The Propaganda Scramble

Now that Mr Feiner has alienated his loyal base of Village residents via the revaluation, said to have been handled ineptly by Tyler Technologies, he is scrambling to validate the increased taxes the Villagers will be paying in their next tax bill. But is it enough? This same voting base were his guaranteed votes that would routinely put him back into office year after year.

The Jefferson project proposed at the Ardsley and Dobbs Ferry border between Rt 9A and the Saw Mill River Parkway is just one example. He has rallied against it. Why? We believe he did so because it would increase his school taxes. As you may know, about 60% of your property taxes is school taxes. He also did this on behalf of Ardsley resident and Greenburgh Town Board member Diana Juettner. He did the same thing against an assisted living facility proposed in North Elmsford’s Payne Street area. The location is in the backyard of Greenburgh Town Board member Kevin Morgan. He’s also fought the Yonkers development of a big box store in his own back yard as part of the Stew Leonard’s property expansion claiming traffic concerns. When Greenburgh residents have the same concerns about projects in their neighborhoods, they are summarily dismissed and told to suck it up. Can you say Not In My Back Yard (NIMBY)? Meanwhile, they routinely tell all of us how good this is for the Town, the neighborhoods, the residents, etc. Ultimately, it is not.

Roll Camera. In spewing his “what we’ve done for you lately” propaganda, there are some truths but also a great deal of unsubstantiated showmanship. First, he makes sure that someone else is to blame by saying the Villages are part of the Town because of state law. Second, he provides a breakdown of the taxes Villagers pay, claiming only 2% of their entire tax bill goes to the Town services. Again, according to him 60% goes to school tax, which the Town is obligated to collect. The rest of his tax collection speech is him doing the Feiner vamp, saying nothing and  proving politicians can speak without saying anything. Stop camera.

He says:

What does the town do for the 2% of your entire tax bill? ABG provides a closer to the truth answer to each point.

1. We offer advance life support (ALS) and paramedic services which has a proven record of repeatedly saving the lives of village residents. Hopefully, you won't need them, but if you do these services are ready to respond to your call 24 hours a day.

Real Answer: They do provide this. However, the Villages pay the Town for this service. What he doesn’t mention is that the Village Ambulance Corps augment the Greenburgh ambulances by responding to Greenburgh calls when requested through Mutual Aid. And while Greenburgh is the “owner” of the call and bills for its services, they do not share any of those monies collected with the ambulance corp or fire department ambulances they used.

2. The town's town wide senior program serves or delivers over 30,000 meals to village seniors each year. The program provides a hot meal five days a week to eligible seniors. We have three nutrition sites - in Dobbs Ferry, Tarrytown and unincorporated Greenburgh. Our home delivery program provides delivery services to seniors who cannot come to one of these sites.  

Real Answer: Mr Feiner habitually throws out numbers hoping some of them will “stick”. Sadly, while he is telling you they deliver 30,000 meals to village seniors, we know it's simply not true. No matter how we did the math, there seems to be about 120 seniors out of about 92,000 total residents who are are getting meals from the Town. And there is no informational breakdown available between Town and Village recipients.

3. The town has a recreation program for developmentally disabled residents.

Real Answer: This may be, but we could find nothing about this on the Town website.
4. The town's animal control department responds to calls for service within the villages. If there is a stray or injured animal the animal control unit will respond. We transport the animals to an appropriate medical facility for care.

Real Answer: This is sort of true. Animal Control is only available between 9 to 5, if the animal control people are available/working. By the way, they won't take every type of animal.
5. The town's civil defense unit provides civil defense services during natural disasters and other major events, such as post 9/11 and during blackouts. These services include coordination of communications for police, fire, paramedics and refilling of air packs and fresh air for specialized rescues. The unit also responds to refill the air tanks of village volunteer firefighters during fires.

Real Answer: While we applaud the work performed by the Civil Defense, this is an extremely small group of volunteers without the personnel necessary to do a lot during an emergency. In fact, they are augmented by the Town's C.E.R.T. group. They DO go to fire scenes and fill air tanks for any firefighters who request them. The paid fire departments have their own systems and don't utilize them. In fact, there's a move now by the paid departments to replace all of their air packs which will require that they purchase new refilling systems. If they didn't use the Civil Defense's system for free, they could go to the Westchester County Fire Training Center in Valhalla and refill their air tanks there 24-7-365 at no charge.

6. The town's highly trained and specially equipped special weapons and tactics (SWAT) team is available 24/7 to respond to emergencies. Officers from throughout the town who meet very rigorous standards are readily available to respond to emergencies in the villages.

