Urban, Suburban, Exurban

Thomas Madden, our Town Planning Commissioner/Commissioner of Community Development, and Chief Bottle-Washer for Anything Planning, was recently interviewed about Greenburgh’s participation in a mid-Hudson sustainability planning consortium made up of Greenburgh and Orange County. Yes, that’s right, Orange County. It seems like another scheme that he, along with The Paul, will be participating in to be able to say the Town is concerned about sustainability.

This move reminds ABG of when the Town investigated combining the Town’s Police Department with the Dobbs Ferry Police Department. It makes no sense to combine these two departments. The only reason it had been done was because there was funding money made available for this specific study. A more realistic study for a combination of police departments would be of the Hudson River towns into one department, or all of the Village police departments joining the Greenburgh Police Department. Regardless of the best departmental combination plans, these obscure studies are thought to be “free” because it’s either state or federal grant money. And who pays the state and federal taxes that fund these wastes of time?

Madden said that, “The diverse geography and topography made it a unique model for sustainability studies. It has urban, suburban and exurban areas, open space, agriculture, mountains, river valleys and coastal regions.” For those of you who don’t what ‘exurban’ is, two definitions explain it as “A region lying beyond the suburbs of a city, especially one inhabited principally by wealthy people,” or “A region or settlement that lies outside a city and usually beyond its suburbs and that often is inhabited chiefly by well-to-do families.”

ABG wonders if the city Madden would be referencing could be White Plains or Yonkers for suburbs beyond the city? But what of the rest of Madden’s definition? Greenburgh is not an urban town or region, in spite of his and The Paul’s best efforts to overdevelop every square inch of it and turn it into an urban area. We no longer have agriculture in the Town as a “sustainable” business model. Open space in Greenburgh has become a thing of the past. As for the well-to-do-families, would he be referring to the people in the Villages or in other areas such as Boulder Ridge?

Yes, there are mountains, river valleys and “coastal” regions (Hudson?). Unfortunately, The Paul has relinquished most of this formerly open space to developers who routinely request spot-zoning changes, which he and his Board routinely grant, and then move forward by building oversized developments where they shouldn’t be. The Brightview Assisted Living Center in Glenville is another glaring example in this long list of abuses! There is also severe flooding throughout areas in Greenburgh that had never experienced any water problems until The Paul’s wholesale overdevelopment of Unincorporated Greenburgh took place.

The Town Board has made sure that there are regulations and fees for just about every little thing any business might want to do, discouraging business growth or even inception in our Town. Now Madden is endorsing a plan of proactive environmental initiatives promoted in the region, saying, “ No population should be disproportionately burdened by impacts of pollution.” Translation? He and The Paul will be looking for ways to fine businesses under the guise of environmental correctness whenever and wherever they can. This is nothing more than a smokescreen to try to raise more money in the Town instead of correcting the problems The Paul has created for taxpayers.

This Sustainability Consortium, created by Thomas Madden with his friend from Orange County, also touched superficially on how “climate change” has contributed to rising flood plains. Flood levels predicted for 2050 are happening now. Local governments would use zoning laws to prevent residential and commercial construction near flood prone areas and require that building be done at higher ground levels. Storm water runoff can be alleviated by efforts to propagate more permeable surfaces where it accumulates. Translation? Nothing will be done in Greenburgh under The Paul’s administration! The Town has stalled every effort to move forward with a Comprehensive Plan, which would fix current zoning in place and stop The Paul from his routine spot-zoning changes developers have come to rely upon. Most of the flooding has been created by The Paul and his Board’s disregard for the current zoning and the reasoning behind it, their lack of infrastructure maintenance and improvements, and The Paul and his Board’s unyielding and blatant disregard to the communities and taxpayers they are supposed to serve.

The Sustainability Consortium that Madden has created by utilizing $865,000 acquired from power companies’ cap and trade fund is nothing more than a spending spree to favored vendors. $780,000 of the $865,000 went to Ecology and Environment, Incorporated, headquartered in Lancaster, NY, to create this sustainability study and consortium. That left about $85k for the Consortium to utilize for environmental purposes. It’s enough money for Madden to get more pet projects that secure his planning position and get his consortium off the ground. Then he’ll need to have more government funds allocated to keep it “sustainable”. Pun intended. He and The Paul will use this consortium to pander to a few and validate changes they wish to control throughout the Town as the Comprhensive Plan makes their spot-zoning increasingly difficult. We don’t need our planning department going after The Paul-like slights-of-hand. There’s been enough Three-Card-Monty’s played by The Paul and his Board. This consortium must be stopped before the residents and businesses are required to pay for it after the funding ends. We can only hope.