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 SCHOOL DAYS. News & Comment By John F. Bailey.January 20,2010: Tonight at the Slater Center, the White Plains Board of Education will stage its second Budget Planning Process forum at the Slater Center, 2 Fisher Court, 7:30 P.M. Last week the first session was held at White Plains High School drawing about 75 persons, including teachers and school district personnel.

 

In looking at the state budget proposed by Governor David Paterson yesterday, and judging the information provided by the school district last week, property taxpayers in White Plains can be assured that because the school district did not cut more expenses last year when they had the opportunity, district taxpayers will be paying whopper tax increases this year in the White Plains School District.

 

A preliminary runthrough by WPCNR shows the district is looking at a $50 increase in the tax rate – unless a miracle occurs. The district is looking at a $201 Million budget based on preliminary figures.

 

 

At last week’s meeting at  the high school, no preliminary budget was passed out, and citizens were asked to comment on areas and issues concerning the budget. One of the most telling comments came toward the end of the meeting, when one spectator asked how the audience could make serious suggestions where to cut the budget when the district had not presented a preliminary budget to them. The Superintendent of Schools (Dr. Christopher Clouet) promised that a preliminary budget would be ready in February.

 

 

Here’s why the largest combined tax increases in memory are going to hit us, unless the school district goes to work and cuts expenses deep:

 

* The Governor went on record yesterday saying he was going to make the whopping cut in the STAR Exemption of 18% he wanted to enact last year, but compromised to an 11% cut instead.  However, the 18% cut is back in his budget this year.

 

By the way, WPCNR was the only media that chose to report this last year. The STAR EXEMPTION cut  was deftly and deliberately hidden by the Governor and the legislature last year, and it was quietly used to “fund-through-the-taxpayer”  the “restoration” of school aid much lauded last spring by the legislators themselves. Local legislators denied knowledge of this legislative sleight of hand, blaming it on the Office of Real Property Services.

 

 But the Governor is very upfront about it in yesterday’s presentation to the legislature. The effect is to tax you upfront with an increase in tax even before the school budgets are passed. The problem is declining home and business property values are going to reduce assessments anyway delivering what WPCNR predicts will be the largest school tax increase we have seen in years unless sanity returns to the school district in some way.

 

 

White Plains Assistant Superintendent for Business Fred Seiler outlined the following cost increasers he expects will affect the budget. His numbers indicated expected increases as follows to be added to this year’s $185,778,149 school budget:

 

* $3.225 Million in Salary Increases for Teachers, Administrators and CSEA members.

 

* $2.8 Million Teacher Retirement Fund Increase

 

* $700,000 in Employee Retirement Increase

 

* $3.3 Million in health Insurance Increases (expected 10%)

 

Total New Budget adding these increases: $196 Million.

 

However, what Seiler did not allude to was the effect of a possible drop of $3 Million in the Assessment Roll causing a $1.5 Million drop in revenue.

 

Say the assessment roll goes down a mere $3 Million to $283.8 Million, this will roll up the budget impact another $1.5M, plus a $3.5 Million in School Aid Loss for White Plains, according to recent governor estimates, bringing a possible total budget of  $201 Million.

 

$1,000 school tax increase for the median home?

 

Such an increase, $185.8 Million to $201 Million unless the district cuts expenses ruthlessly, would result in a tax rate of approximately $567/ $1,000 of assessed valuation. A median home owner  under 65 of a house assessed at $18,475 would pay an increased school property tax of $9,095 up from about $8,000 in 09-10—about a $1,000 increase. Those whose homes are over the median would of course pay more.

 

 Refresher in the STAR EXEMPTION

 

Here’s how the STAR EXEMPTION will work if the legisalature retains the 18% STAR CUT.

