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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WPCNR COMMON COUNCIL CHRONICLE-EXAMINER. By John F. Bailey. July 23, 2010:

Mack Carter, Executive Director of the White Plains Housing Authority,  painted a picture of a Winbrook Revitalization Project to five members of the Common Council that would be a product of the desires of  the citizens in adjacent neighborhoods after a community planning involvement process that he envisioned beginning this fall.

As part of this process, he said, community groups, residents of Winbrook and “stakeholders” from the business community around the city’s aging World War II vintage housing project would, in a series of meetings articulate their vision of the Winbrook of the future. Carter told the council a “feasibility study” was now being conducted by the designated, contracted developer combination of Jonathan Rose Associates and Avalon Bay, first reported by WPCNR three months ago.

 Susan F. Habel, Commissioner of Planning outlined a plan she asked the council to approve at their August  where the council would apply for a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Community Challenge Grant. To qualify the city has to put up $1,000,000 for a possibility of getting a $5 Million grant from HUD.

The Council would commit $150,000 city cash and $200,000 in city services in contemplation of winning a Housing and Urban Development grant that could be as much as $6,000,000 towards the community involvement process.

Habel told the council the city had gotten a the Housing Authority to commit an additional $200,000 in inkind services, $150,000 dedicated to land acquisition from the affordable housing fund, and  gotten an academic-related institute, the Michaelian Institute of  Pace University to offer planning advice and the Regional Planning Association to participate for a seed “stake” of $1 Million, which HUD would match with possibly as much as $5,000,000 for the planning process. This would possibly be awarded by  HUD in October, Habel said.

The council is being asked to approve this commitment for the grant  at their August meeting in order for the city to apply for the grant that would help fund the Winbrook, Post Road, Lexington Avenue planning process that would follow the “Feasibilty Study.

Carter reported to the Common Council that the White Plains Housing Authority had signed a development contract in June  with Jonathan Rose Associates and Avalon Bay, (a development reported two months ago by  WPCNR). Jonathan Rose Associates and Avalon Bay, Carter told the Council  are currently devising and funding a “feasibility study” to come up with what is possible to be built on the Windbrook site, the ratios of affordable housing and market rate housing in each new replacement Winbrook building, as well as mixed use development. The feasibility study is expected to be completed by October, Carter said, and Ms. Habel said the feasibility study will be a spring board for community participation and the Task Force that will be expected to give input in the fall.

Asked by  Councilman David Buchwald about funding for the project, Carter acknowledged that because it took longer than expected to select the developers (Jonathan Rose and Avalon Bay), that the Housing Authority had been unable to file for funding from HUD by June of this year, when filing was due. He said they expected to be ready for file for HUD financing for the project in June of  2011. WPCNR notes that one year ago, when the Common Council approved the Winbrook rezoning project without a clear cut concept of what was being proposed, the reason for approving it was precisely for the Housing Authority to apply for HUD funds by this year.

Mr, Carter stated that no residents of Winbrook are expected to be moved out, that all occupants of the present 450 units would be moved into new units built one new building at a time. The project, he said would take about 10 years.  Councilperson Milagros Lecouna worried about the ration of the 15 story buildings of market rate income units to the affordable units for the Winbrook residents. Bill Null, the lawyer for the Housing Authority it would be about 90 Winbrook rerserved units to 160 for market rate units in the 185-250 unit buildings expected to be built. Lecouna wanted to know where those units would be located in the buildings. Null said this was one of the key components being tackled by the “feasibility study.”

Carter said it was premature really to be talking to the council as the feasibility study had not been executed yet. He assured the council  the Task Force that would draw out community input from stakeholders, residents, neighbors, and businesses along Post Road and Lexington Avenue would play a key role in devising the final design and components of the development. “This is not a hidden process. We want to be very transparent. It’s an open process.”

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WPCNR WHITE PLAINS LAW JOURNAL. By John F. Bailey.  July 22, 2010:

The trial of Mayor Adam Bradley of White Plains on 9 domestic violence related charges involving alleged actions against his wife may begin in late October with jury selection, Judge Susan M. Capeci  allowed today in a “readiness for trial conference.”

Westchester County Courthouse.

The Mayor in his dark blue suit gray shirt, dark tie appeared with his attorney, Luis Penichet approximately 10:13 A.M. in New York State Supreme Court this morning, after three previous cases of domestic violence involving violations of orders of protection were heard, one of whom was in handcuffs, who plead guilty.

