WHITE PLAINS CITIZENETREPORTER SETS RECORD VISITS FOR YEAR 7,017,658 VISITS! 2,098,003 VISITORS MADE 6 VISITS A DAY EVERY DAY. 63,330 UNIQUE VISITORS MADE 133,730 VISITS IN DECEMBER. WPCNR AVERAGED 17,284 VISITORS A WEEK, VISITING 31,270 TIMES.

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WPCNR CAMPAIGN 2014. Special to WPCNR from the White Plains Republican Party. June 18, 2014 (EDITED):

As first reported by WPCNR Tuesday, the White Plains Republican Party  announced today that their candidate to run in the special election to serve the remainder of the unexpired term of Benjamin Boykin for the White Plains Common Council in November is Terence Guerriere.

Brian Maloney, Chairman of the White Plains Republican Party, heralded Terence’s qualifications and the need for a fresh voice on the Council:

“Terence Guerriere is a dedicated White Plains advocate, a community leader and a professional with an impressive resume and a proven record of meeting challenging issues.  We are excited to show the people of White Plains that there indeed is a strong voice for this great City’s hard working families and neighborhoods, that are presently being ignored.”

Mr. Guerriere, a Senior Vice President at Madison Commercial Real Estate Services, is a leader who has displayed keen insight in resolving complicated issues and has demonstrated a willingness to compromise and finding common ground in the most complex litigation. He is an experienced attorney and corporate executive.

Mr. Guerriere, in addition to the aforementioned experience, gained expertise as an attorney in private practice with McCarthy Fingar, LLP, was co-founder and General Counsel of Electronic Land Services. Inc. and a Managing Counsel for the National/Commercial Office of Old Republic National Title Insurance Company.

Guerriere is a graduate of Archbishop Stepinac High School, Williams College and earned his Juris Doctor from St. John’s University School of Law. Prior to his law career, Mr. Guerriere clerked for the Surrogate Court Judge of Nassau County, New York.

His previous career as a private school educator and administrator afforded Mr. Guerriere the skills to be an effective lecturer and coalition leader, and has spoken on the topics of legal ethics and complex issues of law and community planning.

Active in the  White Plains community, he has served on the White Plains Planning and Zoning Boards, including serving as Chairman, and currently is President of the Gedney Association, a local family advocacy and service organization. Mr. Guerriere is a co-founder of the Archbishop Stepinac High School Foundation.

 

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WPCNR CAMPAIGN 2014. By John F. Bailey. June 17, 2014:  

 

Terence Guerriere, of Gedney Farms has been offered the opportunity to contend for the final year of former Councilman Benjamin Boykin’s council  term by the Republican Party leadership, beginning in January 2015..

This morning, speaking to WPCNR by phone, Mr. Guerriere confirmed he was offered the candidacy and has accepted it. He said the party had approached him at the end of last year after Mr. Boykin won election to the Westchester County Board of Legislators.

Guerriere, one of the leaders of the Gedney Association effort to convince the city not to approve the French American School of New York plan to build a 7-building school campus on the defunct Ridgeway Country Club, told WPCNR he has decided to run.

He said behind his decision to run again was the current political condition where the city government is not listening to the neighborhoods. He told WPCNR his campaign would forcus on repairing labor relations between the city and its unions; concentrate on filling up the empty storefronts along Mamaroneck Avenue and the downtown which he said has the most vacancies of rental space since before the recession began in 2008.

He has not picked his campaign manager yet but expects to receive input from former Councilman Larry Delgado and Terry Conroy.

The Guerriere candidacy may be contested by another former Republican Council candidate,Richard Cerulli, who may chose to run on the Independence Party line in November.

Meanwhile over on the other side of town, as I reported on WVOX Radio during the new John Marino Good Morning Westchester program,

At the JUNETEENTH PARADE Saturday,  CHARLES MORGAN was observed campaigning on the sidewalks as the parade marched down Mamaroneck collecting signatures in an effort to launch a primary bid to win the right to be the Democratic candidate in the Special Election, replacing Nadine Hunt-Robinson, presently filling the seat on an interim basis, the last four months, having been appointed to fill the seat until a special election can be held in the fall

Morgan told an organizer of the Juneteenth parade he is definitely shooting to primary Hunt-Robinson in September.

