Section: Croton-on-Hudson Editorial
May 4, 2008
Meet Tony Conetta: Robert Moses He Ain't
One almost expects to be assailed with fear mongering by politicians in the nation’s capital. Scare tactics, a standard operating procedure in Washington, are de rigueur nowadays. But one doesn’t expect to experience them in the Village of Croton-on-Hudson from a would-be contractor to the village.
Yet that’s exactly the unseemly tactic Anthony O. Conetta, 60, vice president of the Long Island-based engineering firm of Dvirka and Bartilucci, tried to employ at last Monday’s sparsely attended work session of the village board. Dvirka and Bartilucci have done work for this village before. They should know better.
It seems that some 700 parking spaces may continue to be lost to use from time to time if the flood-prone area of the parking lot (Sections G and H) at the Croton-Harmon station is not renovated at a cost to Croton of more than $2 million. FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Administration, has already unequivocally turned down Croton’s application for a grant to make improvements that would forestall future flooding events.
The federal government is obviously not anxious to open its coffers for the repair of a parking lot built over a filled-in marsh and with a long history of flooding—one that probably should never have been placed there. Where were environmentalists when this wetland area was originally filled in? Croton is appealing the decision, but getting an inept FEMA to acknowledge that it made a mistake is unlikely. It still won’t admit that anything was wrong with the hundreds of thousands of formaldehyde-contaminated trailer homes it supplied to Katrina hurricane victims, causing many to sicken or die.
Dvirka and Bartilucci have their eyes fixed on a heftily remunerative contract to raise sunken portions of the parking lot by five or six feet. Mr. Conetta conjured up his mushroom cloud at Monday night’s work session. Unethically trying to scare board members and the public, he claimed that the loss of the sinking parking spaces would mean that some 700 current parkers would be driving to New York City instead of taking the train.
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April 27, 2008
Where We Stand: Crotonblog Responds to Mayor Schmidt's Irrational Outburst
In the period euphemistically characterized as “citizen participation” at Croton’s village board of trustees evening meeting on April 21, Kevin Davis, 18, made a reference to this being the period known as Passover. He then asked Mayor Gregory Schmidt and the trustees a series of questions keyed to numbered matzos in a box of matzos he handed to board members. The questions precipitated a heated exchange between the Mayor and Mr. Davis, during which the mayor’s voice rose increasingly higher, sounding more like a coloratura soprano the more excited he became. Maria Callas would have been envious of his range.
First, we want to make clear that Crotonblog holds no brief for Kevin Davis’s unfortunate introduction of a religious holiday and religious symbolism into a purely secular discussion. Mr. Davis is a young man with laudable aspirations to political activism. Unfortunately, he has not yet learned the wisdom embodied in the well-known Madison Avenue maxim called “the KISS Principle.” (“Keep It Simple, Stupid” is what the acronym KISS stands for.)
And, to give the devil his due, Mayor Schmidt was in the right in declining to submit to a finger-pointing interrogation of him and the members of the board of trustees about their participation in an activity called “ghostwriting.” Properly speaking, a ghostwriter is someone who writes a literary work for another, usually for money or other consideration, and who yields claim of authorship to that other person. Quite frankly, we do not know where Mr. Davis was going with this line of questioning, although we believe it was an attempt on his part to get one or more of the Republican trustees to admit to posting messages anonymously on the NCN chat room that masquerades as a blog.
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April 14, 2008
The Facts Behind the Thornton Case
Because so much misinformation is being bandied about what we now call the Thornton Case, Crotonblog should like to set the record straight by recounting the facts as they occurred:
The Thorntons were among the original group who founded Crotonblog, which began publishing on January 14, 2005.
Little more than a year later in March of 2006 the Thorntons decided to resign from the group. Their reason was they objected to an anonymous comment that accused a Croton trustee of helping himself to a can or cans of the soft drink Dr. Pepper from the vending machine in the Stanley H. Kellerhouse Municipal Building. The Thorntons and Mr. Steinberg worship at the same church. Mr. Steinberg had been appointed a trustee by Mayor Schmidt upon the latter’s election as mayor. Mr. Steinberg was decisively defeated in his bid for election as trustee in the following election.
Crotonblog accepted the Thornton’s resignation with regret.
On April 5, 2008, Crotonblog received an e-mail from Mrs. Thornton to the effect that an e-mail from a friend in which the writer had the impression that they were still associated with Crotonblog. She suggested that Crotonblog “announce” their earlier resignation and describe Crotonblog as “The New Crotonblog.”