Real Answer: This is true. The Town's special operations groups are comprised of the paid fire department members and the police department members and require overtime that the taxpayer must pay. Once dispatched, their positions are required to be "backfilled" by off-duty members. This is mostly billed as overtime to the taxpayers. The County has the same special operations teams that can be called out at a moments notice and at no charge to the community and have much more resources available to them.
7. The town's road striping unit is responsible for striping roads, including the center and side lines and crosswalks on roads in all six villages.

Real Answer: While valuable, we're guessing this is not vital. What is vital is to have more police officers on the road, patrolling our communities.

8. The town acts as a collection agent for the schools and county. The town guarantees 100% of the taxes to both entities. If you do not pay your school or county tax bill the town pays it for you. The town then has to use its offices to pursue collection of all unpaid taxes.

Real Answer: This is true, the Town is obligated by law to collect these monies. They don't do because they want to help the Villages out.

9. The Town Clerk
• Responds to FOIL requests from residents town-wide; and provides…

Real Answer: All government agencies are required to respond to FOIL requests. The Town of Greenburgh seems to take an inordinate amount of time fulfilling this obligation while other communities seem to do this more quickly and at less cost to the taxpayers.

• dog licenses to residents, town-wide;

• marriage licenses to residents, town-wide; New York State Licenses: Fishing, Hunting, Handicap Parking Permits;

• Town of Greenburgh Licenses: Cabaret, Canvassing/Peddlers & Solicitors, Filming, Sanitation (private), Taxicab and Taxi Driver;

• Senior Citizen Rent Abatement Program (ETPA) for qualified town residents;

• Management of all vital records (marriages and deaths) that occur in the Town of Greenburgh;

• Sales Tax Letters to residents and businesses for correct Sales Tax amount for the town; and several other miscellaneous services.

Real Answer: While all of this is true, it's our understanding that these services take up a miniscule part of the Clerk's office time and frankly, that's their job, regardless of the Villages' usage of it or not.
10. The Town's Sewer Department responds to calls for service from the villages for sewer emergencies 24/7, which require the use of The Town’s jet/vac truck and operator.

Real Answer: While it is available, our understanding is that it is not used that often.
Because the Theodore Young Community Center was paid for with federal and state tax dollars, residents of the villages have the ability to use the indoor pool at the Theodore Young Community center and to participate in their programs.

Real Answer: While true, most people are unaware of the center because of where it is and if they are aware of it, find there is very little time available to use it because there are daily programs already filling their burgeoning calendar.

The above are some highlights representing the services offered to village residents. I hope this information answers some questions. Feel free to contact me with any further questions.

Real Answer: While these services may be available to the Villages, it hardly justifies the significant tax increase revaluation is placing on many residents. This is pure Feiner Deflection, changing the subject from the original discussion to something unrelated. It has to stop. Only then will we get A Better Greenburgh.

No Disaster Management, We Offer Three Ideas

Disaster management is typically relegated to emergency responders as a quasi-military event in most communities. Greenburgh isn’t much different. We have a very well paid police department and three very well paid fire departments that provide coverage to most of the Unincorporated portions of the Town. Each Village has it’s own police department. Where there is no paid fire service coverage in the Town, the Town contracts with the Village’s all volunteer fire departments for fire protection coverage. Those residents pay a significantly lower fire tax for the assessed value of their homes than the areas with a paid department, roughly $11/thousand versus $130/thousand). It is the most cost-effective use of our fire protection dollars. As with any police or fire department, they are reactive and respond to emergencies as they arise. This is no different for hurricanes, other weather-related events or their “normal calls” and requests for assistance. They are not in the disaster management business although they may be called into it at a moments notice. You call 911, they respond.

The field of disaster management originated during the Cold War, when planning for nuclear attacks and the need for building bomb shelters was developed. Once the threat of nuclear war waned, concern turned towards responding to natural disasters. Not surprisingly, there appears to be a relationship between the degree to which communities accept disaster management planning and the degree to which they experience disasters: the greater the exposure to disasters, the greater the interest in disaster management. Ironically, in Greenburgh, we’ve always been relatively insulated from major storm event damage. However, The Paul tasked Police Chief Joe DeCarlo to work with Disaster Planning consultant Jonathan Raser to develop a Town Hazard Mitigation Plan.

Developing a Town Hazard Mitigation plan was a seemingly good idea and the two men worked independent of the Town’s Comprehensive Planning Committee, with it’s sole goal to allow the Town to apply for grant funding. While not a terrible idea, Raser was subsequently contracted by the Town to assist residents that were affected by flooding damage during Hurricane Irene. Conflict of interest? Perhaps. But the end result was a Hazards Mitigation plan that proved deficient and ineffective during Hurricane Sandy, no funds secured for any residents suffering from Hurricane Irene, and a hefty paycheck for Mr. Raser, who has returned to his home state of New Jersey. No doubt he’ll be billing Governor Christie for similar “planning”.