 

If you’re under 65 and own a median-priced home in White Plains, ($650,000) your STAR EXEMPTION for an $18,500 accessed home  currently at $2,960 this year declines another $532.80 to $2,427, increasing your assessed value to $16,048. At this year’s school tax rate this means an automatic tax increase of $275 PLUS whatever money the school district needs to make up, jacking the average median property homeowner’s tax before the school district even begins to add on its increased expenses.

 

The person over 65 owning a median priced home currently with a $5,790 STAR EXEMPTION, gets creamed with the 18%, losing $1,042 reducing the amount of their STAR EXEMPTION to $4,748—that jumps the over-65er homeowner property tax $537 up from the $6,534 they are paying this year.

 

On top of that, do you own a home valued at over $1.4 Million? Well you lose your STAR EXEMPTION completely. The governor’s budget eliminates the STAR Exemption for homes valued over $1.4 Million. That’s a lot more taxes for you millionaire home owners out there.

 

 

Concepts to ponder:

 

At a recent seminar held January 11 at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., blueprints for the school district of the future were discussed  by Steven Wilson of Ascend Learning and John Chubb of the Edison Learning Institute before a group of assembled educators. The two presented papers that challenged the shibboleths of education today, including the belief that  small class size increases achievement(not demonstrated by research), and challenged districts to use more technology to instruct students in new media, stratify classes according to achievement, among other practices that have been successful in the most successful school systems around the world including charter schools.

 

The eye-opening conference may  be viewed on C-Span at 

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WPCNR THE BIG EXTRA. News & Comment by John F. Bailey. January 18, 2010:  I wrote this column in 2004. It still stands relevant today, Monday morning at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in White Plains, the man, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. will be remembered. His birthday was last week.  I am not that familiar with Dr. King’s life, but I do know that he, like other great men of America who have their days, Dr. King’s name stands for a value that America holds dear.

 George Washington stands for honesty.  

Abraham Lincoln for freedom

 

Columbus for discovery,

 

Dr. King’s name stands for Opportunity.

 

 When I think of Dr. King, I think of the Selma marches, I think of Birmingham, I think of Little Rock, Arkansas, where he lead the African-American community in demonstrations asking for the right of equal opportunity in America: a seat on a bus wherever they chose; a restaurant or hotel of their choice; the right to apply for a job without being turned down because you were black. Blatant in-your-face-discrimination was publicized by Dr. King and America was shown it was not right.

 

It took fearlessness to do that. Who today has that fearlessness that Dr. King and his followers showed all of America?

 

Today, subtle discrimination denying equal opportunity, denying education, exploiting the poor and guaranteeing less opportunity are the evils that Dr. King, had he lived,  would be attacking today. 

 

When I write those sentences I just wrote, it seems incomprehensible to me that someone would deny another person that. When you think about it, it is an awful situation to think about. In the 42 years since Dr. King was murdered, the nation has come a long way in breaking down the visible barriers of racism based on creed and the color of one’s skin — and now, today, the language one speaks and where they are from. The education establishment continues to favor the English-speaking, the wealthied, and the well-situated.

 

Today the barriers to Equal Opportunity are more subtle and just as effective.

 

Barriers still exist: in the classroom. There is reluctance to deliver quality education to the black and Hispanic populations in America today.

 

The only reason there is a concentrated effort to do so are the state achievement tests which showed the shame of our education programs for minorities.

 

 On the other hand, there is the perception elsewhere that because your name and skin color are different, you automatically need help and are slow-tracked into remedial classes; the inclusion of the slower (read minority) children in one corner of a classroom so you can deal with the “problem children” all at once; the notion that it is all right to use millions of dollars meant for rebuilding poor performing schools with better buildings, better teachers, but is used to create educational  bureaucracies for the politically connected instead.

 

In the last ten years the products of this subtle unequal educational opportunity have been well documented and given a name: The Achievement Gap. The educational establishment invests millions in studies to find solutions to it and they have learned a lot about it. It takes more School District heads to stand up and say like Dr. King, “we simply are not going to educate half the population any more.”  