The Judge called the prosecutor from the District Attorney’s Special Investigations Unit, Audrey Stone and Mr. Penichet to the bench for a conference, during which time, Mr. Penichet’s cellphone went off three times, which the Judge ignored. (Cellphones are supposed to be turned off in the courtroom, it should be noted.)

The Judge after a 40 second dissertation by Penochet and a brief comment by Stone, informed the courtroom that the case would next return to court September 23 at 9:30 A.M. for a pre-trial conference, with jury selection set to begin “during the October Jury term,” on October 20,21, and 22. The judge noted that she was presiding over another trial in the same approximate time frame, and the progress of that trial might affect when the Bradley case came to trial.

Audrey Stone, for the District Attorney’s Office, said the D.A.’s office was ready to go to trial with their case.

Asked how many witnesses the District Attorney would be calling, D.A. spokesperson, Tracy Everson, covering for Lucian Chalfen), told WPCNR the D.A. would not disclose the number of witnesses they would be calling. Ms. Everson also told WPCNR the D.A.’s office and Mr. Bradley’s legal counsel have been participating in an “open discovery” process.

Everson in a statement to WPCNR said:  “As to who might testify at trial, with who the potential witness would be, we are going to try our case in the courts and not in the media, so that’s when you will find out who will be called to testify at trial. The discovery material has been an open file discovery case, which means the defense was allowed to permitted  to review any and all documentation and evidence, the prosecution and the people hold.”

The District Attorney’s key witness in the case is Mr. Bradley’s mother-in-law, Kane Machinaga, who is presently in Japan. Ms. Machinaga assured the District attorney last month she would return for any trial date to give testimony. The district attorney’s office did not depose her on video tape in June, which had been considered at the time.

The Mayor faces charges of alleged assault in the 3rd degree, harrassment,violations stemmping from an alleged tea-throwing incident on January 11 of this year, in addition to assault in the third degree and three other counts regarding a alleged incident February 28 when the Mayor was charged for allegedly slamming his wife’s finger in a door.

The charges of withness tampering, 4th degree, Harrassment 2nd Degree and Contempt in the 2nd degree are a result of the Mayor’s alleged violating the order of protection against him five times.

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WPCNR ALBANY ROUNDS. By John F. Bailey. July 21, 2010:

WPCNR has learned that New York Governor David Paterson, in an effort to slice the present 2010-11 budget deficit has offered present state workers a pension incentive if they would retire now.

State employees offered this deal have confirmed the offer.

The effect of the deal enables the Governor to clear payroll, slash the current 2010-11 budget, which is still being funded on a sporadic basis by a legislature which does not seem to be doing anything to pass a budget. The budget due to be approved April 1, three months and three weeks ago, is 112 days late. The legislature continues to fund expenditures “as needed,” to keep the state functioning.

The Paterson deal to state employees eligible to retire is one month added to their pension calculation for every year of service if they retire now, essentially an 8% increase in their pension.  If, for example you have been working for the state for 30 years, you would get an extra 2 years and six months service added to your pension calculation. Perhaps it would mean an 8% increase on a person’s pension if they left now, according to rough estimates from our source.

The advantage to the state is to cut thousands of jobs now from the state payroll reducing the budget deficit,while jacking pensions out of the state pension funds. It also enables the new governor next year, one analyst said, to offer (refill) lots of jobs for an incoming administration.

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 WPCNR’S NEWS & COMMENT. By John F. Bailey.. July 20, 2010 (This column originally appeared on WPCNR on February 1, 2003, and celebrates the Dreamers, the Achievers, the High and the Mighty):

The Space Blazers:

 The Apollo 11 Crew: Nail Armstrong, Michael Collins,  Buzz Aldrin, Jr. Mr. Armstrong set foot on the moon 41 years ago today.(NASA Photo)

The two papers I receive at WPCNR White Plains News Headquarters, White Plains, New York, USA did not tell you this morning that today is the 41st  anniversary of the day when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. The exact hour  is just two hours away at 20:11 GMT (Greenwich Mean Time). That was the culmination of the last great American achievement — conquering space — when Apollo 11 with Armstrong in command, with astronauts Michael Collins and Edwin E. Aldrin, Jr. blasted off to the stars .

