Westhab Violates Code and Promises

During the entire charade perpetrated on the Fulton Park neighborhood by The Paul and his Town Board, and Westhab, by constructing an inappropriate building on an undersized piece of property on Old Kensico Road, EVERYONE promised that the plans were final and that no variances, considerations or concessions would required by Westhab. None. In fact, Francis “Back Pocket” Sheehan repeatedly questioned former Vice President of Real Estate Robert Sanborne that Westhab would not need or be coming back to the Town Board, as the lead agency, for any exceptions? Sanborne, who was terminated from his position for failing to move the project along faster after two years, emphatically said they would not!

At the last Town Board meeting a resident supplied pictures and measurements showing Westhab violated the 10-foot setback they are required to follow. A permanent concrete staircase and handicap ramp was installed and made a part of the structure with an incorrect setback of about five (5) feet. The resident asked that the building department investigate and address its removal. But this is Greenburgh and this is a pet project of The Paul. That means little, if anything, might happen to correct this violation. If this was a homeowner, they would be sent away after being berated and told to come back with updated and corrected plans and try again – and plan to pay the fee again.

Let’s momentarily put aside that the building department “missed” this staircase installation, which we understand was a at least two weeks in the making. Let’s not bring up that a “roaming” building inspector “found” a building violation on the Fulton Park Civic Association’s President’s home on the garage door area after she continually found violations in the Westhab proposal. Let’s ignore The Paul’s explanation that they often have building inspectors drive around neighborhoods looking for violations. Let’s put aside all the illegal multi-family residences in single-family homes in Fulton Park that the Town ignores. Let’s also put aside that the President and a well-known civic-minded attorney got the case against her dismissed. Here’s the big question: why was the building department ignoring this blatant and glaring violation at the Westhab facility? Could the building department have been instructed to “look the other way”? Could The Paul have instructed a building inspector to “check out” the FPCA President’s home and, “Find something?” You decide.

The Paul and his Board will use semantics and find some reason to ignore or approve the change in design – on the fly – and grant the illegal installation of this non-conforming staircase, violating promises made by The Paul and his Board to the Fulton Park residents and to the Town itself. Could the Town Board vote “No” on this change? They can and should, but we know they won’t. 

The Paul made promises to Westhab and their shareholders, so ABG assumes the neighborhood will get screwed again by The Paul and his Board. He often claimed he was going to prove to them how he felt about them and they would change their view of him. It doesn’t look like he or the Town Board will vote in favor of the neighborhood – again. ABG doubts they’ll be changing their view of him. We can only hope.

Is Westhab Being “A Good Neighbor”?

On the agenda for this week’s Town Board’s Work Session is one innocuous line that states:

• Westhab - Request for Waiver

ABG has learned that the waiver Westhab seeks at tomorrow’s work session is to exempt themselves from paying the recreation fee that is required of developers. Their rationale is that they are an
all, low income residential facility and deserve the exemption. ABG believes they should pay the fee, happily, as they are already being given numerous tax breaks and other considerations to build and operate in Greenburgh.

Their residents, as well as this facility, are low income by their choice. Having the use of two recreation departments within the Town and all of the services availed to Greenburgh residents is all the more reason for them to not be exempted. Low income residents take advantage and utilize many of the “free” Town offerings – and we don’t begrudge them. However, Westhab is making excellent money for this facility and can easily afford the fees. In fact, ABG would like to see them pay more, showing a willingness to enhance the Town as they take advantage of our largess in other ways.

ABG is sure The Paul and his Board will rubber stamp this request through and basically give Westhab anything they ask for. It would be nice to see them stand up for the rest of the Town’s over-burdened and over-taxed Unincorporated residents and say “No” to this request. We can only hope.

Residents To Lose To Outside Developers

There was a new organized proposal about two Town Board meetings ago that had an immediate buy-in from The Paul from Homes for Westchester, a consortium of six affordable housing groups that work toward “streamlining” the affordable housing projects process in Westchester. Their aim is to speed up the approval process and get their affordable housing projects sped through the system. Their claim is that it takes much too long for them. They cite not-for-profit as well as for-profit companies having to spend so much time time for approvals that it can make affordable housing unaffordable. Really?