 

The lagging of minority youth is blamed on the home and family breakdown. Well then you have to bring more attention to the family unit and those youngsters’ home environment, putting the education in there. It’s expensive but if you want to solve the Achievement Gap you have to do that.  

 

The argument that you have to speak English in the schools and learn through English is  racial superiority. Of course you have to learn to speak English, but really, Bilingual education is how we English-speakers learn another language. Port Chester has achieved this — and WPCNR pointed this out to the White Plains School Board years ago. Why is this new?

 

Every new teacher being hired in the White Plains School District should be bilingual. And how about a new position in the Superintendent’s cabinet: an educator in charge of bilingual education and academic performance, just for starters.

 

Why not have teachers educate children in their own language with English simultaneously? It is proven to work in Port Chester and New Rochelle. It is time to stop the subtle prejudice that we do not want non-English speaking children in our towns and schools because they are too hard to educate and will cost us money to do that. They are children, you simply cannot throw them away because they do not speak English.

 

This discrimination Dr. Martin Luther King would find hard to take.

 

He would bristle at lowering standards for minorities, because he would see right through that argument, saying:  when are you going to raise the standards for my people because you don’t have to work any harder at educating them, if you do not raise your expectations for them.

 

I think Dr. King would look around today and appreciate how Blacks and Whites, Hispanics and Jews, Catholics and Protestants, Muslims and  other races mingle together in today’s America.

 

I think he’d observe we are all becoming more appreciative and respectful of each other. But, I do not think he would like today’s buzz word :”diversity” and our smugness about our diversity.

 

He would say that’s nice, but let’s keep our eye on the prize, to borrow the wonderful motto of the White Plains Department of Public Safety, let us treat all with integrity, professionalism, respect, and to that add opportunity.

 

Now, let’s think how Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. would handle the present illegal housing situation in White Plains.

 

I believe Dr. Martin Luther King would take organizations in this town that circulate lists of rooming houses (without inspecting them for overcrowding), and call them out, if he were in White Plains today. He’d stand up there tomorrow morning and read list of homes and distribute it personally to the Mayor and say — clean up this disgrace. 

 

Dr. King was not  only politically incorrect, but  politically uncooperative.

 

He’d  bring the unsafely housed with him to breakfast tomorrow morning and introduce them all around to the rich and the powerful and the well-connected and show them the people whom they are treating like cruel political pawns by our leaders on the county and the city level – all over this county — just so political contributers are protected.

 

He’d ask each  to tell their stories at his breakfast. He’d prey for compassion from us the wealthy, the powerful and the decent, and the respectable to have compassion for the weak, the misdirected, the addicted and disturbed, and the mortgage-ravaged.

 

He’d bring the foreclosees and those forced out of their homes and ask those on the dais and the tables — how could you not help them out?

 

He’d ask White Plains leaders to accept the responsibility of leadership and by reaching out personally to the homeless to provide them meals and, perhaps jobs during the day, to welcome them in to White Plains somehow. To help them make a new start in White Plains in a firehouse, a church, or a vacant hospital. To challenge businesses to weave these persons into the fabric of the downtown, instead of telling them they are not welcome.

 

He’d challenge us  to step up our humanity,  as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. did when no one else would 39 years ago.

 

He’d shame  the two governments, county and city, for not treating the immigrants, the foreclosees, the homeless with simple human respect and adhering to the constitution, which prohibits you from being jailed for no reason – a policy incredulously being pushed by politicians who should read the constitution just once to reset their minds.

 

He’d ask White Plains to rise up and forgive the persons with the prison records who have done their time, and find jobs for them and through forgiveness, and respect for them,  melt away the homeless persons’ suspicions and resentments,  alleged by our “leaders.” 

 

And about our gangs: Dr. Martin Luther King would go out to the streets of Yonkers, Mount Vernon, Port Chester, New Rochelle, Peekskill – the cities where gang activity has been reported – and  speak to them about where they are going. It is difficult to say Dr. King would say to the gang members of our area.

