WHITE PLAINS CITIZENETREPORTER 3,374,995 VISITS IN ONE YEAR—65,000 VISITS A WEEK BY 985,281 VISITORS

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WPCNR COUNTY CLARION-LEDGER. By John F. Bailey. September 18, 2002: After five hours behind closed doors at the Board of Elections on Quarropas Street examining Absentee Ballots and Affidavit Ballots, representatives from the Naomi Matusow and Adam Bradley candidacies and Ms. Matusow and Mr. Bradley sat down in an enclosed glass room to count just the White Plains ballots that had been accepted for counting.

DEMOCRACY UNDER GLASS: The counting of the 35 absentee ballots and affidavit ballots from White Plains as it proceeded Wednesday afternoon. A BOE clerk holds a ballot for Naomi Matusow and Adam Bradley to view.
Photo by WPCNR

At the end of 35 minutes, Mr. Bradley emerged from the counting at 4:45 PM Wednesday to announce he had a net gain of 12 votes, winning 22 votes, with Matusow gaining 10 and 3 being questioned, extending his lead to 35 votes.
Unofficially, this brings Mr. Bradley’s vote total to 2,716 to Assemblywoman Naomi Matusow’s, 2,681. The figures are from the Bradley campaign.

The counting of absentee ballots from Harrison, New Castle, Lewisboro, Pound Ridge, North Castle and Bedford will resume at 10:00 A.M. Thursday morning at the Board of Elections. According to Bradley number cruncher, Tim James there are 38 more absentee ballots and 10 affidavitt ballots left to be counted beginning tomorrow.

Tom Roach, who was watching the numbers with WPCNR most of Thursday afternoon, and speculating with us, after listening to Mr. James, calculated that the Bradley “Magic Number” is 8. He needs 8 votes out of the remaining 48 to get a majority of 3 votes.

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WPCNR MILKMAN’S MATINEE NEWS ROUNDUP CORRECTION. By John F. Bailey. September 18, 2002: The Common Council convening a Special meeting at 6:05 PM Wednesday evening, took 5 minutes to approve the Sears Special Permit to run an auto repair shop in The Galleria. The Planning Board also took significant action.
Wynnette Peltz, Director of Marketing for the mall, thanked the city and council for “their tremendous cooperation,” and invited them all to come shop. Demolition was supposed to begin today, providing Mike Gismondi turned over the Demolition Permit to Mr. Bergins, The Galleria attorney. The council then went into Executive Session on undisclosed litigation, so hush-hush, that the group left, WPCNR believes, by the elevator, discreetly avoiding the media.

William King corrected this false impression, writing WPCNR to report the council left as it usually does by the stairs at 7 PM, as it usually does.

Planning Board Approves Pettinichi Subdivision.

The unanimous approval granted the Pettinichis last night, (providing they eliminate the easement to the Dellwood property in Silver Lake, and preserve the lot where the revolutionary sawmill stands), struck down the last hurdle standing between the county purchasing the Pettinichi parcel for public employee housing, and the city leasing the county-owned Dellwood property for a “passive” park in Silver Lake.

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WPCNR Front Page. By John F. Bailey. September 17, 2002: Maureen Keating Tsuchiya, Co-Chair of the New Castle Democratic Party, reported to WPCNR late Tuesday afternoon that all District recanvassing had been completed as of 4:25 PM, and that her candidate, Adam Bradley’s numbers had held up, leaving him with what she said was a 23 to 30 vote lead going into the counting of paper ballots.

She told us, according to her information, that the remainder of the absentee and affidavit ballots would be counted at 10 A.M. at the Board of Elections Wednesday morning.

By Tsuchiya’s information, there are 84 Absentee and Affidavitt Ballots left to be counted. Tim James, the Adam Bradley operative observing the White Plains vote recanvass told WPCNR that the Board of Elections so far has approved 19 Affidavit Ballots and there are about 64 Absentee Ballots left.

Tsuchiya bases her information on observations of Bedford, Lewisboro, North Castle Recanvass

Tsuchiya was the Bradley observer in the recanvass of the Mastuso citiadels in the northern reaches of the 89th Assembly District, and she reports the Bradley reports from their Election Night surveys district by district in Bedford, Lewisboro and North Castle have held up.

She also noted that Representative Nita Lowey, a Harrison resident, and Senator Hillary Clinton, (not President Clinton, as previously told us), the Chappaqua resident, will have their Absentee Ballots counted tomorrow morning.

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WPCNR MORNING SUN. From the Agenda Archives. September 17, 2002: The Common Council returns for a Special Meeting (not a Work Session, as previously written), this evening to hold a public hearing to consider Sears request to operate an auto repair garage out of the basement garage floor of The Galleria. They have also scheduled an Executive Session to discuss “impending litigation.” The meeting is at City Hall, 255 Main Street in the Mayor’s Conference Room at 6. The Planning Board meets at 8.

