Even Yonkers Gets It!

Our “Problem-Solving” supervisor, The Paul, only solves problems that can be easily handed off to others or won’t require any real effort on his part. Call his office or cell phone and he will get back to you or actually answer - as he should. Tell him your street has a pot hole or a bush blocking a sidewalk and he’ll have three trucks and a half a dozen Town employees there to rectify your complaint - as he should. ABG believes a couple of days response is reasonable. But that won’t garner The Paul any votes. So he’ll pull crews already assigned to, scheduled for, and working at, existing projects - throwing schedules and work flow helter-skelter. Subsequently, he gains a vote and enough positive publicity spread by the caller to everyone they know, going way beyond the value of publicity that can be purchased. He couldn’t care less about any of “his” department’s efficiency.

With newly elected Mayor Mike Spano taking the reins of Yonkers’ government, he has created a website to offer information about the fiscal health of the city. If you go to: www.YonkersControlsSpending.com, you’ll encounter a simple but informative amount of financial information about the city. ABG perused the sight and found some useful information and some fields that were lacking. But ABG admires the attempt to clarify the fiscal issues of the city, even if some parts of it fall short and it might only be a pandered attempt to care.

ABG believes transparency in government is overstated, especially in the Town of Greenburgh. We believe in true transparency, not back room deals, hidden handshakes, and quick winks or a subtle nod. This is where Greenburgh suffers, as The Paul has mastered the art of the “done-deal”. If his administration was so transparent, so forthcoming with information, why hasn’t a website such as www.GreenburghControlsSpending.com ever been created? Why hasn’t The Paul’s political lap dog and confidante Alan Hochberg, been instructed to round up the usual cronies and form a twenty person committee to review and determine the need, not to actually create, just evaluate the need, for such a website? Would the forgone conclusion be that The Paul’s pseudo-open government doesn’t warrant it? Or could it not stand under the weight of all the illegalities practiced routinely by The Paul, et al? Hardly expecting the truth, the outcome would need to be a positive one for The Paul to provide him fodder for several press releases, news conferences and mailings. Plus, we could staff it with interns. More press releases, and letters to various sympathetic editors.

So the county’s largest City, known as the city of hills, where nothing is on the level, may actually be taking a small step toward accountability. The county’s largest town, the Town Greenburgh, remains shrouded in untelevised executive sessions, back room deals and developer-centric gifted decisions. It’s abandoned it’s residents and businesses, aka the taxpayers, as they are left to fend for themselves with fees, permits, red tape, departmental attitudes, annual double-digit tax increases and of course, The Paul’s numerous guilty verdicts’ which continue to cost us millions. We cannot afford to continue this path of destruction. It must change - soon. We can only hope!