 

But, I assure you he’d be in their midst confronting this problem and admitting it exists.

 

As we honor Dr. Martin Luther King Monday. Ask ourselves what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. would think of the way we have treated the less fortunate?  What he would think about how we have “reached out?” Would he approve of the way we are working with our youth, our Hispanic population, about how dollars are being used to make unsafe housing safe and why it cannot be policed better, about how dollars are being spent in school districts whether on educating people or creating buildings or stadiums; how dollars are being spent by organizations supposedly helping the afflicted, and how they are really doing, and what are they doing with the dollars.

 

He’d excoriate the variable and below prime mortages now being foreclosed as a new form of financial redlining invented by the financial establishment to exploit. He’d ridicule the efforts of the government to “save” billion dollar financial institutions while allowing homeowners to lose their houses.

 

Would Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. approve?

  

He’d remind us that Jesus Christ chose to minister to the “hardcore” of his time. He went into their midst. He  healed them and made them fishers of men.

 

The way to honor Dr. King tomorrow  and at the “celebrated” holiday  next week is to honor the afflicted, help the troubled with dignity, not humiliate them, not shun them, not “throw them out.”

 

The way Dr. King would view our world today?

He’d observe that “we need work.”

That the lynchings and the shutting of school doors are gone, but the attitudes remain.

And he’d point that out with that his long finger pointing right at us.

He’d say, “I still have a dream.”

And he’d be pointing his finger at the double-standard of justice for the minority youth and the well-to-do wealthy person that will exist today.

He’d be calling upon all to keep our eyes on the prize and not on the power, the prestige, and the people who would steer us away from what needs to be done.

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WPCNR BACKROOM BULLETIN. Special to The CitizeNetReporter. January 14, 2010 UPDATED 11:15 P.M. E.S.T.: Peter Harckham, the County Legislator from Katonah, defeated White Plains Alison Greene by a 13,000 to 7,000 “weighted” vote on the second ballot tonight at the County Democratic Convention at the Crowne Plaza Hotel for the nomination to run for White Plains Mayor Adam Bradley’s 89th District New York state Assembly Seat, which Mr. Bradley vacated when he became Mayor.

At the County Republican Convention, Rob Castelli was nominated for the 89th Seat. Mr. Castelli, speaking to WPCNR this evening, said he is hoping to obtain the Conservative and Independence Party lines as well. He said Harckham is vulnerable having supported Andy Spano on many issues as County Legislator, the recent affordable housing settlement in particular.

Harckham and Castelli have 4 weeks before the Special Election coming up February 9.

Mr. Harckham, quoted in a news release, gave this statement:

“I am extremely humbled and gratified to have earned the trust and support of my fellow Democrats.  With just a few short weeks to go before the election, I will strive to be worthy of that trust, and to present the voters of the 89^th Assembly District with a strong voice to restore confidence and accountability in Albany.  I promise to run a strong, clean, competitive campaign that brings our message of new hope and confidence to the people of our district.”

Dr. Clifford Gevirtz, our correspondent reports, withdrew before the first ballot. Charlotte Watson did not withdraw, and after she finished third in the first vote, Harckham and Greene contended. 

Harckham will face a Republican candidate, reported to be Rob Castelli whom Adam Bradley defeated in 2004 in his bid for reelection for the 89th Assembly District seat,25,571 votes to 17,457.

Our correspondent said that Ms. Greene made a gracious speech in support of Mr. Harckham, and he, in turn, made an equally gracious acceptance speech.

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WPCNR MAIN STREET JOURNAL. January 12,2010: As predicted weeks ago on the White Plains Week  local White Plains public access television program, the City Center is getting a new tenant: a Shop-Rite Supermarket. Geofrey Thompson, a spokesman for Cappelli Enterprises announced the new tenant would be arriving in the summer. It will take up a portion of the second floor of City Center opposite Nordstrom Rack, according to Thompson & Bender, accessible from the bridge from the parking garage.