Their mission was a success. But there have been the tragedies associated with striving for the stars and being the best, achieving the best, working for the good. Those are the persons who keep the dreams alive by their deaths and personal sacrifice. This column was written after the explosion of the Columbia Space Shuttle upon reentry after 19 days in space in January 2003.

Saturday’s fatal Columbia Space Shuttle accident killing all 7 astronauts aboard when the historic spacecraft broke up over East Texas at daybreak Saturday morning begins a period of national mourning.

The expected media speculations have started, guessing at the cause of the reentry that went bizarrely, awfully wrong.

The truth is the civilized world takes absolute scientific miracles for granted. We do not appreciate the courage and skills of the men and women creating the future.

Those of us with cell phones, internet connections, high-speed trains, satellite communications and entertainment (all products made possible by the space program), do not realize the magnitude of daring achievements that you and I have come to accept to be executed like clockwork.

I first learned of Columbia’s fate late Saturday afternoon when my wife mentioned that instead of sports programming being videotaped on our television, there was coverage of a live NASA event on ABC.

(Incredibly, the radio station I had been listening to on the way from a sports clinic had not reported any hint of the accident. That station was Z-100, the most listened-to station in the New York metropolitan area. America Online also on their first up page did not mention the missing craft as of midday. That kind of communications misjudgment is sad.)

As I watched the close of Mr. Jennings’ coverage at about 3 PM, he signed off with no recap, no names of astronauts, and some parting words about what he thought was the cause of the disaster.

I’ll say what he should have said.

Columbia’s seven astronauts who died — we know their names: they were

Columbus, Magellan, Cook, Lewis, Clark, the Wrights, Lindbergh, De Laroche, Earhart, Markham, Gruber, Chaffee, Grissom, White, Gargarin, Komarov, the Challenger Crew, the crew of Soyuz 11. They are the hundreds of brave men and women who went into the unknown.

Apoll 11’s Crew turned the dreams of the 1950s visualized in television shows like Tom Corbett, Space Cadet (above, Astro, Roger and Tom) and Captain Video, “The Master of Science” below  int reality.

America’s Spacemem and the explorers before them are the people who trust in their ability and their vessel to expand the world’s horizons, to know the unknown, whose legacies build a better world. Whose deeds inspire and achievements are the catalyst for achievement to come.

From Cook’s fragile vessel which sailed the Pacific, to the marvel that was the Columbia, the captains courageous who sailed the Roaring 40s, blazed the Oregon Trail, discovered how to fly, and flew the oceans, journeyed to the stars, knew the risks they were taking. 

The media  trivializes their courage, their skills, and the difficulty of what they did and wanted to do, to concentrate on the causes of their failure, as if knowing the cause will make their loss acceptable.

The Magnificent Seven

I do not know Columbia’s Magnificent Seven. I just see their smiling faces in their photograph, and I regret the loss of every one. They had achievement on their faces, pride in their demeanor. Their eyes shown with the glow of being alive and striving to do the great things they set out to do.

Civilization has been created because of people like the crew of the Columbia’s Magnificent Seven, not the incompetence we see demonstrated daily today where technology is concerned.

The Columbia itself had flown 26 missions since launching in 1981. It was guided and outfitted with the best 2003 communications and equipment had to offer.

Not like Captain James Cook’s bark, Endeavour, a 100-foot ship powered by sail that conquered the “space” of his time, the Pacific Ocean. It was the Columbia’s Magnificent Seven’s Endeavour. They were tracked, they were backed up, but they perhaps more than anyone here on the ground knew the high dangers of the shuttle mission.

Liftoff, as their predecessors, The Challenger crew fell victim to, is fraught with risk. Reentry, which needs to be negotiated at precisely the right angle of attack, is equally risky. Soyuz 11’s spacecrew of Dobrovolskiy, Volkov, and Patsayev died in 1971 on reentry, when the Russian cosmonauts took too long to descend.

No guarantees in real life. Machines sometimes run out of miracles.

The magnificence of the explorers’ sacrifice and dedication, is that they accept the risk of “the endeavor.”

They accept the challenge, bear it alone, seizing challenge with an indomitable spirit and confidence, facing death when it comes with the satisfaction that they made the effort, and I suspect analyzing, coping, trying to fix it until the end, the very end. Then never give up.

Columbia’s Magnificent Seven, after 16 days in space, are gone now. My sorrow is with their families who will miss these Magnificent Seven, and who know in their hearts that they died trying to reach the pinnacle of their aspirations.

