THE WORLD READS WHITE PLAINS CITIZENETREPORTER — 8,324,077 VISITS IN ONE YEAR | 2,905,611 VISITORS VISIT 8,324,077 TIMES 3 TIMES EVERY DAY IN ONE YEAR. HIGHEST ACTIVITY IN WPCNR HISTORY.White PlainsCitizeNetReporter lifted its worldwide visits from unique visitors to wpcnr.com to 8,324,077,a 1,306,419 increase in visits in one year from 7,017,658 visits to the site last year which covers White Plains and Westchester County. The 8,324,077 visits were made by 2,005,611 unique visitors who visited wpcnr an average of 3 visits a day. ON JULY 20- -2026 visitors have accessed wpcnr and made 3,072 visits an average of 1.6 visits. In the last week 33,495 individual vistors made 54,458 visits, averaging 1.6 visits. In the last month, 152,940 visitors recorded 229,338 visits (1.5 visits)

Process to vet Standard Amusements Playland Proposal Being Developed by Board of Legislators

Posted on April 15, 2015 by John Bailey

WPCNR PLAYLAND GO-ROUND. By John F. Bailey. April 15, 2015:

Matt Richter, spokesperson for the County Board of Legislators this morning told WPCNR that two county legislature committees, Labor, Parks, Planning and Housing, chaired by Legislator Peter Harckham, and Budget and Appropriations, chaired by Legislator Sheila Marcotte will be the lead committees evaluating the Playland proposal presented by County Executive Robert P. Astorino yesterday.

Richter said a 90-page piece of legislation was being reviewed by Harckham’s committee in a meeting this morning.

He said no schedule has been set yet for meetings, the agreement with Standard Amusements announced yesterday, that was negotiated privately by the County Executive staff, according to Board of Legislators Chairman Michael Kaplowitz who said he knew nothing about the deal before the news conference.

Asked why the Standard Amusements deal is different from what Sustainable Playland had proposed that the Board of Legislators was concerned about, leading Sustainable to withdraw its plan, Richter said it was “profoundly different,” saying that the problem the Board had with the Sustainable Playland proposal was that Sustainable needed to sign contracts with operators (one of them was Standard Amusements) to secure financial investment in the park.

Asked if Standard Amusements has provided specific financials on the operation of the park yet, Richter said they had not.

Asked, if the agreement was approved by the County Board when Standard would pay the $2.5 Million upfront money as part of the proposal, Richter said that was not clear yet. Richter said that Standard had an opt-out option that they would evaluate the Playland operation this summer. In October, Standard would decide whether they would stay and operate, and if they chose to not continue, they would pay the County $500,000.

Buchwalds Welcome Anna Rose Buchwald

Posted on April 15, 2015 by John Bailey

WPCNR MILESTONES. April 15, 2015:

New York State Assemblyman David Buchwald and Lara Buchwald of White Plains are proud to announce the birth of their first child, Anna Rose Buchwald.

Anna was due on April 15, 2015, but she had other ideas and arrived on March 16, 2015, weighing 6 pounds, 2 ounces. Anna stayed in the neonatal intensive care unit at White Plains Hospital for just over five days. “The professionalism of the nurses and doctors at White Plains Hospital’s NICU could not have been better,” said Assemblyman Buchwald.

Mother and daughter are both doing well, and the whole family is enjoying the start of spring. “The birth of our beautiful, precious daughter makes me even more optimistic about the future,” said David. “When I look at Anna, I can’t help but redouble my efforts on behalf of the environment, education, and women’s equality.”

For the first time in his Assembly career, David missed votes while at the hospital with his wife and daughter. One of those votes was on his own bill to improve New York’s Freedom of Information Law. Nonetheless, the bill passed the State Assembly 147 to 0.

Assemblyman David Buchwald represents the 93rd Assembly District in Westchester County, which includes the towns of Bedford, Harrison, Lewisboro, Mt. Kisco, New Castle, North Castle, North Salem and Pound Ridge as well as half of the City of White Plains.

Lara Samet Buchwald is a litigation associate at the law firm of Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP.

Standard Amusements County Exec Choice to Run Playland. County Board Given 60 Days to Approve it. Deal Virtually Matches Sustainable Playland Plan

Posted on April 14, 2015 by John Bailey

WPCNR PLAYLAND GO ROUND. By John F. Bailey April 14, 2015;

County Executive Robert P. Astorino announced that last night his administration had signed an agreement with Standard Amusements to run Playland beginning in 2016.

Standard has agreed to invest $25 Million in new rides, restaurants and attractions within 5 years of taking over the park (with Westchester County still retaining ownership). Standard will pay the county $2.5 Million upon signing of the agreement which the Board of Legislators has 60 days to approve. Chair of the Board, Michael Kaplowitz told WPCNR it was the first he had heard of the surprise signing and said the Board would begin its due diligence on the proposal.

In addition, when Standard would pay the County $300,000 a year the first five years, and when Standard has recouped its investment, it would give the county 7.5% of the profits.

The deal was endorsed by county consultant Dan Biederman of Biederman Redevelopment Ventures, who was the consultant to Sustainable Playland, Mr. Astorino’s first choice of operator of the park, which had also considered Standard Amusements as its operator. The deal is essentially the same with the exception that no permanent field house or fields would be built .

However, the County Executive said there would be “temporary (open air) fields” put in place with artificial turf on the parking lots or other areas during the spring and fall. The City of Rye had vehemently protested the Field House concept, how they will react to this piece of the proposal is not known since the Mayor of Rye was not at the news conference for comment.

More to come.

County Executive Opts His Children Out of ELA Assessments.

Posted on April 14, 2015 by John Bailey

WPCNR SCHOOL DAYS. Statement From County Executive Robert P. Astorino. April 14, 2015:

Today, Sheila and I join over 100,000 parents across New York in opting our children out of the Common Core tests, as is our right.

Our kids deserve better than Common Core, an experiment conceived in secrecy with no public hearings or testing. There are no consequences for opting out. The scores will not affect student records.

We support higher standards for our kids, but that’s not Common Core, despite what we’ve often been told.

The standards are of “poor quality.” Those aren’t my words; those are the words of the Math and English Language Arts content experts on the validation committee. But their concerns were expunged from the final record.

Also ignored are experts’ concerns that:

The standards are developmentally inappropriate in the early grades
No K-12 teachers were involved in writing the standards
High-stakes testing as the sole assessment for both student and teacher performance is both unfair and wrong

I share these concerns, as well as the concern that this is education policy guided at the federal level and not the local level as historically has been the case.

As parental concerns and frustrations continue to fall on deaf ears, the numbers opting out of the tests will continue to grow.

The Governor, Legislature, Education Commissioner, and Board of Regents must restore local control of our schools. Common Core needs to be replaced with better standards developed with input from teachers and parents and vetted and tested in a fully transparent process.