Democratic Debate: “You Sound Like Me!”

The James Harmon Community Center at 44 main Street in Hastings was at capacity for the forum or debate – whichever you prefer to call it – for the “face-off” between rival Democrats Town Supervisor candidate and challenger Robert “Bob” Bernstein and 22-year incumbent and current Town Supervisor Paul Feiner. They are both seeking the Democratic endorsement for the Supervisor’s race. According to Democratic Leader Suzanne Berger, whichever candidate wins the endorsement on September 10th will be virtually guaranteed to be elected Supervisor in the November election. For Mr Bernstein this is a make-or-break primary and his only chance to run for the office. Mr Feiner on the other hand will also be running on the Working Families party line regardless of the outcome on September 10th.

There were two moderators for this evening’s debate and a three-member panel comprised of several media writers . They were Susan Wolfert representing the Scarsdale Inquirer/Rivertowns Enterprise, David McKay Wilson representing the Journal News and Danny Lopriore representing the online site The (Greenburgh) Daily Voice. Each candidate made opening statements followed by questions from the media panelists.

Here’s a few observations about the event. The room had probably about two hundred or so people in it. There were people lining the perimeter of the room. Also in attendance were Town Councilman Kevin Morgan, Town Attorney Timothy Lewis, County Legislators Alfreda Williams and Michael Smith. Also in attendance and given a chance to make a three minute introductory speech during a brief pause in the debate were Town Clerk challenger Sherron Brunson Fantauzzi and current incumbent Town Clerk Judith Beville. There were several others there that the hosts acknowledged early on. Mr Bernstein arrived at the dais carrying a small pad. Mr Feiner arrived carrying an armful of papers and folders. The audience seemed to be an even mix of supporters for both candidates. The moderators asked that the audience hold their applause while candidates spoke. There were numerous video and still photography and cell phone cameras going off. There was a young man who was using his Mac laptop as the official time-keeper for the candidates.

Ms Beville addresses the audience. Ms Brunson Fantauzzi
is seated to her right.

During their three-minute segment to address the crowd during the Supervisor candidates break, Ms Brunson Fantauzzi repeated her list of reasons why voters should choose her for Town Clerk. She similarly went through this list at the non-debate held at Town Hall several weeks ago. A sample from the list she read from included many points posed as questions, such as “If you want a Town Clerk who will expand the hours of her office, vote for me.” And, “If you want a Town Clerk who will transcribe minutes in real-time during the meeting, vote for me.” Unfortunately, Ms Brunson Fantauzzi read this rather long list from a sheet of paper that sat upon the table. As candidates were asked to stand during their answers, Ms Brunson Fantauzzi appeared to lose her place several times along with her rhythm. While this speech served her well at the last event, she fumbled here. At this stage of the campaign, she should have had it memorized or go with a different speech entirely. Ms Beville on the other hand spoke clearly, concisely and with confidence. We still think Ms Brunson Fantauzzi’s message is spot-on but her delivery was lacking and hope the message doesn’t hurt her campaign.

Supervisor candidate Bob Bernstein addresses the crowd.
Mr Feiner is seated to his left.

As questions were posed and answers tendered, an interesting pattern developed. When Mr Feiner spoke, Mr Bernstein jotted a few notes on his pad, and when appropriate stood up and rebutted Mr Feiner, sometimes referencing his notes, sometimes not. When Mr Bernstein spoke, Mr Feiner rummaged through his papers and folders spread out before him and when it was his turn to rebut Mr Bernstein’s comments, he would stand, hold up and point to a piece of paper and say , “This is a copy of the court’s decision. It quotes Mr Bernstein saying...” Or, “Here’s a quote from Mr Bernstein from 2008 when he was against...” This went on throughout the night. At one point, Mr Feiner appeared very nervous and blurted out, “You’re flip-flopping again. You’re all over the place. You sound like me!”

To Mr Feiner’s credit, he practiced for the night’s debate and was much more coherent and smoother that usual. He tried to lay his case against Mr Bernstein with a few ineffectual facts that ultimately rang hollow. When facts didn’t work for him, he resorted to what he always know best and began lying about Mr Bernstein, claiming Mr Bernstein wanted to hire a professional administrator so he could continue working at his law firm and leave running the Town to someone else. He (Bernstein) wasn’t going to be as attentive to residents’ needs and concerns as he has been for 22 years. Mr Feiner stated he was like an old time doctor who still makes house calls at any hour of the day or night. To his credit, he does. Mr Feiner is very adept at deflection and changing the subject when it suits him. He did this several times attacking Mr Bernstein, to the point where both the questioner and the moderator had to ask him to please answer the question. Throughout the evening, Mr Feiner seemed tense, almost jumpy and somewhat nervous. He did dress the part and abandoned the disheveled look that has served him so well in the past.