To recall the scenario resulting in Morgan’s primary effort, Democrat district leaders were upset when Hunt-Robinson was unexpectedly named to the Common Council Boykin vacancy because Hunt-Robinson had never been a district leader, and worse was not a registered Democrat, being a member of the Independence Party.

Leaders were also annoyed  that she was suggested to the Mayor and Common Council b the Ministerial Fellowship of White Plains which persuaded the Mayor that Mr. Boykin, former holder of the seat was an African-American and the black community needed to continue to have representation on the Common Council.

Previously, Nick Wolf, who is white, and a well-known district leader in the Democratic Party highly active in black community issues,  had been attending a number of council meetings over the summer and fall, in anticipation of being named to the seat to replace Mr. Boykin.

Ms. Hunt-robinson a wife of one of the ministers in the Ministerial Fellowship was suggested to the Mayor as an African-American to fill the “black seat” quote-unquote.

Thomas Caruso who is on the Democratic City Committee Nominating Committee challenged the Robinson nomination and lost by 1 District vote, but decided he would not primary Ms. Hunt-Robinson.

Mr. Morgan, though, also an African-American was not deterred. He was bothered by the notion that there was any seat that would be determined by the color of a person’s skin and would belong to any race, and has apparently decided to make a run in a primary to make a point.

 

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WPCNR PLAYLAND GO-ROUND. Commentary from Stakeholders. June 14, 1014:

WPCNR continues to receive reaction on the fate of the Sustainable Playland proposal having been withdrawn this week and where it leaves the county attraction, Playland.

From Marissa Brett, of the Westchester County Association:

“We are deeply disappointed that after three years of discussions and planning, Westchester County and Sustainable Playland, Inc., have abandoned their agreement to redevelop Rye Playland. While no one party is to be blamed for letting the process flounder, certainly the process is at fault.

“Whether one agrees or not with Sustainable Playland’s proposed plans, it is apparent that the group invested considerable thought, time, effort, and money to rescue and resuscitate a money-losing county venture. Unfortunately, they had to work with multiple government entities, some with conflicting visions for the property, in developing their plans. In the end, Sustainable Playland ran out of patience and money for this project.

“Our concern is that this decision may jeopardize future projects between the private sector and the County. We have supported the use of Public-Private Partnerships to improve our County’s infrastructure and to monetize government assets. We need to encourage, and not discourage, more projects between the public and private sectors, such as North 60 at Grasslands in Valhalla, where Fareri Associates has a plan to develop 60 acres of County property for use by biotech companies, a key growth area for Westchester.

“Westchester needs a clear roadmap for developers to follow so there is less risk that important projects lose momentum and die. The Westchester County Association is committed to working with business and government to streamline the process, and we already are meeting with municipal leaders and sharing ideas. It is essential to upgrade our approach to development, and prevent others from spending millions of dollars that lead to nowhere.”

From County Legislator Ken Jenkins, (and Yonkers IDA Director):

“County Executive Rob Astorino seems to be doubling down on a failed approach that makes pre-mature pronouncements on a 10 year contract that will require a super-majority vote of the BOL and wastes taxpayers’ money to perform an analysis that the County Executive claims to have used in making his initial selection of Sustainable Playland.

“The time is now for the BOL, as the governing authority for Westchester County, to bring together the two remaining RFP respondents, Central Amusements and Standard Amusements and develop a lease for the management of Playland’s Amusement area using the framework of the 2010 Resolution adopted by the BOL regarding Playland. 

These last two remaining RFP respondents are prepared today to invest $25 million dollars into the amusement area and get things up and running in time for the 2015 Playland season. The BOL did this with the Children’s Museum with a unanimous vote then a unanimous override of County Executive Astorino’s veto.

“Friends of the Parks are well established group that supports all of Westchester and is concession vendor at Playland.  It will be interesting to see how the Astorino administration addresses the concerns of disparities that have come from organizations like the Central Park Conservancy. 

“I am hopeful my colleagues on the BOL will combine the remaining RFP respondents and develop a lease to operate the amusement area at Playland based on over 2 years of Committee hearings and public review.”

 

 

 

 

 

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WPCNR NEWS BREAK. From Westchester OEM Reports. June 13, 2014 UPDATED 11:05 P.M. E.D.T.:

The Federal Aviation Administration reports a small Piper Malibu Meridian aircraft, originating from Westchester County Airport crashed one mile southwest of the airport near The SUNY Purchase College Campus.

