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.

New Westchester Medical Center Ambulatory Care Facility to serve walk-in patients, was announced Wednesday at the Westchester County Local Development Corporation. The facility, to be located adjacent the present Westchester Medical Center pavilion (red brick building) was announced Wednesday.

WPCNR HEALTH TRENDS. From the Westchester County Department of Communications. (Edited) March 3, 2016:

The Westchester Medical Center Health Network (WMCHealth) unveiled plans Wednesday to build a $230-million, 280,000-square-foot Ambulatory Care Pavilion adjacent to Westchester Medical Center on its Valhalla campus.

Michael Israel CEO of Westchester Medical Center Health Network explained, “The development of an ambulatory care (“walk-in service” ) hub on our Valhalla campus will respond to key changes in health care delivery, while addressing a critical shortage of space as our programs and patient volume continue to grow.  This project will enable us to offer outpatient services currently not available on our campus and further showcase the latest in healthcare technologies.”

The view of how the new Westchester Medical Center Ambulatory Pavilion scheduled to open to serve “walk-in” patients in 2018 will be situation adjacent to the present WMC building. The view is from the Sprain Brook Parkway, looking West.

The project will break ground this spring and is expected to be completed in 2018. The  Westchester County Local Development Corporation is financing the project at no risk to the county. The borrower WMCHealth is solely responsible for repaying the bonds. (More in the WPCNR News Feed below)

Israel said that the eight-story steel and glass Ambulatory Care Pavilion targeted for completion in 2 years,  will include 185,000 square feet of ambulatory care service space, including an Advanced Imaging Center, Ambulatory Surgery Center and Heart and Vascular Institute, and a 20,000-square-foot private-room expansion for Westchester Medical Center, plus another 75,000 square feet for physician offices.

The new building project is expected to break ground this spring, as Westchester Medical Center’s new 6,000-square-foot lobby and its new Caregiver Center for patient families are opened.

The Westchester County Local Development Corporation will  finance the project and  includes $44 million for other capital projects and may re-fund up to $52 million for certain bonds for a total not to exceed $340 million.

There is no financial risk to the county.

The sole obligation for repaying the bonds rests with the not-for-profit borrower, not the LDC.  Because WMCHealth is a public benefit corporation, the LDC amended its bylaws to expand  the LDC financing ability to include public benefit corporations. The additional reach was approved by the state on Tuesday to allow for today’s announcement.

The new Pavilion Team: From left, Mark Tulis, Vice Chair, WMCHealth; Mitchell Hochberg, Chair, WMCHealth;
Richard G. Wishnie, Director, WMCHealth; Deputy County Executive Kevin J. Plunkett;
County Executive Robert P. Astorino; Ilyse Spertus, PhD., Director, Local Development
Corporation (LDC); Michael D. Israel, President and CEO, WMCHealth; Stephen J.
Hunt, Chair, LDC, Nicholas Longo, Director, LDC; Mark K. Stanton, Director, LDC, Gary
F. Brudnicki, Senior Executive Vice President, COO and CFO, WMCHealth; Jerry
McGrath, Director, LDC; William M. Mooney III, Director, Office of Economic Development

The announcement was made at a meeting of the Westchester County Local Development Corporation (LDC), an agency created by Westchester County Executive Robert P. Astorino, which makes tax-exempt financing available to not-for-profit institutions at no risk to taxpayers.

“Hospitals have long been critical to our quality of life in Westchester, but they are also a fast-growing part of our county’s economy,” said Westchester County Executive Astorino. “Today’s announcement represents a giant boost for both healthcare and the economy.  This is the single biggest financing for our LDC to date and by working together with Westchester Medical Center, we are improving healthcare outcomes and creating jobs, which is a winning combination.”

Expected to generate 180 new full-time jobs when complete as well as 225 prevailing wage construction jobs, the WMCHealth Ambulatory Care Pavilion is believed to be one of Westchester’s largest non-residential building projects in recent memory, and the largest healthcare project since Westchester Medical Center’s 400,000-square-foot main tower was built in 1977 and its 250,000-square-foot Maria Fareri Children’s Hospital was built in 2004.

Drop-off area of the new Ambulatory Care Facility.

“This is just another example of the significant investments that WMCHealth is making to further its mission of providing the finest care as close to home for the adults and children of our region,” said Mitchell Hochberg, Chair of the network’s Board of Directors.

Israel said that WMCHealth was proud to partner with County Executive Astorino and the LDC on collaborating on a project of this importance.

“By the time WMCHealth’s Ambulatory Care Pavilion cares for its first patients in 2018, we will have invested nearly $1 billion in infrastructure, technology, renovation and expansion on the Valhalla campus alone, in just over a decade,” Israel added.

