WHITE PLAINS CITIZENETREPORTER 3,826,065 VISITS IN ONE YEAR—73,578 VISITS A WEEK BY 1,111,506 VISITORS

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Amy Paulin’s Albany: By Assemblywoman Amy Paulin. May 7, 2002, UPDATED May 8, 2002: Assembywoman Paulin reports the agreed-on new NYS Budget enhances the STAR program for Seniors by giving them a cost of living increase, and making available $10 Million more for property tax relief.
Assemblywoman Amy Paulin (D-Scarsdale) today announced that the tentative state budget agreement will improve the School Tax Relief (STAR) program by ensuring that a senior’s STAR eligibility is protected from cost-of-living increases. The budget also simplifies the program for seniors.

“STAR plays an important role in whether many New Yorkers – especially seniors living on fixed incomes – can afford their homes,” Paulin said. “The Assembly was determined during budget negotiations that we continue to make New York a better, more affordable place to live. Improving the STAR program is key to that effort.”

Protecting STAR savings for seniors

According to Paulin, the budget includes a provision that would account for cost-of-living increases based upon the rate of inflation – automatically raising the income eligibility levels for seniors receiving enhanced STAR benefits.

Enhanced STAR saved eligible seniors in Westchester County an average of $2,290 last year – the cost-of-living increase will mean an additional $10 million in savings for seniors statewide.

“This program has helped many seniors keep the homes they’ve worked so hard to maintain,” Paulin said. “Unfortunately a small increase in household income has caused some homeowners to lose these important savings – and possibly their homes. This budget will ensure that small increases in income don’t jeopardize the STAR benefits seniors rely on.”

Other STAR improvements under the budget include easing application requirements for seniors and providing extensions for homeowners who fail to meet a STAR deadline due to a death or illness in the family, or other extenuating circumstances.

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WPCNR Daily Mirror. By John F. Bailey. May 2, 2002. 11:00 AM EDT: Two present members of the Board of Education, seeking reelection to the Board for the next three years will be challenged by three at-large candidates in the Board election May 21 for the two seats up for election.
Michelle Schoenfeld reported to WPCNR Wednesday afternoon that the five candidates are:

Photo by WPCNR

*Incumbent Larry Geiger, a marketing executive and incumbent BOE member since 1984, is seeking his seventh term on the Board. Mr. Geiger was on the Board when the White Plains Choice Program was adapted. He supported the need and the execution of district Technology Upgrade of the 1990s, helped steer the Board to Saul Yanofsky’s selection as Superintendent of Schools in 1989, and strongly supported the high school renovation. His tenure encompasses almost twenty years of growth and positive change for the White Plains School System. His wife wrote a definitive history of White Plains High School.

Photo by WPCNR from the Internet, used with permission.

* Incumbent Stephen Sules, an insurance agent, who is seeking reelection to a second term on the School Board. He was elected in 1999. Mr. Sules, a softspoken thoughtful voice, has consistently supported achievement and supported initiatives to improve test scores, physical school projects, and the high school renovation.

Photo by WPCNR.

*Challenger William Pollak, a lawyer, who pioneered the Coachman “Homework Center.” Both his chlidren have attended White Plains Schools. He is a candidate of the White Plains Alliance for Vision in Education(WAVE), and a critic of the Board of Education handling of the decision not to renew Superintendent of Schools Saul Yanofsky’s contract.

Photo by WPCNR from Campaign Brochure.

* Challenger Robert Tuck, owner of a White Plains bicycle shop, husband of a teacher in the school system, long active in working with city youth and citizen at large who twice has run for Common Council unsuccessfully for the Republican Party.

Photo by WPCNR.

*Challenger Maria Valentin, a lawyer, and former popular and effective teacher in the White Plains High School throughout the 1990s. Another candidate supported by White Plains Alliance for Vision in Education (WAVE), she is a strong advocate for the Parent Choice Program, and has first-hand, effective knowledge of the contemporary school learning environment in White Plains.

Who can Vote.

Any legal resident and registered voter of White Plains is eligible to vote in the School Board Election May 21st, and in casting ballots for these candidates, they should vote for two candidates for the Board, because two seats are up for election.

First contested election in two years.

Michell Schoenfeld said that this was the first contested Board of Education election since 1999. Prior to that, she remembers “we always had contested elections.”

Schoenfeld said she distributed ten petitions to persons interested in running for the Board of Education.

The League of Women Voters is sponsoring a debate between the five candidates to held at The Women’s Club of White Plains on Ridgeway Avenue, next Tuesday at 7 PM.

