Town Screws Up Again – Costs Us Millions – Again!

After Paul Feiner was found guilty of discrimination, destroying evidence and five other counts against him in the Fortress Bible Church of Mt Vernon, NY case, “he” had to pay a fine of $6.5 million dollars. In reality, he paid nothing and got off “Scott free.” Although he aways insisted the insurance company would pay the fine prior to the verdict, we soon learned that the insurance company did not have to pay the full amount, contrary to what non-practicing attorney Feiner insisted. Why? Because there was a clause in the policy (loosely interpreted) that relieved the insurance company from that entire obligation because Mr Feiner had been found guilty in Federal Court of the charges, negating that contract. So, the insurance company paid only $1 million dollars and Greenburgh taxpayers, not Mr Feiner, are paying the $5.5 million dollars difference!

It seems that even though the discrimination book is not yet closed on this despicable act by Mr Feiner and his Town Board at the time, another costly settlement has been underway for approximately 5 or so years. Now a settlement has finally been reached and resulted in another multi-million dollar payout by the Town. S&R Development Estates, which acquired the 2.3-acre property at 1 Dromore Road to build a 45-unit apartment complex in 2006, based upon a mapping error by the Town, filed suit against the Town and won, resulting in another massive payout by the Town for $9.5 Million dollars.

The Town Board was advised numerous years ago that there was a discrepancy with the Zoning maps for Dromore Road and that they should be corrected before a developer seeks to purchase the property and build something in the neighborhood, vis é vis the Town, that the surrounding area residents might not want. Well, as sure as Mr Feiner is proof of why we need term limits, S&R Development Estates purchased the property to develop as multi-family housing. And while Mr Feiner has consistently failed to stand up for most neighborhoods and always sides with the developer du jour, here’s yet another example of how he failed the other property owners on Dromore Road, specifically the Green­burgh Na­ture Cen­ter, whose largely wooded 33-acre prop­erty abuts the lot in question, the Sis­ters of the Blessed Sacra­ment, a Catholic or­der whose sanc­tu­ary also bor­ders the prop­erty, and res­i­dents of the un­in­cor­po­rated com­mu­nity of Edge­mont, and the Town residents in general. 

S&R later sold the prop­erty to Wilder and Bal­ter Prop­er­ties of Chap­paqua. They are a de­vel­oper spe­cial­iz­ing in af­ford­able and work­force hous­ing, which is probably what they plan to build on this site. Unfortunately, affordable and workforce housing is just a moniker for low income and/or subsidized housing and the issues that follow it. But those issues will soon belong to the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament, the Greenburgh Nature Center and the Edgemont residents whether they incorporate or not.

So whose at fault with all of this? Mostly Mr Feiner and his current and former Town Board members, Francis Sheehan, Diana Juettner, Eddie Mae Barnes and Steve Bass, as they were made aware of the inaccuracies in zoning and chose to do nothing to correct it. And, once they eventually did try to take action, it was simply too late – and ultimately too costly. The Town Board de­cided to limit the li­a­bil­ity to res­i­dents of un­in­cor­po­rated Green­burgh and not the six vil­lages, in­clud­ing the River­towns (as always). “Since this is a land use mat­ter and the vil­lages have their own land use boards,” said Mr Feiner, “I don’t think it would be fair to have the vil­lages con­tribute.” What Mr Feiner really means is that the Village voters are the people who have kept him in office this long and he doesn’t want to take a chance of alienating them - especially now that he has a challenger for this election! He also failed to mention that the Village’s Mayors and Trustees actually do an infinitely better job of protecting their residents from developers than he has ever done. It must be nice…

If incompetence were ever to go mainstream, its model would be right here in the Town of Greenburgh with any of the career politician Feiner’s administrations. Would a Town run by his challenger, who worked in the failed NYC DiBlasio administration, be any better? Highly doubtful. The Republicans ceded the Town to the Democrats long ago and now they are bearing those fruits at an incredible cost to us all. Electing “more of the same” from the Democrat pork barrel puts at fault those same people, an established one-party, poorly ruled Town. This must change. It’s the only way we’ll get A Better Greenburgh.