Leafing Neighborhoods Alone

ABG wrote about the yearly lack of timely leaf pickup throughout the Town in a post on December 17, 2011, entitled More Mismanagement or Another Knee-Jerk Reaction? This morning, as we crossed Rt 119 and were driving north on Old Kensico Road to Old Tarrytown Road, we saw the Town picking up the leaves at the corner of Old Kensico and Randolph Roads. Interestingly, the leaves have been there for so long, it appeared that a worker was using a pick or shovel of some sort and heavy duty rake to break up the leaves so they could be vacuumed up. It seems to ABG that if the leaves have become that compacted, the Town has certainly missed the proper pick-up date for them.


Each year the Town claims to pick up leaves throughout the Town, complaining that scheduling this seemingly guaranteed event is difficult because they never know when the leaves will fall. Forget the lunacy of this statement momentarily. Usually, the Town doesn’t really pick up the leaves in many neighborhoods. The reality is they wait until the first snowfall and then plow them away with the freshly fallen snow. There’s a certain logic to that if we get an early snow. It allows the Town representatives to boast that they would have picked up the leaves if it hadn’t snowed. We imagine the leaders in a break room, laughing nervously saying, “Thank God it snowed! Now we don’t have to deal with the leaves!”


The Fulton Park neighborhood has long maintained their neglected status within the Town and this administration in particular. After the crippling flooding this neighborhood suffered with storms Irene and Lee, The Paul said repeatedly that he was going to convince this neighborhood that they were important to him and his Board. He said his goal would be to prove it. The leaders of the neighborhood didn’t believe him and yet he continued to repeat it. So here is just one more example of his lack of responsiveness to one community within the Town. If the Paul wants to convince residents that he truly cares, he’ll have to do quite a bit better. ABG believes they had to pick up the leaves even at such a late date because we’ve had such an unusually warm winter so far, with no snow, and they couldn’t plow them away. It was time for them to “get off the pot”! Finally, The Paul changed the local ordinance to keep the leaves on the edge of homeowner property, and out of the roadways. So much for plowing them away!


It’s no wonder that Edgemont is looking to get out from under The Paul incompetent thumb by incorporating and becoming a Village. We’re not sure how much longer the Town can endure under The Paul’s administration. Things need to improve. We can only hope.