functioning!)
Afraid each night they go back to their over-crowded illegal housing which is permitted callously by the administrations of countless towns and cities in the county, who do not enforce housing codes.
Afraid employers will fire them immediately on a whim and report them. What Hell it is to be an immigrant these days who may be illegal. Or legal but speak Spanish. Or in fear of not having their VISA renewed.
Here’s how the two parties…the Astorino administration and the County Legislature are working the Veto Play that makes everyone look good under the shameless sham of protecting immigrants.
The Democratic-controlled legislature cooks up some legislation, in this case, the Immigrant Protection bill, allegedly to protect immigrants from exposure to the ICE authorities currently scouring the county for immigrants here illegally, with expired visas or with possible criminal backgrounds and the purpose of the Immigrant Protection Bill is to as County Legislator Catherine Borgia puts it,
“immigrants have reported that they are less likely to contact police officers if they have been the victim of a crime because of potential immigrant consequences. Westchester is too diverse a County for our residents to live in fear.”
So what does this bill do?
It follows New York State Attorney General Eric Sneiderman’s guidelines: it says that local authorities limit cooperation with federal immigration enforcement by not serving civil immigration warrants; by refusing to detain and hold “uncharged” individuals in custody for over 48 hours (allowing ICE to “pick them up”); restricting federal authorities to individuals presently being held; and restricting information-gathering to federal immigration enforcement (local police not asking for i.d. papers, personal information, etc.).
So, the Democratic-controlled legislature cooks up this “feel good” immigrant protection bill, passes it 10-5, to demonstrate that and these are my quotes: “we are behind you immigrants. We will protect you. Democrats are for you. Vote for us.”
The County Executive then steps and in and plays his role, threatening to veto the legislation they passed Monday within 10 days.
Kenneth Jenkins candidate for County Executive nomination for the Democrats in the September 12 primary vows to work hard to override the expected Astorino veto. State Senator George Latimer has not yet weighed in on the side of the immigrants.
So now both sides of the aisle working the Veto Play to perfection look good.
The Democrats appear to be championing the population of the county of immigrants. The Astorino Republican side does a careful appeal by vetoing to the Trump constituency upcounty while appearing to support local law enforcement.
Aren’t we tired of this game yet, voters?
Don’t you see right through these political maneuvers? Both parties are playing you for suckers.
The Democratic Party that controls the legislature of the county, did the same ploy on the Astorino “no tax increase” budgets the last eight years. They wring their hands over cuts to services, but always two Democrats vote with the Republicans to pass the budget, despite moaning over the $15 Million budget deficit in 2017and borrowing to balance the budget. That happened again in December of 2016.
The Democratic party now is running on the lame premise that the county is running a deficit. But they did not. The county had a surplus this year. Now the Democrats’ loan issue is the airport lease agreement, objecting to leasing the airport for 20 years. They talk about “Westchester Values,” whatever they are.
They also did a reverse veto play on Playland.
The Democrats rejected Sustainable Playland, Rob Astorino’s first plan because Sustainable did not have financing. So that deal went away. Then the Democrats got behind the Standard Amusements plan, only to agree to a deal that will cost the county $50 Million in new Playland debt over the next 20 years if Standard Amusements finally accepts the deal.
Don’t you remember that County Executive Robert Astorino’s original deal with Sustainable Playland and then Standard Amusements would eliminate Playland debt with payments? Well, it did.
But nooooooooooooo, the Democrats said the Sustainable Playland deal was not well financed, so they threw it out. Then Standard Amusements, after having three years to inspect Playland, said they would not pay for all the repairs needed and the county said they would: instead of Playland debt being reduced to nothing, it went up $30 Million. Then the Legislators said they wanted to keep the Playland Pool…Boom! Another $10 Million was added to the debt, up to $40 Million. Then you have the $10 Million the county has spent on the Children’s museum Then the City of Rye sued over the Standard Amusements deal, and if the City of Rye does not withdraw the suit, well if I were Standard Amusements, I’d walk. Attendance is down 22% anyway.
Now we are multiplying the county Playland debt ten times to $50 Million if you include the $10 million we have burned on the Children’s Museum.
The County Legislators have to learn how to count. They are not good businesspersons. They only want to make the County Executive look bad and their efforts to do so, only make situations worse.
Now—back to the Immigrant Protection Act.
If the promised Robert Astorino veto is overridden, then it will only take a couple of tough calls from the Department of Justice to force local law enforcement agencies to “cooperate.” If the Trump Troopers want you to do something they will apply the pressure: pulling back community development funds, threats, threats and more threats.
The county, the cities in the county will fold like the cheap suits they wear.