Mr Bernstein also may have practiced for last night’s debate. He has been involved in many of these same issues and has spoken about them at length before last night’s event. Whenever Mr Feiner spoke, he (Bernstein) periodically made a note or two and appeared to be calmly waiting his turn to either speak or rebut a point or two. After answering the actual question presented, Mr Bernstein smartly used his remaining response time to address points Mr Feiner made about him that were off-topic. When Mr Bernstein stood to speak, he cited facts and numbers, easily appearing confident, knowledgable and at ease with the topics and venue.

According to Mr Bernstein, Mr Feiner has done some good things in office. According to Mr Feiner, Mr Bernstein has sued the Town several times costing the Town unnecessary amounts of money. Mr Bernstein stated that taxes have increased for the Unincorporated as well as the Village residents. Mr Feiner stated that taxes have risen because of frivolous lawsuits from Mr Bernstein. Mr Feiner appeared to be on defense the entire night as Mr Bernstein handily recited facts, decisions and actions taken by Mr Feiner and his Board. Whenever Mr Bernstein hit too close to home, Mr Feiner would state it was the Town Board making the decisions and he was just one vote.

ABG has written often about the collusive nature of “his” Board. Mr Bernstein says he doesn’t want to fire Mr Feiner, just retire him. Mr Feiner states there are injustices that need correcting and he should get two more years. ABG has written often about the many injustices in the Town which have been created by Mr Feiner and his policies. Mr Bernstein has identified a number of ailments the Town is suffering from, some festering for about 22 years. Maybe its time to look for a new doctor? It’s certainly time for A Better Greenburgh.

Ethically Challenged & Resorting To Lies

During the last forum at Town Hall which was not attended by Mr Feiner, his opponent for the Supervisor position, Mr Robert “Bob” Bernstein, had the spotlight shone on himself and the Town Clerk candidate Sherron Brunson Fantauzzi. The fact that Mr Feiner and Ms Beville chose to not attend  the event was nothing short of disrespectful to the residents of Unincorporated Greenburgh and those in attendance.

Several people have stated that Mr Feiner, speaking on behalf of himself and Ms Beville, did not attend because the Council of Greenburgh Civic Associations were campaigning for Mr Bernstein and against him and they are a partisan group. Ironically, the CGCA is run by Madelon O’Shea, who insists that all meetings, functions and discussions remain non-partisan. The League of Women Voters may or may not be partisan but the moderator, Ms Sue Weisfeld was specifically chosen as she has been known to be fair while forcefully maintaining control of a forum and the time constraints necessary.

We’ve always maintained Mr Feiner is shrewd. He proved it again by not attending the forum and then having a one-half an hour commercial run on the cable access channel immediately after the forum ended. It allowed him a relatively captive audience, a half an hour of uninterrupted and unquestioned time to talk about what he wanted to discuss, not what residents might be interested in hearing. It reminded us of the night he went to the NAACP forum about WestHelp and never answered any questions and rambled on about everything but answering the questions that were asked. ABG is relatively sure we’ll see a repeat performance of that behavior again tonight.

Watching the video he produced found him in front of numerous locations discussing topics relating to where he was. One location he illegally entered to film his commercial was the Elmsford Fire Company, a private corporation who did not authorize his film crew to enter or film there, where he professed his love of the villages volunteer firefighters. At the end of that video, he must have realized he offended the paid firefighters in the three Greenburgh Departments and quickly praised them too. ABG understands why he filmed this piece there. The paid firefighter’s union has endorsed his opponent, Mr Bob Bernstein.

He spoke in front of Frank’s nursery (loss to Greenburgh: $3.5M), WestHelp (loss to Greenburgh: $1.2M/yr), the Fortress Bible property (loss to Greenburgh: up to $8M), the Theodore Young Community Center and so on. At each location he staked his claim against Mr Bernstein as being against what he was trying to do at each of these locations. ABG believes Mr Bernstein was on the right side of each of these escapades. Mr Feiner could be found weaving half-truths with out and out lies about Mr Bernstein. We already have documented that Mr Feiner is ethically challenged and in desperation is resorting to lies to make his case for re-election. Residents are smarter than that but Mr Feiner is hoping they will only remember what he has said, not what he has done.