They are only human.

They tried their best, achieved their best, and experienced what they longed to experience. They dared to live the great adventure.

Not all of us have the courage to follow our longed-for adventures and make them real. You can watch movies that attempt to give that experience by transference. That’s why, I believe, you and I take it so personally when we lose heroic personalities of our time. We wonder what they are like. We glorify them, rightly so.

Follow Me! They Say.

I wonder how those Magnificent Seven felt, how satisfying it must have been, to be at your best, doing what you love, coping with the risks.I envy them that.

The Columbia Crew is the Miracle.

In reality it is not machines that conquer, it is the intrepid personalities, each unique, each contributing, who perform the miracles with God’s help. That they fall short is an example to us, not to take ourselves, our fates, or our existences for granted.

This is true of the everyday people we take for granted: the firefighter, the policeman, the train engineer, the airline pilot, the construction worker, and yes, the crusading reporter. All are highly trained disciplined workers, executing precise tasks for which the non-expert has no feel or understanding . What makes for the desire to achieve? What is out there or up there that leads them on?

The Feel of the Unknown

I took Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s biographical adventure diary, Listen! The Wind down from the bookshelf.

She was the young bride of the aviator-pioneer, Charles Lindbergh. She navigated for him in his aircraft, and ran his radio communications on his many exploratory flights around the world.

In a passage she describes a night flight over the ocean, in which she was operating the radio for her husband Charles, who was at the controls. Mrs. Lindbergh is describing the feelings she had as she tries to tune in the South American coast at sea in the dark of night in 1933, 77 years ago.

The feeling, the courage of the adventurer, the explorer has not changed. This is great:

Night was the hardest. It would be all right once it was day. I kept saying…We began to hit clouds. I could tell without looking up, for the plane bumped slightly from time to time, first one wing down and then the other. And the moon blackened out for short periods. Then for longer periods. I could not see to write my messages. I stiffened, dimly sensing fear – the old fear of bad weather – and looked out. We were flying under clouds. I could still find a kind of horizon, a difference in shading where the water met the clouds. That was all. But it seemed to be getting darker. Storms? Were those clouds or was it the sky? We had lost the water. We were flying blind. I turned off the light quickly (to give my husband a little more vision), and sat waiting, tense, peering through the night. Now we were out again. There were holes through which one could see the dark sky. It was all right, I felt, as long as there were holes.

More blind flying. This is it, I thought is what people forget. This is what it means to fly across the ocean, blind and at night. But day is coming. It ought to be day before long… Daybreak! What a miracle. I didn’t see any sign of day and yet it must be lighter. The clouds were distinguishing themselves more and more from water and sea.

Daybreak—thank God—as if we had been living in eternal night—as if this were the first sun that ever rose out of the sea.

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WPCNR WESTCHESTER COUNTY CLARION-LEDGER. From the County Board of Legislators.(Edited) UPDATED 3:33 P.M. EDT July 16,2010:

Today, Westchester County Board of Legislators Chairman Ken Jenkins announced that he has submitted legislation that will cap local property tax growth. The Chairman’s tax cap proposal would impose long-term fiscal discipline and ease the crushing burden on Westchester homeowners, who pay the highest property taxes in the country. 

 The proposed property tax cap would limit tax levy growth to three percent or the annual rate of inflation, whichever is lower. Similar to the New Jersey property tax cap plan, the cap would exclude expenses towards public employee health benefits and pension costs. The proposal, also, allows voters to override the tax cap set by public referendum.

The cap, according to Tara L. Martin, Board of Legislators media spokesperson, would appy to both the county property tax and the sewer district taxes (a high impact item in White Plains).

It would not affect city property taxes or school district taxes because the county has no jurisdiction on those taxes, Martin said.  

“These surely are difficult times. We must provide New Yorkers with property tax relief,” said Chairman Jenkins.  “Everyday residents have seen their property taxes rise at unsustainable rates and the soaring increase to their cost of living.  The debate is no longer whether or not there is a problem, or what caused the problem. The debate is instead over how to ease the burden on homeowners.”

 Jenkins believes that solving the property tax crisis in Westchester County is an important step in making our county more affordable for families again and a home for economic growth. “This proposal is a creative way to develop solutions to this on-going problem.  The override provision will allow the public to take an active role in shaping their county budget.”