Government Should Remain Neutral

A short time ago, Mr Feiner did his routine email blast with the coveted GBList. We'll reiterate he is violating daily yet another court's guilty penalty and order by refusing to turn the list over to the resident who had requested it. She was refused, appealed, refused a second time, sued and won in court for access to it. This is significant mostly because Mr Feiner has always been content to violate the laws he doesn't like without consequence as well as the trust of Town residents. However, Mr Feiner wholeheartedly endorses his developer friends’ projects du jour, usually at an extreme cost to neighborhoods throughout the Town. Now, however the other shoe appears to be on his foot.

We were originally going to write about how Mr Feiner has again mounted a campaign blitz on behalf of his friends from GameOn 365 and their most recent push to build a mega-sports complex on Dobbs Ferry Road. You'll recall they tried to proceed with acquiring the property with an illegal lease scheme concocted and championed by Mr Feiner. Then he tried to gift the property to them at a significantly undervalued price with obscenely minimal payments over 13 years. When another area resident and business owner offered to purchase the property for double the amount at $3.5 million in cash and pay for all site contaminated remediation, Mr Feiner refused to entertain their offer claiming it was not a serious one. What he should have done was publicize all the facts about the property, interested parties and their offers. Clearly, the Town could have held the upper hand while being open and transparent. But once Mr Feiner began the closed door, back room meetings, that ship sailed and sank. Or did it?

Now, many years later, the property remains vacant and still contaminated because the Town Board has kowtowed to Mr Feiner's wishes to finagle a way to gift the property to GameOn 365. Both Mr Feiner and his Town Board have not done the right thing with this (now-reverted) residential property! While Mr Feiner should have the taxpayers best interests at heart, he's more interested in helping his friends. Apparently the City of Yonkers isn't the only municipality with a Friends and Family Plan for developers.

Regardless of Mr Feiner and the Town Board's illogical, perhaps immoral, if not illegal, actions with the former Frank's Nursery property on Dobbs Ferry Road, this article is about to shift gears and focus on the over-development of our Unincorporated Town property. We have bemoaned the fact that every sliver of space in Unincorporated Greenburgh is being gobbled up by developers who then approach the Administration and tout the benefits of mega-construction on the land.True to form, Mr Feiner instructs his Board how to vote and the developer's presentation sails through and before you can say, "Wait just a second," the Town Board declares themselves the lead agency and the deal is done.

Here's a few such examples to what we are referring. First, we'll go with Brightview Assisted Living Center. Mr Feiner touted the availability and need for Greenburgh residents to have a place they could spend their remaining years. What was uncovered and at first denied by Mr Feiner was that someone without assets and on Medicaid would not be allowed to move in. In typical Feiner-form, he finally acquiesced, admitting he was still in favor of it, apparently the poorer Medicaid recipient-residents be damned. This mammoth structure looming over Rt 119 is adding to the infrastructure burden and not contributing any relief to the residents. At least the developers are making out well.

Second, he is entertaining a proposal on a triangular strip of land between the Sprain Brook Parkway off of Payne Street for a 96 room assisted living facility. Access and egress will happen through one of the side streets off of Payne Street. The increase in traffic through a residential neighborhood, we're sure, will be proposed as either negligible or non-existent as these are retired, non-driving occupants. Whatever the developer wants is probably what the traffic study will say. Interestingly, all of these projects are green-lighted (pun intended) regardless of what the traffic study says. This will increase traffic and further burden the infrastructure.

Third, was the Westhab project in Fulton Park, proposed as a 7-story apartment building and finally constructed as a three story gulag-style building that is an eyesore to the neighborhood, Rt 119 and will ultimately become a Section 8 housing facility. Throughout all of the disingenuous posturing from the Town Board, residents were continually told that no decision had been made by the Town Board and they could still say no to the project. What they conveniently left out was that no open decision was made, nor was it made public. The deal was done with the neighborhood, the infrastructure and traffic to the area be damned.

Fourth, there are several plans to build apartments without parking on Central Avenue since Mr Feiner and his Board forced a new tax onto service stations, forcing them to close (opposite Scarsdale Ford). There's also Dromore Road off of Central Avenue. The pièce de résistance is the mega-development that's been presented in North Elmsford's Eastview area. Over 100 acres have been green-lighted by Mr Feiner and his Board to build more of the same. Mr Feiner has never met a developer whose plans he didn't endorse. The over-sized development there is another added burden to our infrastructure as well increasing traffic. The attitude at Town hall is that traffic is already congested so a little more won't matter.

The latest debacle to be proposed is in Ardsley at what was the old Akzo Nobel Chemical site that was in the area of 9A and the Saw Mill River Parkway. STOP! Mr Feiner says its not a good location. He says the developers should reconsider building there because it will, ahem, tax the infrastructure. All developers in the area know that there is no project that Mr Feiner won't give a thumbs-up to as long as his precious gated community is left alone. Infrastructure be damned! Could it be the carcinogens left on the site that might poison staff and residents? No. What's good for the goose, perhaps? No. Too much traffic? No. Overburdening the schools? No, not even close. Then what could possibly cause Mr Feiner to be against another development?

Votes. That's right. Mr Feiner is afraid to upset the Villages of Ardsley, Dobbs Ferry and Hastings. He will lose beau coup votes from the otherwise solid stalwarts at election time. How can we tell? It's simple really, but an even more obvious example is the cleaning out of the Saw Mill River after the massive flooding that we believe was, in part, caused by all the over-development approved by Mr Feiner and his Town Board. He rallied alongside Elmsford's Babbitt Court residents, Ardsley and the other river towns in Greenburgh. More importantly however, is that he did absolutely nothing about helping the Greenburgh residents along the Bronx River corridor. Why? They cannot bring enough votes against him in an election so he knows he can ignore them - and he and his Town Board does just that.

ABG believes the site for this newly proposed multi-family metropolis is a viable one in a location that will not intrude on any residential neighborhoods. And, lo and behold, there is an extremely successful sports complex nearby for the families to use. We understand they might be looking to expand and this could be just the venue to help them along. We accept that Mr Feiner routinely lies to the constituency, the courts and God knows who else. And, it was during his 22-year tenure that the infrastructure was neglected. Hardly a valid argument for him to make now. But we needn't accept this bad behavior from our government leaders. Politicians should remain neutral with developers and their projects and not advertise on behalf of them. They should also invest in its infrastructure, not use its failings as an excuse. It's time for a change. Only then will we see A Better Greenburgh