Community members are becoming increasingly frustrated not only with being excluded from the decision-making processes involved in community planning, but also with being excluded from those involved in disaster management planning. During all of the three-card monty-like shuffles, we still haven’t received any solutions from our leaders. Fortunately, public participation is gradually becoming an accepted part of the disaster management process – except perhaps in Greenburgh – so things may improve. The Paul rarely has a problem forming a committee for anything and everything with his convict-buddy, Alan Hochberg. He has no issue corralling interns to do the work our regular employees would normally be doing and being paid to do. Could it be because the interns are too naïve to realize they’re being used and abused or that they simply seek the community service hours and could care less how bad The Paul is at doing his job?

ABG can and will continue to critique the actions of the Town and The Paul and the waste of money to get us no closer to any solutions. Additionally, rather than only being critical, ABG is offering a few suggestions to follow and hope they make their way to The Paul’s yet to be formed Emergency Management Committee (EMC), not chaired by Alan Hochberg. While these are our ideas, they by no means are the panacea for all that is wrong in our Town: spot zoning, over-development, antiquated and ignored infrastructure, lack of flood mitigation, lack of impervious space and so on. So here’s just a few of ABG’s ideas that can be done with little or no money and stay under the 2% Tax Cap.

Solution Number 1:

We’d like to see the Town develop a program we’ve tentatively named: HEROS, for Home Emergency Response Operation System. This would entail having a leader and volunteers from every neighborhood throughout the Town to provide information to the Town as well as get information from the Town and back to its residents.

The HEROS’ tasks could include but not be limited:

1) to complete a neighborhood inventory of available equipment (e.g. chainsaws, pumps, generators) and skills (e.g. nursing, plumbers) that could be useful during and after a disaster.

2) to develop a list of special-needs situations (e.g. elderly people living alone) and follow up with them after an event to ensure they’re okay.

3) to arrange for local stockpiling of supplies, such as medical (ice packs, bandages), food (snack bars) and water.

4) to have community members become CERT members and provide basic emergency interaction prior, during and immediately after an event.

5) to provide basic search and accountability, first-aid training.

6) to assess needs required from the Town within their jurisdiction and forward that to the appropriate designee before and/or after an event.

Solution Number 2:

We’d like to see the Civic Associations develop a HEROS-like squad within their individual civic associations that would assign key personnel:

1) to complete a neighborhood inventory of available equipment (e.g. chainsaws, pumps, generators) and skills (e.g. nursing, plumbers) that could be useful during and after a disaster.

2) to assess needs required from the Town within their jurisdiction and forward that to the appropriate designee before and/or after an event.

3) to develop a list of special-needs situations (e.g. elderly people living alone) and follow up with them after an event to make sure they are okay.

Solution Number 3:

We’d like to see the Town develop a liaison with each neighborhood via their civic associations to be the neighborhoods point of contact. This liaison could be a Police Department Constable or a Fire Department Volunteer (no additional costs to the Town) that reports back through their chain of command about the status of each neighborhood they are assigned to liaise.

ABG recognizes that while a top-down policy is needed, it’s really the local-level bottom-up policy that provides the impetus for the implementation of mitigation strategies and a successful disaster management process. When we looked at his blog, The Paul touts and is “thankful” for the work done to alleviate flooding along the Saw Mill River praising the work that’s been done. This work happened due to the efforts of business owners along the 9A corridor, former Village of Elmsford Trustee William Zimkin and the Village of Elmsford. The Paul offered nothing nor initiated any of that cleanup work. Furthermore, after repeatedly promising to show the Fulton Park area how much he thinks of them and is going to help their neighborhood, he has done nothing to help alleviate flooding for Town residents along the Bronx River. That screams volumes of how he feels about them! Their next storm with the subsequent flooding and losses will be their problem, not his. We’re sure The Paul will be emails home sending to those without power, suggesting they call FEMA to keep busy.

State and federal governments and agencies have a role to play in establishing mitigation policies, but it is up to local communities to formulate, initiate and implement those policies that will lead to the adoption of mitigation strategies. Given the obvious links between sustainable hazard mitigation and community planning, it behooves the Town to address the links between hazard mitigation and disaster management planning. In short, it is obvious The Paul has no solutions, nor can we rely on The Paul’s administration for bona fide help, just more finger pointing, emails, letters and rhetoric. We need action – even if we must provide it ourselves. We can only hope.