There is one fatal injury to the pilot of the plane who was the only soul on board.

The pilot is identified by a spokesman for his family,  as Dr.  Richard Rockefeller, 65, a nephew of former Vice President Nelson A. Rockefeller, who also was governor of New York from 1959 to 1973. Richard Rockefeller ate dinner with his father, banker and philanthropist David Rockefeller, in Westchester to celebrate the family patriarch’s 99th birthday, a family spokesman said.

The spokesman described him as an experienced pilot whose death left the family in shock.

There are no additional injuries or fatalities reported. The college was not impacted by the crash.

The cause of the crash is still undetermined.

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WPCNR SCHOOL DAYS. By John F. Bailey. June 11, 2014:

Actual Questions with answers and justifications of the answers that appeared in the 2014 New York State Assessments will be delivered to School Districts in August, the State Commissioner of Education told WPCNR Wednesday.

Commissioner of Education for the State of New York John King delivered a request to the Business Council of Westchester Wednesday morning: He sought the business community help — for business leaders and community leaders to spread the word that the successful implementation of Common Core standards is needed to prepare NY children and turn out graduates with the skills the NY workplace needs.

He said districts needed to focus on what they are spending their budgets on to devote more funds they have to tuning Common Core teaching methods, commending  performances of school districts in Virginia and Maryland as  prudent spending models.

He spent a very cordial hour with the Business Council and experienced none of the rancor he received on his tours of school districts last year. He demonstrated a more involved and hands-on, “we’re going to fix this” attitude and expressed the confidence that as students become more familiar with Common Core-instilled skills, and the assessment test process the students  will improve test performance. He detailed one way the state is doing this:

He said the state is preparing videos of successful classrooms in action teaching the Common Core where school populations have been successful on the recent state tests and those videos will be sent to Principals to assist in preparing teachers to teach the Common Core standards successfully.

In a post-meeting session for the media, I  asked Mr. King when copies of partial questions appearing on this year’s state assessment tests recently completed (demanded by teachers and advocated by the state legislator two months ago with the passing of the budget. King said a representative portion of actual questions (complete with answers and justifications for the answers from the 2014 ELA and Math assessments) would be furnished school districts across the state in August with 2014 state assessment results.

I asked him if these questions would be in time for districts to make curriculum results. He said, that did not matter because if the district is teaching the Common Core standards effectively, the students should have no problem with this year’s new tests:

“More test preparation doesn’t really work. You have to raise instruction levels to better outcomes.”

He said drilling on test questions was just teaching to the test, and that the legislature has limited the amount of time teachers can spend on giving students sample tests in the coming year.

Asked if Pearson the worldwide education publisher that prepares the assessments, had been given new suggestions and objectives how to formulate the 2015 assessments based on the test analysis so far, King said the Department of Education has not completed its analysis of the test results or drawn conclusions about the quality, effectivess and difficult of the questions.

When the SED analyses of how students responded to questions  were complete the SED impressions of what presumably caused wrong answers would be shared with the Pearson assessment test creators to incorporate in design of  2015 assessment test preparation.

He did not say whether the Stated Education Department would be seeking direct comment from teachers and principals and curriculum coordinators and passing them on — but he did indicate to me the SED is paying attention to comments about the test.

King said strides have been made this year on the 2014  assessments.

The state eliminated two  reading booklets used  for testing passages on the English Language Arts exam , which teachers said lead to confusion and frustration and in 2014 students had only one book to refer to. King said the tests were shortened. He told me in the news conference that commentary from educators on the 2014 tests indicated students handled the exams better and were not as stressed out.

John Ravitz, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of the Business Council of Westchester told WPCNR in the news session with reporters that “everywhere” he goes business about Westchester County are concerned that new entrants into the workforce do not have the technical and problem-solving skills to analyze and make linear progressions of reasoning to orchestrate a project to completion, what he called the ability to take an assignment from “A-to-B-to-C-to-D.”

He was supportive of the Common Core for its objective to incorporate reading, writing and technical understanding. Asked if today’s I-Phone, Facebook, Instagram, connected twenty-something’s weren’t technically business ready, Ravitz told me, “They are very proficient technically when they operate amusements, but they do not possess an ability  to create a functional process that creates an answer or answers to a problem.”