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WPCNR Pressbox. By John F. Bailey. May 1, 2002. 3:00 PM EDT: The man who used to sharpen Dorothy Hamill’s figure skates sharpens the skate blades for White Plains figure skaters with one-of-a-kind precision instruments he designed 35 years ago.

BLADE MASTER FRED KOHLER sharpens skates in his Haverstraw workshop.
Photo by WPCNR

Your reporter met Fred Kohler at his home in Haverstraw Monday, when he was recommended by one of my daughter’s skating instructors. It’s the way Fred Kohler, 75, gets his clients. Strictly word of mouth. If you’re not landing your “Axels,” or bobbling your spins, one sharpening by Fred and bingo, the landings become pinpint, the spins “on a dime.”

“Leading Edge” of Skate Sharpening.

After a pleasant drive up the Palisades Parkway and into the rapidly growing community of Haverstraw we arrived at Mr. Kohler’s attractive home and were welcomed into his very neat little garage workshop. Little did we know this was the “leading edge” of skate blade sharpening in the world.

MEASURING THE BLADE POSITION, Fred Kohler uses a centering device to assure a precisely-positioned blade.
Photo by WPCNR

His “workshop” features a machine lathe with grinder wheels. Boxes of skating boots were stacked in precise order to the ceiling and some autographed photographs of well-known figure skaters whose skating blades Mr. Kohler sharpened: Kyoko Ina and Jason Dungeon, the pairs skaters and the American Champion, Elaine Sayak were just two of the photos of skating icons on his wall.

We met Mr. Kohler, a slight man in his seventies, thin with spectacles, Monday morning. He is “The Sharpener to the Stars.”

Troubleshooter on the Edge.

In his German-American accent, Mr. Kohler asked to look at my daughter’s blades. With his naked eye, he said he did not see how she could skate on these blades, or spin, because there was a bump in the spin area at the tip of the blade.

MEASURING THE HEIGHTS OF BLADE EDGES, with his own custom “Edge-O-Meter,” The Sharpener to the Stars discovers if edges are in sync.
Photo by WPCNR

Next, to my amazement, Mr. K. reached for an instrument that appeared to be a stop watch, that he precisely fitted onto the skate blade. (For skating amateurs, a figure skating ice skate blade is hollowed out in the center to create two edges, an inside edge and an outside edge.)

It turned out to be a gauge, (what the WPCNR, always in search of nomenclature will call an “Edge-O-Meter”) , which Kohler used to measure first the inside edge, then the outside edge. He showed me the difference in the needle positions, the readings confirming that one edge of my daughter’s skateblade was twice as high as the other edge, way out of whack.

Takes the Guesswork Out of Sharpening.

“I designed these instruments, and built them myself,” Kohler explained. “The gauge checks the edges that every edge is exactly the same height.” Kohler explained.

I asked if this would make a difference in my daughter’s ability to land her jumps. Kohler said absolutely:

“Because the skater if they have an edge higher or lower would have a hard time to get at that lower edge. They have to be exactly the same height.”

When a figure skater lands a jump, depending on the jump, the jump would require a landing adjustment depending on which edge (inner or outer), she landed on. My skater had trouble landing her axel three times over the weekend, and she never misses them, so Mr. Kohler’s analysis made a lot of sense.

Created for His Daughters’ Skates.

Kohler turned on the machine lathe/grinder device. Locking the boot into a custom mount, he proceeded to bring down the edges. By hand he brought them back with his own personally designed hand sharpening instrument. Mr. Kohler developed his sharpening tools when his daughters skated..

ONE OF KIND TECHNOLOGY: Kohler’s Edge measurement gauge, what WPCNR calls an “Edge-O-Meter,” on the left, is used by Kohler to synchronize the height of the blade edges. He uses the hand edge-sharpener at right to bring up the edges, and checks them with the gauge.
Photo by WPCNR

Both of Mr. Kohler’s daughters were figure skaters. He created his instruments because when he had his daughters’ skates sharpened in New York, they were never right:

“When my daughters were skating, we had to go to New York for skate work. Sometimes when we came home, something was wrong with the skates. So, back to New York. So, I figured there had to be a better way. I started doing it for them. Then I did it for friends. And before I knew it I had people from all around. I had a lot of skaters.”

Kohler has never patented or marketed his “Edgeometer,” or his skating instruments, though he gave one to the Chinese figure skating organization twenty-two years ago when they were developing their figure skating team for the first time. Perhaps the rapid rise of Chinese figure skaters is a direct result of “The Kohler Edge.”

Grinding Away Shabby Sharpenings.