The process in the Town is extremely convoluted sometimes but more complicated than other communities. In Greenburgh for instance, to re-roof your home doesn’t require a permit. But if you use more than one sheet of plywood during the renovation, a permit is required. Approvals for homeowners require plans and their submission, attendance at zoning and planning board meetings, etc. The process can go for as long as a year and may be more. And, there’s no guarantee that your project will get the green light from the Town. There are some good things that come from this process from a safety perspective.

Tony Hoeltzel, the “front man” for this consortium, along with Joan Arnold, gave examples of the supposedly difficult process he’s been a part of in numerous communities. In Greenburgh, The Paul and his go-along Stepford Board will rush affordable housing projects through the system in the blink of an eye. Planning Commissioner Thomas “Can’t Say No” Madden will even meet with and assist developers with their planning. Residents don’t get this same hand-holding. In fact, if they miss something on their submission applications, they are denied, told the application is not correct and sent to the back of the line to start all over again. This doesn’t often happen with affordable housing proponents. Residents are seeking changes to their largest investments while the outside developers are simply coming in to make a buck!

Hoeltzel claimed of one project that took thirty three meetings to get approved, thus his comment about the unaffordability of affordable housing. ABG is sure this project was not in Greenburgh. Perhaps he should seek another line of work if he doesn’t like having to participate in the same processes the residents and taxpayers must to protect and cultivate their Towns and Villages. In particular, in our Town where The Paul will rubber stamp all projects from a select group of developers as affordable, ABG doubts this service really needed? The Paul with his complicit Board, along with Thomas “Can’t Say No” Madden and in concert with Building Inspector John Locido, approve every project, no matter how inappropriate, as long as the developer mentions a few buzzwords: affordable, low-income, workforce, municipal workers and of course veterans and senior citizens.

This effort is nothing more than a special interest group seeking to circumvent the rules and regulations of the Town for their own gain. They are playing the “not for profit” card like its some sort of panacea for housing. Its not. These “not for profit” owners garner extremely attractive salaries. Many of their more senior employees, such as their attorneys, engineers and designers also make very enviable salaries while living under the “not for profit” moniker. So, at the end of the year, when their well-paid accountants are preparing their books to show “no profit”, their balance sheets may not show a profit but everyone was handsomely compensated. That is the only significant difference between them and a “for profit” developer. Well, that and the various tax breaks afforded to them that the “for profit” developer doesn’t receive, increasing the playing field to be even more disproportionate.

The Paul favors this action. Why wouldn’t he? Its right in line with his continued “ghettoization” of the Fairview section of Greenburgh which is currently running on all cylinders. While the Town did not have to participate in the Westchester County HUD Housing Settlement because there was, to quote The Paul, “An over abundance of affordable housing in Greenburgh,” the reality is he’s over-saturated this one area while protecting votes in others. It’s time for the residents to be heard! We do not need special interest groups with their own agendas having a special line that allows them to get their own dispensation for their projects while the owners of the Town, the resident taxpayers, are forced to wait on longer and slower moving lines. This must be stopped! We can only hope.

Sanctuary Town: Illegal Housing Costs Us All

Look The Other Way
ABG’s previously posted about the Town employees being told to look the other way when it comes to illegal aliens, illegal housing, and other related illegal activities. It bears further comment in terms of what it costs us, the legal and abused taxpayers of Greenburgh. When we discuss illegal housing, we are not targeting illegal aliens. While there is less of an issue from the standpoint of their being here, how they reside still contributes to the illegal housing and should not be ignored. But it also costs us in many other ways.

Every Service Is Estimated
There are several categories that bear examination, including, but not limited to, water usage, trash removal, garbage removal, recycling, fire, police, and schools. Every service in our Town is either estimated or sometimes “guesstimated” on past usage, square footage of residential and commercial buildings. Most of it is pretty routine. But this affects our infrastructure as well as aging it prematurely, overburdening it, and increasing the costs to it.