For Planning Board buffs, the Planning Board, lead by the Chairperson Mary Cavallero, and citizens J. Russell Imlay, Stephen A. Alexander, John S. Garment, Terrence P. Gueriere, Robert Stackpole and Juan Carlos Roskell takes up a host of issues this evening a little bit later at 8 PM. In the lineup will be the Pettinicchi Subdivision up on Silver Lake, where the Board will consider the Westchester County plan to build low cost housing for public employees,(the first step in the city hall plan to lease the Dellwood property).

Also in the Planning Board lineup:

Discussion of the ordinance allowing overnight, on-street paid parking for one-year on Mamaroneck Road; the ordinance allowing transferring of development rights in the downtown; three proposed new restaurants; and three antenna sites.

Check out the complete agendas on the City of White Plains website, by going on “White Plains Links,” and looking for Government.

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WPCNR Afternoon Trib & Post. By John F. Bailey. September 16, 2002: Gardella Park was the scene of the annual Republican Party Picnic Sunday, in which Republicans honored Mayor Joseph Delfino with a sketch of himself drawn by Frank Becerra, for the Mayor’s achievements during his first term in office. In talking with Larry Delgado about the picnic, Mr. Delgado said he will meet with the Attorney General September 26 on his effort to get the Attorney General to start a court proceeding to return Mr. Delgado to the Common Council.

Larry Delgado, the deposed White Plains Common Councilman in last year’s disputed White Plains election, told WPCNR that Governor George Pataki’s daughter, Emily, attended the picnic, staying most of the threatening afternoon. (A canopy kept Republicans dry and convivial.)

Delgado said Emily is “very involved in her father’s campaign. It was heartwarming to see how White Plains seems to be shaping up that the city would attract the Governor’s daughter.”

Delgado reported that candidates for County Court, Irene Rattner and Tom Dickerson for Supreme Court were also in attendance.

Republicans Hype Billion Dollar Joe’s Achievements.

Mr. Delgado said that the Republicans honored Mayor Delfino “for the great work he’s done as Mayor, moving the city forward, getting movement on issues that have languished for years, and reinvigorating the downtown.”

After receiving the drawing of himself, Mayor Delfino, according to Delgado, said he was “very thankful. He thanked the city staff, (he always thanks the city staff and extends the credit), and praised the cooperation of the Common Council for their ability to reach a consensus and get things moving.”

Republican Agenda?

Delgado said there were no specific plans for strengthening the Republican Party numbers in White Plains in the immediate future, but said, it was not a majority that mattered, but the candidates that are presented.

The Councilman, awaiting the possibility of his being reinstated to the Common Council, pending an Attorney General investigation into last year’s jammed voting machine in District 18, in White Plains, said he did not know what Mayor Delfino’s new agenda for the next four years, but pointed out the Mayor has moved on all fronts: open space, development, public safety, and was confident the city would continue to grow under the next three years of the Mayor’s term.

Meanwhile, back in the Attorney General’s Office…

WPCNR asked Mr. Delgado how his request for the Attorney General Elliot Spitzer for a quo warranto proceeding to remove Glen Hockley from the Common Council was developing.

Delgado reports he has a meeting with the Attorney General in New York City on September 26, but he has no indication of whether a decision has been reached.

He said he was disappointed that “it has dragged on for so long, considering I sent a letter to the Attorney General February 22. But, the Attorney General’s investigation has been very thorough, and I thank them for the process. They have finished interviewing the Board of Elections officials and inspectors, the City Clerk, and all the people who said they voted for me that day. I submitted 104 sworn affidavits from people in the 18th White Plains Election District who said they voted for me that day, rather than the 39 that the machine recorded. With 87 votes or more, I win the seat.”

Delgado said, “I have the 1.) The Facts on my side, and 2.) The law on my side.”

Mr. Spitzer, in order to remove Mr. Hockley “as a usurper” of Mr. Delgado’s seat, should the Attorney General choose to do so, must do so in a court proceeding in Supreme Court, according to our understanding.

89th Assembly Matusow-Bradley Results “Bizarre,”: Delgado

Mr. Delgado said he found the closeness of the 89th Assembly District election between Naomi Matusow and Allan Bradley and the Board of Elections failure to impound the voting machines, and fluctuating official counts “bizarre.”

“It seems,” he said with a sense of humor and irony, “ With the latest technology in Florida creating problems, our machines creating problems, that we are concentrating not on who wins elections, but on how we count the votes, the process. Perhaps it’s time to go back to paper ballots instead of all this machinery.”

Delgado said, it was perhaps, in retrospect, a good thing the Common Council did not invest in new voting machines last spring when they were considering it, noting the problems that have developed with Florida’s new election machines.

Failure to Impound Strange.

He said that the Board of Elections failure to impound the voting machines as confirmed by all eight Town Clerk offices last week, “is corrosive to the public’s confidence in the integrity of election results.”

Delgado said that when he and his attorneys served their Impoundment Order ten months ago on Election night when they suspected their jammed machine problem in District 18 that his attorneys served both the Board of Elections and the Westchester County Police in Hawthorne. But, Delgado added, “If you can’t count on the Board of Elections who can you count on?”