Kohler enjoys a reputation among skaters who have used him as the absolute master of “the skater’s edge.” One of my daughter’s instructors has been having Kohler sharpen her skates since she was 7 years old. Kohler laments that other professionals sharpening skates in the area are simply not paying enough attention to their important work:

“First of all, I think, most of those people don’t take enough care, or don’t have enough training to do it that accurately. Secondly, they don’t have the gadgets that I have.”

Previously my daughter’s skates were sharpened by hand. We asked why Kohler uses the machine grinding on the skates: “I do machine sharpening and hand-finishing. You have to get that old sharpening down first with the machine. You have to get the old sharpening down to a dull edge, then you have to put a new hollow into the blade. You have to be careful not to take too much off the blade, because those blades are very expensive. This is like a hobby to me.”

So “Edgy”, Skaters Send Kohler Their Skates from All Over the World.

Kohler said he has professionals sending him their skates from faraway places who pay for overnight shipping to get their skates back with the coveted “Kohler Edge.” The overnight shipping costs more than his sharpening.

The reason: the Kohler Edge works.

While I was visiting, Mauro Bruni’s mom, called up Mr. Kohler. Bruni, a well-known young man who learned to skate at Ebersole Rink in White Plains, and competes nationally, competed in Luxemburg, Germany recently, and finished second. Mrs. Bruni called to personally thank Mr. Kohler for the skate-sharpening, which she felt contributed to her son’s strong finish possible.

Monday evening my daughter took to the ice with her new “Kohler Edges.” Previously, whenever my daughter had her skates sharpened she was cautioned by instructors to break them in a little and not sharpen skates right before a show. This time, the blades showed a difference right away. Jumps were landed crisply. Spins solid.

Her analysis: “They’re really good, Dad!”

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King Comments by White Plains Councilman William King. April 30, 2002. 3:00 EDT. The peripatetic councilman suggests possible sites for a Children’s Museum in White Plains, and reports the latest “Galleria Spin” from Winnette Peltz, the Galleria General Manager. He reports a department store there within two months.
Winnette Peltz, the Galleria general manager, who was considerably more upbeat, naturally, than the last time I talked to her, which was after the shooting incident there 2 years ago, says she is intrigued by the idea of a children’s museum.

She said she saw such a museum in a converted dept. store in a mall in Poughkeepsie. I will have to go and take a look. She asked me how much space a children’s museum would need and I said I didn’t know, that I seen them in various sizes. I asked whether a store (or a children’s museum), other than a dept. store in the mall, could be 2 levels, as most of the children’s museums I have seen were on more than one floor, and she said there haven’t been any at the Galleria but she has seen them in other malls.

I mentioned to her about my contacting IKEA a few months ago about the Penney’s space which she appreciated. I said IKEA had only got back to me to say they would call me but they never did.

She said there is strong interest in the space, which the Galleria (Cadillac Fairview, the owner of a bunch of malls in the U.S. and Canada) bought from Penney’s last November and that, while they thought they were close to an announcement a few months ago and stranger things have happened in the real estate business, she thought there might be something to announce in the next few months in the way of a new dept. store in the old Penney’s. The new store would shoot for either a Christmas 2002 opening or in Spring 2003.

I think we’ll have to look at other space in the downtown, either existing space or as part of some redevelopment project. Cappelli hasn’t leased its second floor yet. They were going to contact the Children’s Museum of Manhattan after I last spoke to them.

People should take a look at Rochester’s. And, as I have heard, also Providence’s. Baltimore has done some exciting things for kids, too. There are even old exhibits probably somewhere in storage down there from the Baltimore City Life Museum, near the Inner Harbor, which was excellent, but closed.

I would also like to look at Paris’s children’s museum!

William King
White Plains City Councilman

King Komments is a periodic column from the White Plains Councilman carried exclusively by WPCNR.

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WPCNR All News Final. By John F. Bailey. April 25, 2002. 11:00 PM EDT: Sequoia Voting Systems of Jamestown, NY and Election Systems & Software of Syracuse presented the ABC Advantage and V2000 electric voting machines to the Common Council Thursday evening. The council learned that to purchase new machines would cost the city approximately $600,000 for 80 machines to bring jamproof voting to White Plains voters.

RITA MALMUD TRIES OUT THE ABC ADVANTAGE VOTING MACHINE AT THE COMMON COUNCIL: The machine can be previewed at the company website, www.sequoiavote.com.
Photo by WPCNR

Both machines are similar. The “ballot with metal levers” is replaced by a flat, soft voting panel, with electronic touch squares in boxes below the preprinted ballot sheet, that can be reconfigured for each election. Voters depress the squares softly with the finger to vote for a candidate.

There are no mechanical parts. The machines when activated show lights to indicate offices to vote for. It is impossible to vote twice for a candidate. Write-ins are handled electronically with keypads.