Crotonblog does not publish a traditional masthead listing staff and ownership as newspapers do, and, like newspapers, neither do we report the resignation of individual staff members. Announcing the resignation of the Thorntons more than two years earlier hardly seems like a news item of interest to Crotonblog’s readers.
Accordingly, in our response to Mrs. Thornton on April 6, we pointed out that since receipt of such messages by the Thorntons was surely infrequent, it would seem to be more practicable if the Thorntons merely announced in their response that they no longer had any connection to Crotonblog. We declined, as a matter of policy, to publish the requested news item.
Mr. Thornton responded with a comment left on Crotonblog, and in reply we reiterated our feelings about making a news item of their resignation.
The above states the facts as they pertain to the resignations of the Thorntons from Crotonblog, more than two years ago. The Thorntons were never “banned” from Crotonblog, as one of the lies being circulated on a local chatroom has it. And it is a matter of record that the Thorntons initiated all actions relating to the termination of their association with Crotonblog. The Thorntons have had no association with Crotonblog since March of 2006.
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March 31, 2008
When Is a Blog Not a Blog?
The answer: When it’s virtually a chatroom.
Out of curiosity we looked in at The North County News blogs, particularly the one that would like to be a competitor of Crotonblog. It has a lazy, East European quality about it that we found off-putting. It turns out that The North County News blogs are not true blogs, but really are virtual “chat rooms”—a derisive term that some North County News posters from time to time have applied to Crotonblog, a true blog. What they call “forums” have been set up for a few of the communities in the newspaper’s coverage area, but many have simply ignored the opportunity to participate in the forums.
In fact, of the dozen regional forums created by the newspaper, only one seems to show any real activity—the one devoted to Croton-on-Hudson. It’s preoccupied mainly with what can best be described as “talk between ships,” and a few individuals monopolize this boring back-and-forth chatter. Some of the monopolizing individuals are former Crotonblog users—or rather Crotonblog abusers who later took Crotonblog to task for allowing anonymous postings.
Crotonblog is always interested in statistics, so we compiled a few about the usage of the North County News forums. Here’s the doleful picture:
| Town | Topics | Posts |
| Chappaqua | 0 | 0 |
| Cortlandt | 4 | 4 |
| Croton-on-Hudson | 73 | 449 |
| Katonah | 2 | 2 |
| Mt. Kisco | 0 | 0 |
| Ossining | 2 | 2 |
| Pleasantville | 0 | 0 |
| Peekskill | 10 | 10 |
| Putnam Valley | 6 | 6 |
| Somers | 1 | 1 |
| Yorktown | 12 | 12 |
| Westchester County | 7 | 7 |
We were interested in the names used by posters on The North County News forum set aside for Crotonites and their frequency of use. Here are the most frequent posters:
| Rank | Name | Posts | Since |
| 1. | Maria | 183 | November 8, 2007 |
| 2. | Bob Wintermeier | 73 | November 12, 2007 |
| 3. | Carolyn G. | 59 | January 19, 2008 |
| 4. | Notorc | 57 | November 12, 2007 |
| 5. | William b r | 42 | November 16, 2007 |
| 6. | Elise Sasso | 10 | November 22, 2007 |
Readers who may be interested in back-fence gossip between this small clique may find tidbits of chitchat there. Frankly, we found it all very tiresome. Since only some 140 days have passed since November 8, it is evident that at least one poster has been working overtime.
Some of the posters are using less than their “true legal names,” the former requirement of The North County News predecessor blog. These are the same people who raised a stink over Crotonblog’s acceptance of both signed and anonymous postings, a common practice on the Internet. For some reason, they are more interested in the identity of the person who made a comment rather than the content of the comment.
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March 22, 2008
Another North County News 'Goof of the Week'
In a feature story on the Croton election, we find the following in this week’s North County News:
Olver said he plans to spend his first days in office meeting village staff and listening to their concerns. He also plans to pour over the budget as hearings begin March 24 and culminate with the board’s vote on April 28.
Pour, of course, means to spill from a container. Pore means to study intently. One pores over a book, but pours water. In the North County News excerpt one is tempted to ask what Mr. Olver intends to pour over the budget.
After Bruce Apar, who likes to show off his title as Editor + Publisher, took over the North County News, he managed to eject the prize-winning staff of the newspaper and substituted an entirely new staff, largely neophytes to the newspaper business like himself. He now has clear-cut proof of the adage that you get what you pay for. From our vantage point it’s obvious that he should have given them all spelling and comprehension tests.
Recently, the North County News advertised in the Pennysaver for several weeks seeking a copy editor. The newspaper definitely still needs a good copy editor.
Here’s what The American Heritage Dictionary says about pour and pore:
pour
v.tr.
