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WPCNR CITY HALL CIRCUIT. By John F. Bailey. July 16, 2004: The George Gretsas era in White Plains ends today.
George Gretsas, left, and his mentor, Mayor Joseph Delfino at Opening of White Plains Performing Arts Center. November 2003. Photo by WPCNR News.
About this time George Gretsas will be shaving at his modest apartment on Westview Avenue in White Plains. He’ll be donning his trademark white shirt and dark tie and black suit with the sharply creased pants for the last time. Or, will he be taking advantage of casual Friday at City Hall? He’ll put on his Woodrow Wilson spectacles. Then it will be time to put the key in the ignition of the dark sedan to motor to 255 Main Street for the last time.
Gretsas, “The Man Behind the Scenes” as he calls himself will quietly head to his last day, much like a character in a 1930s gangster movie. Perhaps he will wear his long black coat even though it is the middle of summer.
He will leave White Plains as much of an enigma as he was when he arrived in 1998. The man who has micromanaged every aspect of the city for the last six-and-a-half years will be heading to the corner office at the big house on Main Street and in eight to ten hours he will head for new worlds to conquer.
How will city hall change after Mr. Gretsas leaves?
City hall will be a far less nervous place. Things will not move as fast, if Mr. Gretsas truly is divorcing himself from city affairs, and stays true to his statement to the CitizeNetReporter that he will not consult with the Mayor’s office once he takes a job as City Manager with Fort Lauderdale.
Will the “gag order” on all city commissioners be more loosely enforced by whomever Mr. Gretsas’ successor be? City Commissioners under Gretsas are not allowed to speak to the media, or Councilpersons without a Gretsas staffer or Gretsas himself monitoring the interview or telephone conversation.
Will the Mayor start to hold news conferences again where questions are invited from the media?
Over the last year every news conference has not had a formal question-and-answer period — a subtle change that has avoided embarrassing questions being asked of the Mayor. Will news releases announcing changes in the city start to be issued again by the Mayor’s office in a timely manner to all media? They have not.
This will also be the last day city commissioners will sit in dread of an irate Gretsas phone call summoning them to his office to grill them for some transgression against a developer, or for their not cooperating with favored partners of the city, or simply to be hollered for a leak to the press, letting some embarrassing piece of information slip.
Will there be a last tense meeting at the last moment, called on six hours notice in the absurdly small Mayor’s conference room? Perhaps he will want to do that one last time just for kicks.
Perhaps Mr. Gretsas will stroll around the Mayor’s Conference Room for a last time and feel a touch of nostalgia at the intrigue and arm-twisting of councilpersons that month after month he orchestrated, maneuvering the council into situations where they had to approve matters, had to not ask the embarrassing questions, and were presented with choices that made doing The Mayor’s bidding more politically advantageous than doing their due diligence.
Maybe he will call one more Executive Session just for the fun of it.
There have never been more Executive Sessions on important matters in the City of White Plains than in the least 6-1/2 years according to seasoned observers.
Meetings or work sessions were carefully set up by the politically shrewd maneuverer of City Hall. From the New York Presbyterian Hospital offer to settle their Article 78 action, to the Nicoletti Bypass solution, to the awarding of the White Plains Performing Arts Center contract, the council was wrangled masterfully by Mr. Gretsas into making politically expedient decisions, and it could be argued, the wrong decisions.
Perhaps Mr. Gretsas should suppress one more damaging memo or piece of information today.
Just for old times’ sake. Like the Nicoletti City Center sewer memo, the Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s bond analysis, or the actual sales tax collection figures, and how $5.2 million from the Parking Authority was spent on economic development when the council agreed it was to go to debt service.
All were important pieces of information that the Council’s attention was subtlely misdirected from at the time when that information should have been paid attention to very closely for the good of the city.
At lunch, Mr. Gretsas can order his favorite chinese takeout one last time. (He may not be able to get the same Chinese quality down in Fort Lauderdale.)
Perhaps the Mayor’s office will have its locks removed now that Gretsas is leaving.
The outer entrance tothe Mayor’s Office is always locked, and you have to be buzzed in. The interior Mayor’s suite is also locked during meetings in the conference room, resulting in fumbling knocking when a commissioner or zealous aid needs to go in and consult with Mr. Gretsas in his inner sanctum. The resulting knockings and openings during the course of a meeting lately resemble Seinfeld skits.
Since the first edition of this article appeared, a reader has suggested that the television security cameras installed under the Gretsas regime could be the next things to go.
Maybe, just for the memory, Mr. Gretsas will summon one last private meeting with a member of the press in which he offers to go off the record with the reporter to give them the real reasons why something happened. Or summon a reporter for an advance story of an event about to happen Monday.
This taking a reporter into confidence is a technique of news management Mr. Gretsas has perfected to engineer softpedaled stories about very embarrassing situations. The cadre of journalists in Fort Lauderdale will not know what hit them when he starts doing this down there.
Perhaps more timely and candid budget analysis will be presented in September when the first financials usually come out.
Last year the information was notoriously sketchy and explained away by assurances “it’ll get better.”
Another thing he might do is to give assurances to one more citizen that something will be done for them that they expect.
Well, Mr. Gretsas no longer has to worry about White Plains future. But who will?
Will Mayor Joseph Delfino suddenly take the policy reins and plot out the choreography of each City Hall day beginning Monday? It may take time away from his public appearances.
Perhaps on Monday the Mayor will report how the city will be reorganized after Gretsas leaves at the end of the day. We still do not know.
Or maybe the Mayor won’t have to.
Mr. Gretsas jocularly referred to a sattelite link to Fort Lauderdale on his appearance on the Winbrook Like It Is show Wednesday evening. Mr. G. is only a phone call away, a computer and a fax away and evenings on his balcony with the Atlantic Ocean breeze blowing in, he can simply review the events of the day in White Plains and direct Mr. Wood (the rumored next Executive Officer) how to proceed.
That couldn’t be the plan, could it?
Of course not. No one would be that egocentric to think they could run a city by telephone from half-a-continent away.
Or could they?
At the end of the day, George Gretsas will have left the building for the last time. But the memories will linger on.
Mr. Gretsas has engineered the White Plains Renaissance. No question, as he says. He has achieved a lot for the city, it seems good.
He deserves all the credit for that. He could have executed it better though. He could have run a more open government, a nicer government, a government that inspired confidence instead of suspicion.
Time will tell whether the Gretsas style and the Gretsas methods and the Gretsas decisions were the right ones.