Photo by WPCNR

A printed tape is provided by the V2000 with results, and a printed sheet with tallies is provided by the rival machine, the ABC Advantage. Each machine has 4 back-up memory banks and a cassette device to recreate the vote. Each has battery backup. Primary counting ability is made possible by the voting machine attendant who programs the party the voter announces before they step into the machine, making it impossible to vote for two parties.

The ABC Advantage machine that Councilperson Rita Malmud is trying out, is in use in 14 counties in New Jersey, including Bergen County, Union County, Hudson and Morris County and has a proven track record over 13 years. Douglas L. Van Sant, of Sequoia, said the County Clerk of Ocean County, New Jersey just this week was telling him how very pleased that county is with the technology.

IN USE FOR EIGHT YEARS, in St. Lawrence County, the V2000 may be viewed in detail on the Election Software and Systems website at www.essvote.com.
Photo by WPCNR

The V2000 Machine is in use in St. Lawrence County in New York, and one county in New Jersey and most closely approximates the standard New York State ballot voters are used to in its configuration, according to Larry Tonelli, the ESS spokesperson. Tonelli said Governor Pataki’s Committee on Modernization was very sensitive that the plastic ballot board be familiar to the voter.

“It looks just like your ballot,” Tonelli said. “That’s very important, because the least amount of change and description you can do is a great benefit.” The V2000 provides 16 rows down and 32 across, very similar to the typical ballot in a mechanical voting machine.

The ABC Advantage device, according to Van Sant, is being used in more counties in New Jersey than the V2000, with no adverse affect from its 12 columns across format with 54 lines down format. Van Sant said that Party Affiliations are run across the top of the ballot, and the offices to be voted for are run down the side, and voters have had no problem with that ballot configuration.

Van Sant reported that the ABC Advantage is not a computerized machine. Results cannot be erased by magnets. he says, “It is a good solid workhorse. It’s not a sophisticated system. Not a complex machine. It eliminates human error. It’s all boards and chips, no components can be demagnetized.”

Van Sant added that the Advantage is Americans With Disabilities Act-compliant, that a wheelchair could fit under the voting board and the button registering the vote reachable by a person in a wheelchair. Both Van Sant’s machine and Tonelli’s machine had accessories enabling the machine to be used by the blind and the hearing disabled.

Van Sant reported that the Westchester County Board of Elections is considering the Advantage for its absentee ballot system.

The Gretsas Report

After the presentations had been completed, George Gretsas, the Mayor’s Executive Officer, said the Governor’s Committee on Modernization was due to report its findings and recommendations on election machines by the end of April. He said that through “the grapevine” he has learned the Committee is expected to recommend county purchase of machines for the towns. He said it may authorize other kinds of voting machine formats such as a paginated ballot display in use in other states, or the voting kiosk recently tested in Grand Central Terminal. He said the Council had to consider whether now was the right time to buy these machines since, they were old technology. The Advantage, in fact was first used in Bergen County the very year when Mr. Gretsas was on the ballot for the Board of Education there.

On the other hand, Gretsas wryly observed, a new system has no track record of success as the V2000 and ABC Advantage have, which would be one of the first questions asked about any new system.

Gretsas reported that the two houses of congress are currently reconciling their separate bills authorizing federal funding for new election systems. Gretsas said it was thought that the thrust of these bills was to replace punchcard systems, not voting machines. But, it is unclear at this time what federal aid and conditions will be in the reconciled version. “There are a lot of issues,” he said.

City could bond the project for 5 years. A 6/10 of a percent tax increase.

Gretsas said that the city financial departments recommended they bond the purchase over five years, which would amount to approximately $170,000 in the first year, resulting in a 6.6% tax increase in the budget, instead of a 6.3% increase now planned in the 2002-03 Budget.

Eliot Spitzer Has Not Contacted Larry Delgado

A rueful observer in the audience was private citizen, former Councilman Larry Delgado, whose loss to Glen Hockley, was sealed by a jammed voting machine in District 18 last November. Mr. Delgado told WPCNR he had written the Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, asking him to look into the matter of a quo warranto proceeding. Delgado said he was told “we were looking into it, and we’ll get back to you.” It has been a month, and Mr. Spitzer has not responded to Mr. Delgado’s plea.

Roach praised by Mayor Delfino for taking the lead on the issue.

Mayor Joseph Delfino complimented Councilman Tom Roach for putting the city out in front on this issue.

Mr. Roach thanked the Mayor and his staff “You’ve worked very hard on this. I think this is the right time to be looking at this. There’s no remedy that would have recreated what actually happened on Election Day (in November, last year). I appreciate the hard work that went into this (presentation).”