Deflection Committee To Be Formed

Hurricane Sandy was yet another 100-Year Storm in two years. That these storms seem to be happening yearly cannot be coincidence. What it proved again is that our governments, whether local, state or federal, are incapable of addressing even the most basic of challenges. And, pointing their fingers to blame someone or something else is the accepted response. Many in the Town have complained that our infrastructure has not kept pace with the over-development of the Town. 

At the federal level, we hear of FEMA this and FEMA that, while it’s private citizens that seem to come to the rescue more often than not. ABG believes strongly that Homeland Security needs to be overhauled. They are too large and cumbersome to make and implement effective decisions that help our residents in a timely and useful manner.

At the state level, the only thing done before the storm was the governor declaring a state of emergency due to the impending storm, making it easier for the state to request help from the federal government. Once the storm hit, they stood by, watched and only reacted to events after they played out. They lost their proactive posture with the first flooded basement! When the storm ended, reports of looting, mile-long gasoline lines and no power everywhere were the standard fare on every news channel’s report. Clearly, the storm taxed our resources. The politicians only continue to tax us.

At the County level, County Executive Rob Astorino made sure he was on the air whether on local TV, radio or with emails. His media machine was making sure he showed up everywhere, wearing his personalized County Police response jacket. That he is wearing a County Police jacket was pointed out to us by a variety of firefighters throughout the County as they claim Astorino is still trying to “consolidate” the County’s Fire Training Center, putting them under the County Police. Apparently, this is his big consolidation plan to save taxpayers a couple of hundred dollars so the County Police can apply for more grant monies that typically go to the fire service. We’ll see. Regardless, after stating that ConEd has supplied him with information as to what areas and how many homes were without power, the County didn’t really do anything. Getting an update from ConEd, through our overpaid County Executive aka spokesperson was not really helpful to those without power, is it?

In Greenburgh, the Town got “blitzed” by this storm. Sandy slammed many of the same roadways that were affected by Hurricane Irene again. Trees and phone poles that survived the previous storms weren’t as lucky this time with Sandy. Where were The Paul and his Board during the storm? No one seems to know. It easily took The Paul two days after Irene to surface from his gated sanctuary in Boulder Ridge after Hurricane Irene. Once he emerged, he made a beeline to the nearest media’s microphone or camera. The Paul began promising distraught residents FEMA home buyouts as they watched an ocean of polluted water fill their homes; he offered false hope to constituents with no tangible path for remediation or relief. The Paul postured at every opportunity to reach out to other politicians and said they should help his residents. Therein is the problem. He did nothing!

A big issue after Hurricane Sandy caused downed wires, trees and phone poles is clearly the loss of power. In all our years of working and/or residing in the Town, we have rarely seen this kind of frequency of such widespread loss of power as in recent years. We’ve also not experienced the severe storms like we’ve been having as well. Environmentalist will claim it’s global everything. Religious zealots will claim its Armageddon. At ABG, we are convinced the weather is a direct result of the overdevelopment in general of the north eastern corridor, the tri-state area specifically and the Town locally. The physical changes are affecting the wind currents, flooding, raised sea levels and extreme temperatures, both hot and cold. Rising oceanic levels isn’t necessarily from melting glaciers, but more probably from the larger amounts of garbage that humans are dumping into the oceans, from all countries, not just us.

Another big issue is The Paul and his hapless Board continues to green light the overdeveloping of what’s left of any open space in the Unincorporated Town. Additionally, The Paul has chosen a well-honed course of hands-off management and foisted any and all action to other politicians. The Paul needs to stop passing the buck! How exactly can he do that? He hasn’t a clue. In fact, he has announced that he will be forming yet another committee to push for changes as to how ConEd handles future power outages. We imagine the new press releases to the lamestream media being worked on as we write this. Our guess is convicted criminal Alan Hochberg help in forming another “feel good” committee.

The Paul claims that he has some of the solutions and the committee will come up with other answers for our power issues during and after a storm. One of his solutions is to have ConEd workers working around the clock-24 hours a day. It doesn’t seem to matter to him that these people are legally unable to do that by contractual mandates, OSHA, ANSI, PESH and other standards. He feels that since crews work at night already, they can work in the dark. He asks what’s the difference? The simple answer is when they are working on the poles and live wires, it is much easier and safer to do it in the daylight hours. Deflection.

He states that ConEd should hire licensed electricians to help out and that there are many licensed electricians who would like to help out. I’m sure their unions would not have any issues with different locals taking overtime hours from their ConEd brothers and sisters. The fact that someone is a licensed electrician doesn’t automatically mean they are qualified to work as a line person. These are highly trained experts that are working for ConEd. Wouldn’t a better tact for The Paul be to actually ratify the union contract with the Teamsters that work for the Town after ignoring them for four years? Deflection.

The Paul questions whether ConEd waited too long to call in outside out of state crews. ABG is pretty sure that ConEd as well as other utilities have some sort of mutual aid agreements in place but cannot activate it and have these crews respond until there is a certified need to have them come in. The Paul claims the crews didn’t show up until days after the storm. The Paul would obviously prefer they abandon their home districts in a storm to come and sit in Greenburgh and possibly be used if we get hit with a storm. Deflection.

His committee will investigate how ConEd deals with the frail elderly and disabled when there are emergencies. Interestingly, ConEd has several programs and steps they take to assist those who have registered with them. What does The Paul do for these people other that open the Theodore Young Community Center? The Town did allow the mostly glass library to stay open as an assembly point for people. There’s nothing like sitting near an entire glass structure and glass window to watch a hurricane. What’s next; stand under a tree to stay dry? Deflection.

People who lost power should not be charged for the days they suffered without power. There should be a mechanism for them to claim lost foods and other damages but there is not. Maybe instead of forming a committee to do his job, The Paul will actually do something proactively. After all, why fix something when we can talk about it. And that’s all The Paul does, is posture and talk about it. Things need to change so our residents can truly get help when a disaster strikes. We can only hope.