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WPCNR QUILL & EYESHADE. From Town of Greenburgh Supervisor Paul Feiner. August 9, 2022:

Governor Kathy Hochul has signed legislation yesterday that the town of Greenburgh lobbied for for many years.

The new law will allow  allow local governments to increase the maximum allowable income eligible for a property tax exemption to $50,000 for people who are 65 and older as well as people with disabilities. The measure will increase the current limit set at $29,000 a year for older New Yorkers who live outside of New York City. 

The Greenburgh Town Board, Assessor Edye McCarthy (Editor’s Note, she is former White Plains Assessor) and I have been pushing for this new law for a number of years.

We felt that it was unfair for NYC seniors to get better tax breaks than seniors of Greenburgh.

Am grateful to State Assemblyman Tom Abinanti who also worked very hard to get this legislation approved over many years and to Senator Andrea Stewart Cousins for her advocacy.  This new law will enable more seniors to continue to live in Greenburgh.

It’s our intention to approve this benefit for seniors. 

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WPCNR THE SUNDAY BAILEY. News & Comment by John F. Bailey. The CitizeNetReporter. August 7, 2022:

I rely on baseball statistics as a measure of team and player performance as unerring indications of how a team, its management, its manager, its players “are doin.’”

The reason why baseball stats are so good is that they are unequivocal and ruthless in saying how good or incompetent a player, manager, general manager is.

You never hear a .220 hitting power hitter rationalized by the press saying he’d hit .300 if he was more selective, or took more walks. The consistency of performance tells the truth about how good a club is.

I am puzzled about how meaning of far more important statistics are analyzed, twisted, interpreted, or suppressed to tell a story in the national media and political stadiums, The U.S. Capitol, and the White House Press room.

Tell you what I mean. Friday and Saturday, the recession was declared over when Employment figures of last month showed according to Government Stats, all jobs lost during the Covid pandemic until now were filled and America what was left of it was back to work. To quote today’s Times: “Employers added more than half a million jobs in July and the unemployment rate is at a half century low.”

Just about a week ago, it was lamented that job numbers fell.

Today, Sunday the paper says in its headline “Free Spending, Plenty of  Jobs: A shaky Boom. An unstable economy Erodes confidence.”

How the public feels about economic statistics is influenced a lot by commentary and reinventing what the numbers mean. If it is good for your party and political view to say the economy is bad you say the numbers do not reflect what Joe the Plumber is experiencing.

Friday’s front page headlines essentially saying we are all back to work was  interesting. We do not know how much of this is caused by summer employment, for example which accounts for hires and are not differentiated. 

However it is to political advantage of the administration in power to say “America’s Back to Work and Rolling Again.” 

It does not take into account our reeling street retail outlets across the nation. It does not take into account the millions of workers who have died of covid. One good statistic does not heal the damage done to the country. We need the Big Number picture

By far the most manipulated statistics are the ones put out on covid spread and hospitalizations. By that I mean suppression of key totals.

We are not by any means getting a handle on how serious the 10,000 new infections a month for three straight months in Westchester County are affecting hospitalizations for covid and hospital staff ability to handle the numbers we do not know.

The number of  total hospitalizations for covid a month in Westchester County are not given. We are not told who is getting sick demographically. We are not told how long the average stay is in the hospital when persons are hospitalized. Do they stay 2 days? 4 days? 7 days? And how really almost full I.C.U.’s are affecting hospitals like White Plains Hospital, Phelps Memorial, Westchester Medical Center where the most hospitalizations for covid (46 covid hospitalizations, 87% of I.C.U. occupied) have been.  

Telling us that we had 150 hospitalizations for covid last week in Westchester on 5,000 infections the last two weeks, after 128 infections the first two weeks of July, mean we had 278 hospitalizations in July by simply doubling the figures given the county.

Now how long did they stay in the  hospital? Did short stays not  stress the medical personnel?

If it took as long as 5 days to stabilize a person, how is that extending the medical staffs to  covid pre-vaccination days in 2020?

Without demographic breakdowns, length of stays of hospitalizations, just saying we only had 150 hospitalized in the last two weeks makes us the general public loosen our covid wariness.

But the disease, variant related, is rolling along consistently at the 2,000 plus new infections a week rate for 3 months of May June and July it infects us Saturday and Sunday. We feel symptoms within two days and the at home testing shows them positive they go to get a lab test and BOOM they have covid ractheting up numbers in the middle of the week, Tuesday, Wednesday Thursday and Friday.

This first week in August is on track depending on this afternoon report on Saturday (yesterday) covid infections), for close to 2,000 infections again for the first week in August. So if 5,000 infections up to last Monday, for two weeks with 150 hospitalized that is a hospitalization rate of 3% of weekly infections

The totals for the month  of July, 10,298 cases resulted in 156 hospitalizations but no Total hospitalizations for the month given.