Water Usage
No one at the Town seemed able to tell us the yearly water rate or garbage fee per ton for the Town of Greenburgh. No matter, we’ll make up numbers for our example. Let’s say the Town pays $1,000 per day to use one million gallons of water. That translates to $365,000 for 365 million gallons of water. We understand that usage fluctuates and there will be days where more and/or less is rightfully used. But what happens if we use more at the end of a billing period and we go over our one million gallons? If we wind up using 1 million and 1 gallons, the price the Town pays goes up exponentially, roughly by (i.e.) four times the amount. So instead of paying $365,000, we now have to pay $1,460,000! Granted these numbers are examples but the exponential increases are very real.

Why is our water usage important? Because when the Town estimates the budgets and projected usage for the year, it is based on existing housing and the housing’s designation as single family, two family, six family, apartment buildings and so on. If you have a family of four (again an average estimate) in a single family home, you can approximate water usage by their actual address, house size and/or square footage, based on four people and then estimate water usage for a neighborhood. It’s the same for businesses as well. In fact, the Coca Cola bottling plant in the northern unincorporated area of Greenburgh (9A-north Elmsford) used so much water when they opened that they created a vacuum of water in the surrounding area, activating area business’ fire alarm systems with false water-flow alarms. It took some time but was corrected. Once the issue for that business is fixed, normal usage is again planned for.

When a single family home of four is estimated to use a certain amount of water per year, the Town budgets for just that. If say three families are now living in that same single-family home, they are effectively using three times the amount of water. Getting the water is not the issue, nor would the increase in people and usage in one home be a problem. It would be the same as say a young adult losing their job or home and moving back in with their parents or the parents moving in with their son or daughter. It’s not a problem nor would we seek to force them out. But when there are numerous single-family homes occupied by multiple families, it begins to shift the water costs upward to the Town significantly. We all pay more for water with increased fees while the single family with multiple families effectively pays less. It’s a large part of why our Water Department operated at a $4M deficit for the past few years.

Garbage Removal
Similar to water usage costs are garbage removal fees. The Town picks up garbage throughout the Town twice a week except during holiday weeks, when residents continue to generate garbage but Town workers receive the holiday off and our pickup is reduced to once a week. The Town plans on a certain tonnage of garbage to be generated by it’s residents and budgets personnel, vehicles and fees for that quantity to be picked up, carted to The Charles Point Resource Recovery Facility, located in Peekskill. What the Town picks up and delivers to them is paid for by most of us by the pound. We all pay more for it while the single family with multiple families effectively pays less for extra trips back and forth to Peekskill, additional garbage tonnage, personnel, etc.

The garbage removal is paid for by most of us and not all of us based on the illegal housing that the through the Town’s condoning of illegal housing. Our example of a single family home of four, it is estimated to generate a certain amount of garbage and the Town budgets for just that based on housing zoning and a generically acceptable amount of occupants per square footage. If say three families are now living in that same single-family home, they are effectively generating three times the amount of garbage. Since they are paying a rate for one family, the rest of us must make up the difference with increased garbage removal costs to the Town.

Looking The Other Way
The over-occupancy of single and two family homes is a safety issue that seems to be brought into the open any time there is an injury or death and requires police or fire department intervention. Interestingly, The Paul has mandated to the police and fire departments that they are not to go to a home and “find” other violations beyond what they were called there for. An example is a domestic fight that took place in a single family home that our offices overlook. If they notice rooms with locks or subdivisions, multiple mattresses on the floors throughout the house, they cannot report it.

From our hilltop location, we actually have a view of many rooftops but only two or three homes. They are over-occupied based on what we witness 24/7. When the police responded for a domestic disturbance between the apparent landlord and tenant, our own Christina, went to an officer she knows and asked what happened. He told her the landlord wanted the renter evicted and when he tried to put the renters belongings outside, things got violent. The officer told her he went in after the tenant and got “turned around” momentarily when he went in because the basement, through the boarded up garage area, had been subdivided numerous times. Eventually, with assistance from the other officers, he and the renter were brought outside.

