More Mismanagement or Another Knee-Jerk Reaction?

Anytime ABG believes we’ll be able to take a break, The Paul decides otherwise by doing or saying something asinine. From that perspective, he never disappoints. This time it’s through both his media outlets, the Journal News newsletter and a self-promotion piece mailed at Town expense under the guise of an informational piece. Newly elected politicians can learn a lot from The Paul, as well as many other incumbents, such as his buddy Assemblyman Tom Abinanti, the master of self-promotional mailings on the “constituent dime”. Keep your name out there with mailings - the environmental pollutant that never ends.

This time, the “Stepford“ Board and The Paul, say: “The Greenburgh Town Board is seriously considering a change in our leaf collection process for 2012. We are considering a requirement that leaves be bagged instead of picked up at the curb. There are a number of reasons for this. Our leaf collection process has never been efficient. It’s also extremely expensive. Most years we don’t complete the leaf pick up season until early January (although most of the leaves are picked up by December). This year, because of the October storm, we are backlogged with leaves and tree branches. As of today we probably completed half the town. Our crews are working on Saturdays (this Saturday will be the third overtime Saturday for leaf pickup).”

ABG tried to focus on the blatant contradictions, but this mailing is rife with them, defeating the purpose! There’s always more to The Paul’s simplistic “throw it out and see what sticks” rubric.The usual assessors at Town Board meetings, aka the Greenburgh-8 (G8), hammered The Paul and the Board about leaf pickups two meetings ago while discussing his arbitrary decision to cancel the paper recycling pickup for that week, only notifying via an email sent to those masochists who are on his personal email list. Since he sends out so much non-pertinent information via email, our staff has severed his flow. We all just wait for his blather in the mail. The USPS may be fed up with him as well, saying they’ll soon be reducing their deliveries. We almost can’t wait.

We’ve always maintained, correctly noted in this letter by The Paul, that leaf pickup is horrendous in our Town. When Al Regula was the Commissioner, he had the hutzpah at a Board meeting to say they have difficulty scheduling leaf pickup each year because they didn’t know when the leaves would fall. Huh? Isn’t that why the season is called “fall”? When this statement was made, the Town was still distributing leaf bags to it’s residents that had transportation to Town Hall. How did they know when to order the bags if they didn’t know when the leaves would be down? They weren’t distributing the bags in March, for instance, so they must have a pretty good idea. ABG believes that since they got the leaf bags correctly ordered and distributed, it made the Town administration look bad with the actual leaf pick up. Solution? Stop giving out the bags! By the way, we question whether the money saved went toward lowering our taxes or at least trying to save any jobs for our CSEA workers? Since there wouldn’t be any publicity in doing that, probably not. What a shame.

Several years ago Regula said, and The Paul echoed, that part of the Town’s problem was that one of the two leaf vacuum trucks was in for repairs. Fair enough. And yet, each year there seemed to be a different excuse as to why we were again down to one truck. There may have only been one truck all along and his shell game was catching up to The Paul. We’ve always maintained in our neighborhood that leaves on our hill would be picked up after the first snow, when the plows come through for snow, also pushing the leaves the homeowners put in the streets to be vacuumed up a month earlier, way before the first snowfall.

“Our leaf collection process has never been efficient. It’s also extremely expensive. Most years we don’t complete the leaf pick up season until early January (although most of the leaves are picked up by December).”

Wouldn’t it be easier to work on improving the efficiency of this portion of the department, rather than instituting a Town-wide change of operations? And, if The Paul and his department commissioners were to unable find a solution, open it up to the public for ideas, in particular the G8 and see what they come up with. They usually seem pretty creative at the Town Board meetings and offer many plausible ideas to the bereft Town Board. If that doesn’t sit well with The Paul, perhaps his usual suspects, led by convicted felon Alan Hochberg, can offer a volunteer commission to come up with something. After all, those that can’t do, meet.

Paraphrasing The Paul from his letter, “Most years they don’t complete the leaf collection until January but most are picked up by December unless it snows”. We’re not even going to bother.

“The equipment we use damages curbs, roads and shortens the lifespan of our roadways - costing you money because we have to repave roads and fix more curbs sooner. The leaves that pile up for months cause drainage problems. The drains become covered, increasing the chances of flooding and becoming a dangerous condition to vehicles and pedestrians.”

The equipment is a giant, albeit powerful vacuum hose, often with a nozzle attachment and occasionally not. It sounds like our employees may need additional training if the use of a tool is causing unintended damage. Or, is this just another lie by The Paul to try to make his case? If the Board changes the process, will they sell this vacuum equipment or keep it? They probably haven’t even thought that through. We agree with his point about the drainage issue. This is even more reason to be diligent about leaf pickup.

Last season the Town Board passed an ordinance that all piles of leaves no longer be put in the roadways, but left on lawns at the curb to be vacuumed up. Drainage issues no longer appear to be an issue with this law in place. The Paul’s reasoning was to prevent kids from being attracted to playing in the leaf piles, exposing them to being hit by vehicles on the roadway. How many different iterations of “for the children” can The Paul make? Enough already. No kids in the Town were ever hit because they were playing in leaves in the streets. If they are determined to go back to leaf bags, will they repeal this leaf law? We can only hope.

At a meeting of the Town Supervisors Association, he claims that many Supervisors complained that landscapers illegal dump their leaves/debris on the streets, when no one is looking, because it saves them money. And, if leaves are bagged, fewer leaves from other localities will be illegal dumped in our Town. Huh? We see numerous locations in the Town where people dump TVs, garbage, tires and other debris. Work on eliminating that. The Paul’s solution? Put up a sign that says no dumping allowed. Problem solved? No! That hasn’t stopped the problem. We doubt bagging leaves will stop this major illegal leaf dumping crime wave.

Can bagging leaves help the Town. Simply, yes. It is the answer until someone decides that bags cost too much and adds to the refuse disposal for the Town or it costs us more to dispose of than a vacuum truck would and we’re right back to the vacuum truck. What’s the solution? Fix the problems with the vacuum trucks.

Here’s one idea: have the sanitation department keep a checklist of streets that have piles of leaves on the lawns and when the sanitation workers are picking up garbage, trash or recyclables, check off the streets with leaf piles. Hand that in at the end of their shift. Then have a crew go out to those locations with the vacuum truck and pick up those leaves. Another idea is to post dates when leaf vacuuming on a particular street will be done and distribute that to all the residents. Also, post it on temporary Town signs, similar to campaign yard signs and distribute the pickup dates to lawn service crews as they are working in neighborhoods. Maybe we’ll be able to improve the leaf pickup issue with a simple, real effort by our elected officials.

We can only hope that this minor issue can easily be addressed with some major common sense solutions. We can only hope.

Letter from The Paul (front & Back):