Why not? It would seem to me, rough guess you can double that 156 to 300 for the month. for the other first two weeks of July

It is impossible to change human behavior if they do not have reason to do so. If statistics are repressed on hospitalizations without drilling down deep into who is getting it how long it takes to get them out of the hospital (OK, we know most are unvaccinated) but how sick are they getting? How is it affecting staffing and keeping them prepared for the monkeypox infections (44 last Monday) that are ramping up.

My feeling is if the state does not report the complete picture on hospitalizations, my assumption is the complete picture does not instill confidence, and they in the state health department do not want to make us feel bad and stay home and not eat out. The state priority is not to keep the state economy continuing to move, by downplaying covid when it is growing faster week after week for three months exponentially ahead of the the first wave that started last July in Westchester County.

Please tell us real revealing figures that instill confidence! Not hope.

Give the statistics like baseball does, the good, the bad  and the ugly without spin. You cannot based on the Yankees performance since the All-Star Break that they have enough hitting to handle good pitching to win the World Series. They can’t handle good pitching. Statistics show that.

Spinning statistics for political advantage which has been going on for 5 years now is reckless.

It erodes credibility and makes opinion news real and real facts vulnerable to denial, solidifying persons unfound beliefs.

Can we strengthen the clarity of our health performance on the 10,000 a month covid spread we are experiencing, show me I am wrong. Give people confidence you can take care of them.

If you start hitting 200 infections every two weeks you hit 400 for a month and if you hit 300 new infections every two weeks you get 600 hospitalizations a month at the 3% hospitalization rate. Give us the totals. Make projections for us. Instill us with confidence that the health institutions (9 of them in Westchester County) know how to handle this relentless new caseload.

Consumers of news should start taking note of the times when good news numbers today, are debunked as bad news numbers on the same subject the next day. (That happens often.)

That is “Numberganda.”

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WPCNR COMMON COUNCIL REPORT. By John F. Bailey. August 3, 2022:

The Common Council enacted new detailed regulations on the standards and requirements of solar panel installations capable  of generating  over 1,000 kilowatts of electricity Monday evening unanimously. Key aspects of the legislation reflected concerns of the Havilands Manor neighborhood which objected to the installation of canopy-placed solar panels at the 1133 Westchester Avenue site.

(In a related development, the public hearing on the 1133 Westchester site was postponed, as 1133 was revising its site plan.)

Highlights were requiring green plantings to shield solar canopies/ installations from views of neighborhoods while preserving the environmental integrity of the existing adjacent properties. A second protection for the future was the fate of solar installations should the existing owners of properties go bankrupt or sell the property.

Mayor Thomas Roach in a 15 minute commentary on the legislation expressed dismay at the evidence of global warning effects this summer.

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Three men receive three months in jail following criminal conviction by jury; defendants disrupted medical office operations and patient services

WPCNR LAW JOURNAL. From the Westchester County District Attorney’s Office. August 2, 2022:

Westchester County District Attorney Miriam E. Rocah announced that three men affiliated with the anti-abortion group Red Rose Rescue, including two that live out of state, were sentenced on August 2, 2022, to three months in jail following their criminal conviction for trespassing at All Women’s Health and Medical Services in White Plains. Judge John Collins of White Plains City Court imposed fines and court surcharges totaling $750 for each defendant due on or before February 2, 2023.  

During sentencing, Judge Collins expressed his opinion that one of the defendants lied during the trial, and that the conduct of all three men during the incident was disrespectful toward law enforcement. Collins also noted that the defendants placed their personal interests above the rule of law and that their criminal conduct warranted the maximum jail sentence. 

“We are pleased that in this case, the Court imposed the maximum jail sentence allowed under the law as we recommended,” DA Rocah said. “Abortion is legal in the state of New York and interfering with a patient’s right to access medical and reproductive care is a crime. I will use the full force of my office to protect patients and reproductive rights here in Westchester County,”  

Following a three-day trial in March 2022, a jury found Matthew Connolly, 40, of Minnesota, William Goodman, 52, of Wisconsin, and, Christopher Moscinski, 52, of the Bronx, guilty of Criminal Trespass in the Third Degree, a misdemeanor.   

On November 27, 2021, at approximately 8:40 a.m., the defendants entered All Women’s Health and Medical Services in White Plains, a private medical office, where they remained unlawfully for approximately two hours despite receiving numerous requests and warnings to leave from medical staff and the White Plains Police Department. All three defendants disrupted facility operations and patient services, with two defendants occupying the waiting room, rendering it unusable, and another using his body to create an obstacle in one of the office doorways. They were arrested by White Plains police who had to physically carry them out of the premises. 

The case was prosecuted by Assistant District Attorney Celia Curtis of the Trials and Investigations Division.