The officer explained he used to be a city firefighter and wonders what might have happened if it were a couple of firefighters who went in there in a smoky condition, saying they would have been killed or called a ‘mayday’! A ‘Mayday’ call from a firefighter is when they are disoriented, trapped or hurt in a fire and need assistance to get out. When pushed if he would report this to the Building Department, he stated he cannot and will not put it in his report. His orders are to respond to the call and look the other way toward other violations! A check with our firefighters confirmed this policy.

Schools and More
There are other costs to the Town’s residents that the rest of us pay to absorb, beyond the increased staffing for Police, Fire and Sanitation personnel. We pay more for our schools taxes because we have to accommodate teaching the additional kids that overburden an already saturated system. So if the schools planned on an estimated two children from a single-family home, which is now receiving four kids, and they can’t turn them away, nor would we, they are absorbed into the system. However the same system for good instruction for the legal residents suffers from being overburdened. It’s costing us all more.

There other examples of how this affects us from overcrowded hospital emergency rooms, ambulance calls, closing of hospitals, increased costs for state, county local benefits, etc. The final concern here is resident’s personal safety at home. By allowing multiple families to illegally occupy a single family home, we condone them to live in a dangerous environment unnecessarily. This goes beyond not paying their fair share. We put them and our first responders in added danger when they must respond to aided calls, fire calls or domestic disturbance calls at these locations. Our first responders, whether paid or volunteer, never signed up for the additional hazards of responding to single family homes with multiple families. Nor did we as residents.

Indicators
What are the signs of multiple occupancy? There are typically more than two or three cars in the driveway, different cars coming and going at all hours of the day and night, cars parked on the lawn because the driveway is full. Watch for the amount of garbage that is put out. We’re not talking about the occasional time there is a holiday or birthday party when additional garbage is generated. But, when you see more than one or two bags of garbage per pickup, you might have multiple tenants. Watch on trash pickup days for the same thing. Many homes that have multiple tenants or families don’t have a storm door - something which is baffling to us and we cannot explain. Look on the side of the house for a cable splitter with wires going into the house at different locations or through windows. Take a look for multiple satellite dishes mounted to the house. Finally, ask a neighbor and they will easily be able to point out multiple tenant single-family homes.

It Must Stop
The Paul has decided to make the Town a sanctuary Town. His motivation is unknown to us but we’d like to see the laws we have enforced. When you complain about your taxes going up, illegal housing is a large contributing reason for it. It must stop and the Town needs to address the multi-families in a single family home problem that is pervasive throughout our Town. It’s not safe and adds unnecessarily costs to our residents and businesses. It must stop! We can only hope.

Town Treats More Properties Like WestHelp

ABG was invited to look at two homes in one neighborhood during a tour of several Town locations for different reasons. We’re not making judgements of the people who may own these homes or their circumstances. We were told when we visited them that they were not occupied. These photos cannot capture the conditions that an “in-person” viewing did. The reason for our post with these two homes is that the condition of the homes present a danger to the residents, if in fact they are occupied, bring a negative image to the neighborhood, and ultimately reflect poorly on the Town’s code enforcement departments.

The first home is on Drisler Avenue and the second is on Lark Avenue, both in the Worthington Woodlands area of the Town. Unfortunately, they do not adequately show the true condition of what we witnessed. We knocked on a few neighbors doors and only found one person willing to admit that they had contacted the Town about trying to get some attention to these homes. Her concerns were to have repairs made before they became either too damaged, infested with rodents, used by squatters or stripped by thieves. She explained her pleas to The Paul fell on deaf ears.

Note the cars shown appear to not be registered for street use.

It is incumbent on the Town Building Department to secure the safety of all our residents, not only on the streets, but perhaps from themselves through neglect. The Paul and his Stepford Board never seem to miss an opportunity to create a new fee (tax) for the Building Department to charge residents. If the owners of these homes need help, we should find a way to help them fix what needs to be fixed. If these homes are simply unoccupied because the owners passed away, is incapacitated, too old or frail to make repairs, or in foreclosure, let them investigate and find every way to make them habitable.

