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WPCNR THE LETTER TICKER. MAY 29, 2020:

All,

I write to make you aware that our (White Plains) City officials are moving forward with, and will potential close the rezoning hearing for the Good Counsel property/ 52 North Broadway, on Monday, June 1, 2020. We ask for your assistance to contact the City and request this hearing be postponed..

The developer had requested that this hearing be postponed in prior months, for their convenience, to which the City agreed. Yet, when residents of the Stewart/Ross neighborhood and the attorney for 10 Stewart Place made this same request to postpone the hearing for this month we were ignored.  Once again, the City bows to the developers.

The developer’s attorney sent a registered letter to residents in surrounding buildings, complete with false information about the project and to notify us of the hearing. I believe they did this so that they can say to the City that we were all notified and “few spoke out”. 

The City will hold a Zoom meeting including these developers and the residents get to “call in by phone”. We are in the midst of a pandemic where people are preoccupied to say the least, concerned about their health, their jobs or lack of, and a hearing of this sort is the last thing on their priority list. 

The fact that the City feels the need to fast track a massive rezoning of some 16 acres in the midst of a pandemic is not only a disgrace,  it is an insult to each and every tax paying citizen in White Plains. This is non essential business that needs to be tabled for the time being.

Any of you who have been fighting overbuilding and rezoning in your own neighborhoods know we need to stop this nonsense where the developers rule what goes on in White Plains. Please, contact City officials and ask them to postpone this hearing. 

Thank You

Barbara Allen- Stewart/Ross Neighborhood

WPCNR THURSDAY GOVERNOR ANDREW M. CUOMO CORONAVIRUS BRIEFING. By John F. Bailey. May 28, 2020:

Governor Andrew M. Cuomo introduced a new Executive Order this morning, giving business owners the right to bar customers not wearing a mask to enter their stores.

He also introduced Chris Rock and Rosie Perez, two well-known entertainers from Brooklyn asked by the Governor to volunteer to help spread the message to wear masks everywhere in the city, and particularly in the hard hit communities in Brooklyn, The Bronx and Queens where  new coronavirus infections are double the rate  of the rest of New York City boroughs.

Mr. Rock, in the news conference said he estimated only about 40% of persons he has noticed to be wearing a mask.

Ms. Perez speaking the ‘Q & A” in the press conference that disputes arise in street retail stories between patrons telling an unmasked person they should bwe wearing a mask. She welcomed the governor’s new executive order giving storekeepers the right to bar patrons not wearing a mask  as they attempt to enter the store.

The Governor  said: “Facts today are looking good,” citing the lowest number of new infections (163) since the coronavirus started to spread.

Asked whether New York City with daily death rate from the virus running at 74 a day would have a higher threshold for opening than other regions, the governor said “New York City will have the same metrics as all other regions in the state.”

The governor said he would attempt to avoid layoffs in any cuts to the state budget, but he will not make cuts until he sees how much aid congress eventually provides to New York funding relief. He said he doubted it would be all that the state needs,.