Stop Playing Games With Their Livelihood!

Two of the signs protesters wore and held up at the Town Board meeting.

ABG was at the Wednesday night Town Board meeting, also referred to as the Greenburgh Employees and Teamster’s Protest, held on September 12. There was the obligatory movie and other campaign-centric fodder from The Paul. By no means is ABG lessening the value of what these presenters have done, merely maintaining this should not be the venue for it. Most of the G8 was in attendance and assumedly relieved to see a sea of people filling the room. The Town’s Teamster union members, sporting matching red tee shirts, are Town employees working for the Highway, Recreation and Repair Departments. There were about fifty members there to protest their treatment by The Paul and his Stepford Board regarding their still-absent contract after four years.

You may recall our post several weeks ago where the union inflated their now infamous “rat” near The Paul’s home in the gated, well-to-do and exclusive Boulder Ridge community (Can You Smell A Rat?). The following week they placed it outside of Town Hall to protest his flip-flopping and new position against building the new Tappan Zee Bridge – costing the area and union much needed jobs! It seems The Paul and his Stepford Board is waging a personal vendetta against our Town employees.

The Teamsters are protesting The Paul’s unwillingness to bargain regarding their contract between the Town and our employees. ABG knows they have been played by The Paul for too long; longer than should be necessary by any stretch of the imagination or truth, and want action! When he asked them to agree to freeze their pay because times were tough, they went along with him and abandoned a raise. But for the last four years The Paul has refused to come to the bargaining table for serious negotiations. When he does offer to meet, he violates the law by adding new stipulations to the contract. Once the contents of the contract are established, additions cannot be made. As we’ve witnessed so many times before, if The Paul doesn’t like a law, he feels compelled to disobey or ignore it. He’s at it again, adding insult to injury.

The issue is not the union members. The issue is not revenue, per se, or insufficient taxes for the Town. No, the issue is The Paul and the financial “Three Card Monty” he’s continually shuffled during his twenty-plus years tenure. Greenburgh is not the most expensive place to live in Westchester County, but it certainly is expensive. Yearly double-digit tax increases, 102% water rate increases, WestHelp contracts left to languish and disappear are only the tip of the iceberg. The financial problems besieging the Town have been self-induced by The Paul! It is squarely on his shoulders. That’s why he’s scrambling to push every hare-brained idea he can think of to offset the Town’s dwindling fund balance.

Patronage abounds in Greenburgh if you are in the right clique; The Paul has tried to supply his friends, similar to the Friends and Family Plan run by the City of Yonkers, with “do nothing positions” in the Town. He has repeatedly tried to gift his friend and supporter Alan Hochberg with positions for more pay than any of these employees make! Each time The Paul tries to slip a job to Hochberg, the G8 and others protest. Given Mr. Hochberg’s criminal past and The Paul’s political slight of hand we owe the G8 a big “thank you”. But, how long will they continue to be successful?

Money that should be used toward the Town and especially the Town employees’ contracts goes to other uses. First and foremost are the oft-used outside attorney and litigation fees The Paul racks up with lawsuits. An example of an unnecessary expense because of The Paul’s ego would be the yet to be announced financial penalty of the Fortress Bible guilty decision. That decision promises to go as high as $8 million once it is rendered. Then there’s the $4 million dollars lost with the Water Department. Had the water costs correctly been passed on to the users, the Town would not have had to raid its fund balance to cover these costs. If you’re counting, the tab is up to about $12.5 million because of the illegal and incompetent actions of The Paul. Still, no contract for our neighbors, the Town’s employees.

These problems that are costing the Town exorbitant amounts of money are not the employees fault. In fact, it’s because of their actions in spite of The Paul that the Town is doing as well as it does. As The Paul tries to find financial relief for the Town, his failures become more intensified. He laid off two workers almost a year ago. Scott Uzzo, a former Town employee became distraught after the layoff and committed suicide off the Tappan Zee Bridge (Ex-Greenburgh Worker Jumps From Tappan Zee Bridge). We grieve with his family, friends and coworkers because this was nothing more than a power play by The Paul. This isn’t how you run a Town.

Not running a Town properly seems to be The Paul’s main strength. He blew the WestHelp lease deal with the County to counter with an alternate deal worth half the revenue with a Yonkers School. He paid off Valhalla’s School district and Mayfair-Knollwood Civic Association to the tune of more than a million dollars. The Paul’s actions were proved to be illegal and he was again found guilty! Michael Smith, the newly elected County Legislator for that district was part of those shenanigans, and his reward was to move up to a higher position in County government. Then there’s the GameOn 365 Sports Bubble deal that will net the Town over $5 million dollars in rent over 15 years. Wow! We mean really, Wow! When you break down the numbers, its peanuts. The property is contaminated and must be cleaned up. Sure, GameOn 365 will dribble some money into that fee until it gets too costly. Then ABG believes they’ll back out and walk away, leaving the Town to pick up the entire cost - again.

The action The Paul and his lackey Stepford Board should have taken when the Town received ownership of the property after the Frank’s Nursery default on their taxes, was to have it cleaned up and sold. The sale would generate a cash influx and a future tax paying property owner for the Town. The sales money could have been used for many things in the Town, including a contract for the Town employees. They deserve a raise. The one sticking point The Paul and his Stepfords want is for these employees to pay 12% of their medical insurance coverage. We won’t discuss the right and wrong of this point. Give them a raise and agree to an incremental health insurance increase come the next contract and meet with them in earnest to work this out in the next contract if it’s the direction the Town needs to go. Kevin “The Henchman” Morgan stated that the other union members pay a percentage of their health care. While technically correct, he ignores the fact that the other employees make significantly more money than these employees. It’s not an accurate comparison.

The Frank’s Nursery sale could have generated enough money to pay for the cleanup of Frank’s Nursery (how about super-fund grants to assist with the cleanup?). Or, the revenue could have been used to improve the infrastructure in the flood-prone areas of the Town. Our infrastructure continues to decay and each time a developer is gifted their project from The Paul through spot zoning, variances and the like, the existing infrastructure remains the same. For instance, Old Kensico Road seems to flood when it gets cloudy out because there are only six storm drains on the entire street that now gets water from numerous neighborhoods. Twenty and thirty years ago when there weren’t condominiums on Old Tarrytown Road and other developments, the water was absorbed into the ground or was aptly caught up by the storm drains. Not any more. Now the houses in the area constantly flood. These same Town employees came through after Irene and carted away everything that wasn’t disposed of in dumpsters. They did a terrific job. In fact, they did their usual exemplary performance everyone has come to expect of them. They are that good!

This is an outstanding group of employees that are part of the entire family of employees whom have all gotten contracts. They weren’t threatened with privatization as these employees have been by The Paul. They are an integral part of the heartbeat of the Town of Greenburgh. When The Paul touts the outdated Money magazine Best Places To Live article, it wasn’t because of The Paul. Rather, it’s because of our employees – our people are our greatest asset. These employees are the gears that mesh the machinery that runs the engine that makes Greenburgh great! Give these employees a raise; stop playing games with their livelihoods and treat them with the respect they deserve! We can only hope.