Mr Feiner has been in office for 22 years now. In the beginning, when many residents tired of the Anthony Veteran administration, the voters decided to try something new with Mr Feiner. What we have learned in those 22 years is that the old saying about how “power corrupts” is absolutely true. While Mr Feiner may have been a logical and even good choice 22 years ago, his lack of management skills, lack of private sector knowledge and experience, lack of ever working in the real world has shifted his focus from doing the right thing for residents to favoring developers, contributors and special interest groups.

This September 10th is the date for the Democratic Primary. The outcome will decide who will be the endorsed candidate of the Democratic Party in the November election. It’s not about which yard sign was more impressive or readable when speeding down our residential neighborhood streets. It’s not about wondering who will help you as you watch your possessions float away during a misting rain because overdevelopment has no place for the water to go. It’s not about standing in the shadows of a larger than zoned-for building wondering how to watch a sunset in our Town. It’s not about watching our already overdeveloped green space turn black from macadam. It’s not about wondering if traffic will begin to move in time for you to play with your kids before they go to bed. It’s not about watching our seniors move out of their homes of 30 and 40 years into a subsidized studio apartments because taxes became greater than their Social Security checks. No, it’s about the fundamental and sweeping changes our Town has gone through and deciding if enough is enough! It’s time to return Greenburgh back to it’s residents. It’s time for A Better Greenburgh!

Punishing Residents

The average homeowner in Greenburgh pays their property taxes without much fanfare. Many have chosen to include their taxes in their mortgage payment and never really “see” the tax increases and simply pay their increased mortgage payment without much thought. Most residents are also “headline readers” or willfully uninformed as to what is going on with their local government and its officials. Greenburgh taxes have risen exponentially in many cases and are only realized if and when the homeowner sees or pays their bill independent of their mortgage. Property taxes for municipal services in Greenburgh have soared by 54 percent in Unincorporated Greenburgh, and 145% in the villages.

Case in point? Our increased water bills for the last three years. To soften the blow of an under-financed water department (there’s really more to it), Mr Feiner took it upon himself to raise the water tax two years in a row for a total of 102%! And while the rate change addressed the immediate shortfall, he insists new water meters be installed throughout the Town, claiming faulty meter reading amounts were the cause of the financial deficit. Since we were able to quickly address the deficit in two years, perhaps we’ll see a reduction in our water rates to an evened-out amount and an end to the water meter folly? Not likely.

Additionally, Mr Feiner ignores the real estate tax increases punishing residents for the various districts when he makes his speeches about staying within the 2% tax caps “imposed” by the state. The Fairview Fire District had released its proposed 2013 budget in excess of the NYS 2% cap. The district’s proposal would increase homeowners property taxes by 4.95%, with the bulk of the increase being retirement and salary costs! Add to this the ever-increasing school taxes – for the children – that each year are supposedly going to new and improved programs that ostensibly need to be created/replaced/tuned-up/increased/expanded, etc., with correspondingly dismal results. The taxpayers wallets are seen as an endless source of revenue by each taxing district. And for those not working, working part-time or not making the money our Supervisor does, they have all they can do just to get by.

We all know that having a job is a good way to help our community flourish, unless it’s the Fairview section of Town. This has been Mr Feiner’s dumping ground for low and no income people, DSS recipients, Greenburgh Housing recipients, displaced people and so on. He has ghettoized this area to “protect” other areas of the Town and Villages from it. Hmm, do you think that’s why he always gets the Villages vote in the elections? It couldn’t hurt.

Go to some of the buildings in the Manhattan Avenue area without an escort and report back to us how it felt. The police department spends a concentrated amount of their time there for criminal activity and the fire department mostly for ambulance and some fire calls. While these people may need or even want a job, you never see Mr Feiner and his job bank working to employ them. Why not? They are expendable to him except at the voting booth. Watch for another Lanza-funded program to be offered to them at the TYCC so he can boast what he’s done for them this time.

Every politician promises jobs to their electorate at every election, even Mr Feiner. Yet, we all know government doesn’t create jobs. What government does, in particular Greenburgh government under 22 years of the Feiner Administration, is desperately seek new ways to tax, fee, and regulate business to death. The Town Board’s recently failed attempt to add a hotel tax as part of their revenue stream was introduced and pushed by Feiner friend and sidekick in Albany, Assemblyman Thomas Abinanti. He claimed that this tax was justified because the hotel patrons utilize our highways and roadways, free parking and beautiful landscapes. What Mr Abinanti, Mr Feiner and others don’t understand is that the tax they seek to impose will not be paid by the hotel. It will simply be passed along to the customer. Eventually, the customer or more importantly their company will say, “Enough!” and stop going there. Most of the other politicians have been equally disappointed because they just cannot understand the real world of business. For Mr Feiner, never having been in the private sector, this is strictly an abstract concept. The hotel managers on the other hand are relieved the tax never passed into law.