With all the homeless, seniors, veterans and others in need of a roof over their heads, wouldn’t these houses, instead of constructing apartment buildings that don’t fit in our neighborhoods, be a better solution? Simply, yes!. Every neighborhood throughout the Town has vacant homes for a variety of reasons. Shouldn’t we stop letting facilities such as WestHelp be used for a personal agenda as a political football and start housing people again? Simply, yes! Shouldn’t we look at homes that are vacant as part of a solution to our affordable housing solution. Simply, yes! Shouldn’t our “problem-solver” be solving problems instead of creating more of them? We can only hope.

Town Ignores Toll Brothers’ Ardsley Chase Violations

Seemingly nestled in the bucolic Village of Ardsley, Toll Brothers, luxury homebuilders, have been selling pre-built lots and future luxury homes in their new development, Ardsley Chase.

These are actually in the Town of Greenburgh. What ABG has learned however, is that while the development may be luxury homes for future residents, the Town is completely abandoning our existing residents in the surrounding area. This is not a new circumstance that the Town administration might say they were unaware of or hadn’t heard about until now. Letters and emails have been sent and phone calls made. Efforts made to enlist the Town’s help rectify the wrongs perpetrated by the Toll Brothers and their various sub-contractors have fallen on deaf ears at Town Hall. No surprise in the Town of Developer Paradise.

ABG staffers took a quick tour of the site with several residents to see first hand some of the issues. While mud throughout the site limited our access on foot, there were no gates offering the site any security or limiting our access. This is one of the complaints from residents. Trucks seem to be accessing and exiting the construction site at all hours of the day and night without regard to noise ordinances, “normal operating/business hours” nor weekend courtesies of allowing residents a respite from the noise, rumbling and traffic created by their trucks.

We attended a resident meeting recently about the Brightview Assisted Living Facility, who have proposed a sweeping Town-wide zoning change to accommodate themselves and other developers, with theirs being a new, 4-story, 90 units facility smack dab in the middle of single family residential communities. When queried about construction noise, traffic and obstructions to their daily lives, they insisted in very soft-spoken and calming voices that they would adhere to the Town’s extremely strict blasting, noise, building and site specific regulations for parking, etc., during construction. It was like listening to Allison Steele on the radio. Residents were correctly skeptical. Especially when representatives from other neighborhoods confirmed the Town did not enforce any of the regulations, allowing developers the “run” of the neighborhood. At this point, the President of the Glenville Civic Association (the area near Benedict Ave & Rt 119) and others from the neighborhood complained about the construction violations that the Town did not enforce during the entire construction of the new Stop and Shop across from them on Rt 119. In fact, when they complained with calls to the police department, they were told little could be done.

Blasting at the Ardsley Chase site, while mostly completed at this point, has resulted in damage to numerous neighbors near and far, forcing them to place claims with their insurance companies and the Town. These construction blasting victims were all told by their insurance companies their claims were refused because the cracks, “nail pops”, pipe leaks and related damage were caused by their homes settling. To contest the decision would require hiring engineers, having studies performed which is just not cost effective when its all said and done. 

Toll Brothers has refused to repair the damage to the homes. The Paul and the Town’s various departments expectedly refuse them help, even going so far as to not return resident’s phone calls. Ironically, the Town mandates developers to maintain insurance bonds to pay for damage caused by construction. These should be viewed like the Town’s AAA Bond Rating. It’s valueless if you are not going to use it. ABG has learned that Fulton Park had the same problem when Westhab was blasting and when the NYS Truway Authority blasted as they added sound barriers along I-287; Glenville had the same problem when Stop and Shop site blasting was happening; Dunnings Drive residents had the same problem during construction of Watch Hill; the same thing at Nob Hill and Avalon Green’s surrounding residents. Nothing was ever done by the Town to remedy any of this. Now Glenville needs to prepare for Round 2!

At the entrance to the new development at Birch Ridge and Ardsley Roads, the developer moved the telephone pole back about maybe two to three feet. 

Phone pole on west side of Birch Hill Rd was previously where the gray rectangle on the
sidewalk is. You can just barely see the edge of the bus stop sign on the northern side of the
pole between the second and third metal straps holding the metal pole to the phone pole.

