Town Board Caught Napping

Citing a failure to accurately report the news and events of Westchester by the Journal News and other smaller area newspapers, ABG has learned that a new weekly local newspaper will be launched in the near future. “When the Gannett Corporation sucked up all the local editions of our community newspapers and put them under one banner as the Journal News, they created a huge paper with a talented staff but never ran it well. In fact, they ran it into the ground,” our source explained. ABG welcomes this new addition if they live up to their promise of not catering to the status quo with politicians and the like by ignoring the real or underlying story.

Case in point? This Monday night at Greenburgh Town Hall will be a public hearing for the re-striping and a few other minor changes in store for the Greenburgh Shopping Center between under the guise of improvements from the landlord seeking to perform re-striping of the existing parking lot, creating more parking for the disabled (re-striping), new crosswalks (re-striping) and stop signs (to coincide with re-striping), new shopping cart carriages, improvements in traffic flow (re-striping) and pedestrian safety enhancements and new ramps by the cinema for the disabled.

Why would this re-striping take an exhaustive plan and presentation from the landlord to the Town Board at the November 24th Work Session? Because the Town's Building Department and the Town Board dropped the ball! About two years ago the shopping center landlords took it upon themselves to re-stripe the parking lot without Town permits, plans or a public hearing, altering the already awkward and outdated driving patterns originated when the shopping center was created.

In true “Deflection Mode”, Mr Feiner claimed at the Work Session that the shopping center is very busy and cited increased activity because Acme supermarket has opened in place of the previous A&P. ABG estimates the activity to be about the same as it was when the A&P was still open and operating there. The changeover between the stores’ ownership, closing, restocking and opening took about two days. What he failed to pontificate on is that he, his Board and his Building Department completely ignored the new striping the landlord “just did” on their own, apparently during the night. So how did they find out about their blunder?

At a regular Town Board meeting, with the help of Ella Preiser and Madelon O’Shea of the Council of Greenburgh Civic Associations, Worthington Woodlands Civic Association President and community activist Dorrine Livson brought up the fact that the lot had had been re-striped, possibly creating several driving and pedestrian hazards. The Board remained immobile. Then the Council of Greenburgh Civic Associations was made aware of the issue from Ms Livson and got behind her. Together they went to the Commissioner of Community Development and Conservation and the Building Department. Perhaps when Mr Feiner realized the Town might have missed out on a fee or a fine that could be levied against the landlord, the Board began to pay attention.

Ms Livson’s diligence, along with that of the Council of Greenburgh Civic Associations, should be applauded for being watchdogs of the Town Board and Mr Feiner. Too often we see Mr Feiner cater to developers and favored landlords with their projects. How one slipped by him is, frankly, astonishing. As a note, you may recall Ms Livson went to court seeking Mr Feiner and the Town release a copy of the frequently used GBList to her. They refused and a judge has mandated it. The Town is appealing that decision. ABG believes more information, unfiltered, needs to flow to the residents and taxpayers and residents. To that end, we pledge to continue doing just that. We also welcome this new newspaper and hope they will add another valuable and serious voice to the mix. It’s what will make for A Better Greenburgh.