Dan Conte, president of the Westchester Hotel Association and Manager of the Westchester Marriott in Tarrytown, stated most of Westchester’s hotel business comes from corporate clients. Even a minor room tax can mean the difference in a choice of hotels, he said. “Every penny does count when it comes to the decision makers,” he said. “The misnomer is that it’s a victimless crime.” They are competing with hotels from White Plains, Fairfield County, Connecticut, and Northern New Jersey. These are more readily accessible to public transportation and a broader range of dining options. He noted that the county already charges its own 3% tax on hotels in addition to the sales tax. “We don’t understand, again, why they continue to single us out as an industry,” Conte said. “The economy has gotten a little bit better, but it’s not better.”

The New York State 2% tax cap that Mr Feiner knowingly boasts of adhering to can easily be overridden when necessary and is fraught with exemptions. With his mismanagement of the Town’s finances, his false tax cap savings and ever-increasing certiorari refunds, other taxing districts are forced to compensate for their respective shifting revenues, blowing any tax cap savings out of the water! This last Town Board meeting (8/14/13) approved over $2 million in certiorari refunds. The 47% non-tax-paying-not-for-profits operating in the Town, the twice-monthly certiorari adjustments the Town Board authorizes at each Town Board meeting, are choking the rest of the tax-paying residents of the Town and must stop! We pray Mr Feiner doesn’t decide to start a Greenburgh BID. Even though they are proven losers, he seems to embrace one bad idea after another.

The Greenburgh electorate is primarily comprised of democrats and they have the ability to change the Town. The Democratic Primary for Town Supervisor and Town Clerk are the two contested positions in the September 10th Democratic Primary election. Mr Robert “Bob” Bernstein and Sharron Fantauzzi, respectively, are running against the incumbents for Supervisor and Town Clerk. ABG urges all registered democrats to vote in this primary and help to create A Better Greenburgh.

Bernstein To Debate in Two Venues

Town of Greenburgh Supervisor candidate Bob Bernstein announced today he has accepted invitations to debate current supervisor Paul Feiner on two different occasions in the weeks leading up to the Democratic Primary to be held on September 10. Town Clerk candidates Sherron Fantauzzi and Judith Beville have been invited to debate as well.

The Council of Greenburgh Civic Associations (CGCA), a politically non-partisan organization established in 1955 to represent the interests of residents in unincorporated Greenburgh, has invited Mr. Bernstein and Mr. Feiner to a debate to be held Thursday, August 22 at 7 p.m. at Greenburgh Town Hall. The debate will air live on public access cable (channel 76 on Cablevision and channel 35 on Verizon FIOS).

The Hastings-on-Hudson and Dobbs Ferry Democratic Committee’s will co-host a debate September 3 at 8 p.m. at the Harmon Community Center in Hastings-on-Hudson.

Mr. Feiner is currently refusing to participate in the CGCA debate, insisting instead he will only take part in the debate taking place in the villages. “I am sure Mr. Feiner will not snub the voters of unincorporated Greenburgh, who pay 95 percent of the Town’s taxes,” Mr. Bernstein said. He further noted that in 2005, Mr. Feiner showed up minutes before the debate was to begin, after refusing the CGCA’s invitation to debate then supervisor candidate Bill Greenawalt. At the time of this release, Ms. Beville had not responded to the invitation from the CGCA.

Mr. Bernstein and Ms. Fantauzzi were overwhelmingly endorsed by the Greenburgh Democratic Committee at its convention earlier this year.

“This debate is an opportunity to speak about the issues plaguing our Town,” Mr. Bernstein said. “Residents need to hear how I will lead the Town out from under the bevy of lawsuits filed as a result of Mr. Feiner’s conduct in office. His mismanagement has resulted in the Town being found liable for violating the Constitutional rights of a church; for losing millions in revenue at WestHELP, which he has kept vacant and deteriorating for two years; and most recently, for failing to sell the Frank’s Nursery property to the highest bidder. Greenburgh taxpayers have shouldered the ‘Price of Paul’ for too long.”