Where it is however, creates a line of site hindrance that will make exiting the complex onto Ardsley Road extremely dangerous. We experienced this when we tried to exit. Add inclement weather, snow and ice conditions and you have a recipe for disaster. The County bus stop, which had been located on the western side (at the point we’re standing to take this picture) of Birch Street, was moved to make the entrance appear more inviting.  This makes the accessibility of the bus stop a serious issue and quite possibly an ADA violation. The new western-side sidewalk has phone poles right in the center of the sidewalk, blocking anyone trying to walk on it and forcing them to step into the roadway to go around it. This is extremely dangerous and needs to be fixed.

More importantly, the Birch Ridge Road’s line of site coming eastbound on Ardsley Road (toward Central Ave.) is too steep and in violation of AASHTO standards, the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials. Ignoring important safety standards at this already precarious location mandates a foregone conclusion of multiple accidents, injuries and even death! Why haven’t our assorted planning and building departments in tandem with our elected officials addressed this? Why does The Paul’s Stepford Board continue to become the lead agency for every project, with the Planning Commissioner “going to bat” for every developer, and then ignore such routine violations when lives are unnecessary placed in harms way?

We passed two existing homes, one on each corner as we entered Birch Ridge Road that have had recent landscaping performed by the Toll Brothers developers. On the eastern side, the home had their driveway moved to access Birch Ridge Road. It used to open onto Ardsley Road. They allowed the developer to make this change and enhance the entrance to Ardsley Chase. Most importantly is that the county Bee Line bus stop and ADA compliant sidewalk that had been located there was removed and grass planted. It looks terrific with the new stonewall entrance to these $1.2M and higher homes. Tacked up onto the phone pole across on the west side of Birch Ridge Road is the indicator of the new bus stop. While the phone pole on this side had been moved back two to three feet, it is still in the wrong place!

A less critical issue, but serious to the existing homeowners is truck traffic continually driving over the edges of the entrances to their homes and drives, not only ruining the landscaping, but crushing the new water meters the Town recently installed! These new meters have provided some water pressure relief to these residents while creating other problems. While Toll Brothers has repeatedly repaired the damage caused by their trucks, ABG is sure once they finish with the delivery trucks and the building is complete, these residents only recourse will be to come to the Town to complain. Basically, residents will be required to fix it themselves since our Town has a habit of ignoring its current residents.

There are several water runoff catch basins and a pump system that is supposed to catch rainwater runoff and handle it to reduce potential flooding in the area. While it is a worthy attempt to right a wrong ignored everywhere else in the Town, there hasn’t been enough rain or storms to prove it works. One of the best ways to absorb water and control flooding is by maintaining and cultivating wooded areas as well as limiting impervious space.

According to Greenburgh’s arborist, Toll Brothers removed 18,000 trees, mostly poplar trees that were at least 100 feet tall! Poplar is sought after by lumber mills because of the consistency and quantity of straight lumber they will yield. It is also a very weather/water resistant wood. Toll Brothers only paid fines of $17k for the entire deforestation that took place. This amount would be easily absorbed by the lumber profits after selling these trees. They’ve replaced a small portion of the trees with evergreens, birch trees and other saplings that will not offer the wind and water protection these poplars had. What a shame the Town did nothing to inspect and ultimately protect the area – again!

Throughout the site are silt barriers erected to protect and prevent dirt erosion from rain and storms. We noticed that the many spoil piles of dirt randomly left uncovered is another unenforced violation the Town is ignoring. ABG is questioning the Toll Brothers intent, as these seemingly small violations are not really so small. They cumulatively highlight our poorly functioning Town departments and leadership, create an unsafe worksite environment and unnecessarily put workers and visitors lives at risk.

The pervasive consistency of inaction and malaise has evolved in the Town and its departments into a tangible laisser-faire working relationship with developers. They’ve turned a blind eye toward the developers while our Town continues insulting, costing us all and disrespecting the Town’s current residents – the “little guy”.  This must change. We can only hope.