There are several bulk mailing rates that the Town uses for
their snail-mail mailings. One piece of mail in a business envelope goes for $.23;
another goes for $.46.5. This costs all tax payers a lot of money during the
course of a year each time a mailing is done. Why are these mailings done and
why so often you may ask? Simply, it’s politics. It’s a cost free way for Mr
Feiner, albeit the Town Board, to campaign without using his/their own money,
campaign funds or donations. As long as it can be done under the pretext of
providing information to the public, there are no campaign finance laws broken
nor are any election bank accounts emptied, drained or depleted.
When there is an issue Mr Feiner wishes to promote, you might
receive almost daily mailings arriving to you at either rate. We witnessed this
numerous times in the past. One recent proposal has been Mr Feiner’s push for
the ill-conceived and zoning deficient assisted living facility by the
Formation Shelbourne organization where the current Sprainbrook Nursery sits.
They are seeking to build a four-story, 94-bed facility on less than four acres
of property and roughly 6,000 feet from a County of State right-of-way roadway
– requirements under the two-year old zoning law recently adopted by Mr Feiner
and his Town Board.
Mr Feiner has taken to endorsing projects that are primarily
commercial by nature, regardless of whether they are built in a commercial or
residentially zoned area. There are several examples that come to mind. The
first was Westhab which he suggested to then County Legislator Lois Bronz be
built on the former Kings Inn Motel site in Fulton Park. That was a transition
parcel of land that was zoned half commercial and half residential. But he didn’t care about zoning. By making
the Town Board the lead agency for the project, they were able to disregard any
and all legal standings previously maintained and allowed building to proceed. Mailings
were done throughout the Town seeking support of this project. People
sympathetic to Mr Feiner in the neighborhood also received these mailings. The
rest did not. However, the multiple mailings cost us a significant chuck of
money. Shouldn’t the Supervisor remain neutral about any projects?
Another project was the GameOn 365 proposal in the former
Frank’s Nursery property on Dobbs Ferry Road. Emails acquired under the Freedom
of Information Law confirmed Mr Feiner promised in private meetings with the GameOn
365 principals that he’d push the project through. When the area neighborhoods
learned of the proposal, they revived their civic association to fight the
8-story sports bubble Mr Feiner felt was okay to build in this residential
neighborhood. You see, the zoning had been allowed for a commercial
establishment years ago. When Frank’s Nursery defaulted on the mortgage, they
went into foreclosure and the Town acquired the property. Instead of selling it
within the first 6-months of acquisition, as required by County and State law, Mr
Feiner decided to hold onto it. Consequently, the zoning for the land reverted
back to residential zoning. Had he not begun playing politics with the property
and simply sold it, it would have been “grandfathered” to remain commercial.
Not only were there multiple mailings supporting this project, he did separate
mailings about holding a referendum, poorly written by his administration, in
hopes of getting a passing vote. It worked but he ultimately lost because all
of the neighborhoods stood united to only have residential housing built there.
There were so many mailings for this project it’s actually hard to tally it all
up.
Next up was the Brightview Assisted Living facility at Rt
119 and Benedict Avenue in the Glenville section of Unincorporated Greenburgh.
This small tight knit neighborhood would soon be overwhelmed with a building
that a) doesn’t fit the neighborhood; b) looms over Rt 119 and the beginning of
Benedict Avenue; c) does not allow the average Greenburgh senior citizen on
Medicare to live there; and d) could wind up following suit as so many other assisted
living facilities and go bankrupt and need to repurpose itself into a
condominium or co-operative apartment. Could this entire assisted living
facility be a pretense to build an assisted living facility where apartment
buildings would not be allowed due to zoning? We don’t know but wonder. There
were numerous mailings from the Supervisor pushing the Brightview project. All
we wonder is at what cost was all of this done and why was the Supervisor so
invested in promoting it?
Beyond the major projects such as mentioned above, and there are more, he goes out of his way to do mailings vis-à-vis advertising for private companies and corporations. The latest recipient of Mr Feiner’s largess is the Hartsdale Kumon Center. While this may be a terrific business doing great work with kids needing additional help with their schoolwork for a fee, it is not the job of the Town to do a mailing or advertising blitz throughout the Town for private, for profit businesses. At $.46 per piece mailed, this is an unnecessary expense for taxpayers to bear and must stop. Only then will we get A Better Greenburgh.
Beyond the major projects such as mentioned above, and there are more, he goes out of his way to do mailings vis-à-vis advertising for private companies and corporations. The latest recipient of Mr Feiner’s largess is the Hartsdale Kumon Center. While this may be a terrific business doing great work with kids needing additional help with their schoolwork for a fee, it is not the job of the Town to do a mailing or advertising blitz throughout the Town for private, for profit businesses. At $.46 per piece mailed, this is an unnecessary expense for taxpayers to bear and must stop. Only then will we get A Better Greenburgh.
Once more, the bias and frustration of ABG in not making any headway against Feiner, has taken a turn for the worse. Calling Feiner's advocacy for certain projects a misuse of the Town Supervisor's franking privileges is NOT an example of his disregard for the limitations of Executive power. Were Feiner to use taxpayer-paid postage to write "Vote for Me" would but this in not what ABg's post is about. Instead, it is simply the author's device to revisit several "win-wins" of Feiner that ABG and its close friends did not approve of. If ABG really were concerned about the cost of postage, then it would have done the leg work and reported the annual cost rather than the cost of one stamp. Indeed ABG doesn't really care about doing the harder work: substantiating its pretensions of knowing the facts. One of the "fish" in the ABG barrel is the notion (see post) that the Town acquired Frank's through a mortgage foreclosure. Ignoring that the entire Frank's Nursery corporation was in the final throes of Bankruptcy Court and that the Town of Greenburgh is not a mortgage lender, this reader wonders where the fiction of a six month requirement to sell the property came from? But there is a larger issue at stake here and one which ABG and others are steadfast in their will to misunderstand reality: rising expenses in the Town budget (think payroll/benefits as one costly line item) need to be offset by rising income. ABG doesn't want to be seen as the advocate for raising property taxes or any taxes yet it fails to recognize that the RX for higher costs is attracting higher uses of a fixed quantity of land. And with School Taxes the biggest burden, commercial land uses which don't fill classrooms are most desirable. And within this category and in alignment with an aging population, assisted living and hurting homes are the best of all worlds result. For the record when arguing against the imagined perils of Westhab, ABG fails to disclose that it is a NIMBY resident of Fulton Park, it would seem that this un-intrusive threat did not sink Fulton Park upon its completion or lower asking prices of homes for sale. What ABG needs to understand to attempt credibility is that part of the job of Town Supervisor is to ATTRACT investment to the town. New development means more property tax dollars, more sales taxes, more mortgage taxes, more employment, more choices...In order to attract investment, the Town Supervisor, any Town Supervisor or Mayor, would be remiss of he or she didn't meet with interested parties who logically have a need to sound out the local government to get an idea how receptive and supportive the municipality would be to their proposal. At the early stages of talks, it should be understandable that a project not yet locked in would seek non-disclosure. Hence what are labeled "back room deals" by critics are neither unusual or threatening merely by occurring. When such dealings become public, which they must well before shovels hit the ground, then and only then can Feiner be taken behind the woodshed and spanked. But this post decries Feiner's use of Town stamps to argue his case. Would it be more to ABG's liking were Feiner not to put his position on record? If we are to have a better Greenburgh, it will not come from the likes of those who shoot first without any understanding of the real world and the need to acquire factual content before caterwauling.
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