Astorino established the county LDC in 2013 to fill a void that had existed since January 2008, when the state’s Industrial Development Agencies, including Westchester’s, lost the authority to issue bonds on behalf of non-profit organizations. Since then, the LDC has provided not-for-profits in Westchester with access to $264 million in low-cost, tax-exempt bonds for the financing of job-creating construction projects. The WMCHealth project marks a first for the hospital and th

About Westchester Medical Center Health Network
The Westchester Medical Center Health Network (WMCHealth) is a 1,400-bed healthcare system headquartered in Valhalla, NY, spanning seven hospitals and several campuses and locations in the Hudson Valley. Its flagship, Westchester Medical Center, is the only regional resource for tertiary and quaternary care, covering 6,000 square miles in eight counties and serving more than three million people. WMCHealth employs more than 10,000 people, with nearly 3,000 attending physicians. With Level 1 and Level 2 Trauma Centers, the region’s only acute-care children’s hospital, an academic medical center, several community hospitals and numerous health-related centers, programs and services, today WMCHealth is the leading and pre-eminent provider of integrated health in the Hudson Valley.

About the Local Development Corporation

Created in 2013 under the state’s Not-For-Profit Corporation Law, the LDC provides non-profits access to millions of dollars in low-cost, tax-exempt bonds for the financing of job-creating construction projects. These benefits are provided at no cost or risk to the taxpayers of Westchester County.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OMN5pbnO30&feature=youtu.be

So what happens now:  each Greenburgh property owner will receive a “disclosure” notice in mid-March, 2016. This letter will show what your assessment and taxes were before the reassessment and what your assessment and projected taxes will be after the reassessment.

If you are satisfied with your assessed value, you need do nothing further.  If you are dissatisfied that your assessment is to high or to low, please contact Tyler Technologies (their contact information will be on the letter) to discuss your new value.  You will have from receipt of the letter to the end of April to meet with our Contractor.

If you are still dissatisfied, after their determination, you have the right to file a formal assessment appeal with the Board of Assessment Review in June of 2016. At this time, there is no charge for the informal meeting with Tyler Technologies, nor is there a charge to file a formal assessment complaint.  You can file the paperwork on your own, as there is no requirement to hire a representative

 Members of the Greenburgh Town Board (Kevin Morgan, Francis Sheehan, Diana Juettner, Ken Jones, and I) decided yesterday to reject the homestead option.. The Town Board asked New York State to do an analysis and all the Board members decided to reject Homestead- after receiving a report from NYS.  Of the more than 1,000 jurisdictions in NYS that have reassessed properties only 48 have adopted homestead, according to the Assessor. Most of the Westchester communities that have reassessed also rejected homestead.

During a reassessment, a municipality has the choice of adopting what is known as the “Homestead Option”.  Homestead is a tax policy option available to municipalities that implement a reassessment.  It creates two classes, homestead (residential) and non-homestead (commercial properties and most condominiums and cooperatives).  It also creates different tax rates for each of the classes.  Typically the Non-Homestead tax rate is higher.

The purpose of the Homestead is to prevent a dramatic shift in the tax burden to residential property owners in the event that the residential class increases its share of taxable value.    There are many factors to take in to consideration prior to making this decision, such as but not limited to: what would happen to the residential class of property; what would happen to the condominiums/cooperatives, and what would happen to the commercial class of property.

At our Town Board work session on February 23rd our Assessor, Monitor and our State Representative, presented data to give us the ability to make an informed decision whether or not to opt in to the Homestead Option.  The information supplied indicated that the aggregate tax shifts between the residential and commercial class of properties was a very modest increase of approximately 2% in the aggregate.

However, if we were to adopt this provision, the commercial properties would pay substantially more in property taxes along with over 60% of the condominium owners paying over 30% more of the aggregate tax burden.

This burden would be very difficult to bear for condominium property owners, and we were also concerned about the burden to our commercial owners, as we want to maintain the economic competitiveness that we currently have.  We have many large  commercial developments interested in coming to Greenburgh (which will assist in relief of the tax burden to our homeowners) and this may create an apprehension, not unwarranted.

For the reasons above, the Town Board unanimously decided against opting in to the Homestead Option.

The members of the Town Board -Diana Juettner, Ken Jones, Francis Sheehan, Kevin Morgan, Assessor Edye McCarthy and I are more than happy to meet with neighborhood groups in the coming months to discuss the reassessment process and to answer questions. If you have any other questions about the process please e mail me at pfeiner@greenburghny.com.