- To make (a liquid or granular solid) stream or flow, as from a container.
- To send forth, produce, express, or utter copiously, as if in a stream or flood: poured money into the project; poured out my inner thoughts.
v.intr.
- To stream or flow continuously or profusely.
- To rain hard or heavily.
- To pass or proceed in large numbers or quantity: Students poured into the auditorium.
- To serve a beverage, such as tea or coffee, to a gathering: We need someone to pour.
[Middle English pouren, perhaps from Old North French purer, to sift, pour out, from Latin pūrāre, to purify, from pūrus, pure; see peuə- in Indo-European roots.]
pore
intr.v. pored, por·ing, pores
- To read or study carefully and attentively: pored over the classified ads in search of a new job.
- To gaze intently; stare.
- To meditate deeply; ponder: pored on the matter.
[Middle English pouren.]
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March 19, 2008
Notes on the Recent Croton Election
We were tempted to begin this editorial with the trite phrase, “The people have spoken.” But the people have done more than speak in yesterday’s election. By an almost two-to-one margin, the people of Croton let out a roar of disapproval and unhappiness with the Republican Party for trying to fob off a pair of ersatz candidates for the post of Trustee.
We accept that Mr. Streany spent many hours training for and being on call as a volunteer firefighter. We accept that for many years Mrs. Minett has been unhappy with one situation after another in the Village and has publicly expressed her discontent. But in each case, voters recognized that such credentials alone were not enough to qualify these candidates to formulate the policies of the Village and to dispense its funds. In addition, however, it was one candidate’s unsavory baggage and the other candidate’s perpetually narrow contrariness and lack of experience in dealing with anything more complicated than a household budget that doomed them both to such a decisive defeat.
That old warhorse Winston Churchill had an expression that fits this election. He said, “The problems of victory are more agreeable than those of defeat, but they are no less difficult.” This brings to mind another Churchill quotation: “In war, resolution; in defeat, defiance; in victory, magnanimity; in peace, goodwill.” The Democrats may think that the battle is over and the time has come to be magnanimous. This is sheer nonsense. The battle for the next election in 2009 has just begun. The 2008 election was the first skirmish in that battle. Only the same spirited willingness of the Democrats to carry the attack to the opposition can hope to eject the do-nothing Schmidt administration from office.
No matter how uncomfortable we make Trustee Brennan and others with political ambitions, Crotonblog will continue to be an aggressive force for truth. And since when is the truth “mudslinging?” Our research in public records has revealed information that, while embarrassing for those under our spotlight, has never been refuted. We shall continue our investigative research in future campaigns and let the devil take the hindmost.
We are not going away. If future candidates have anything questionable in their past, our advice to them is to reconsider their decisions to run for office. Harry Truman once said, “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.” Crotonblog would modify that to, “If you can’t stand the spotlight, get off the stage.”
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March 17, 2008
The Uncivil War Within Croton
There is a battle going on in Croton—and it isn’t only between local Democrats and Republicans. We’re talking about the behind-the-scenes wrangling between “Old Croton” and “New Croton” Republicans. Families that have been here for several generations comprise Old Croton. New Croton are those who have moved here more recently—and include people like Greg Schmidt, Thomas Brennan, Sue Konig (only 9 years) and Joann Minett (only 10 years).
We have it on good authority that Old Croton Republicans are unhappy with the New Croton Republicans who currently hold elected office because of their repeated failures over the past three years to actually do what they said they would do and really “move Croton forward.” Simply put, they want meaningful results and have been left unsatisfied. They are also worried about the reality that Croton is quickly becoming an unaffordable place for them to live—and that they will be forced to move away.
There are several subtle evidences of the rift. Just drive around Croton and you will notice that Streany/Minett signs are not being displayed on the lawns of many Old Croton homes. The way we understand it, Old Croton Republicans are frustrated by Mayor Schmidt’s “do nothing approach” to government, rising property taxes and quality of life issues. They are determined to take back what they deem to be theirs. To do that, Committee co-chairmen Charles Trendell and Otto Robert Wintermeier have put Joe Streany forth as their candidate in hopes that he can shake things up before it is too late.
We don’t know how much this schism will affect the outcome of tomorrow’s election. In another 24 hours, we will know whether their bet on an ethically challenged Old Crotonite like Joe Streany and New Crotonite Joann Minett will pay off.
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March 2, 2008
A Call to Arms
Tom Paine in his The American Crisis (1776) said words that could be directed at Croton’s Democratic Party today: “Lead, follow or get out of the way.” Students of local politics have never satisfactorily explained why the Democrats took such a shellacking in the 2007 local election. Not only did Ann Gallelli, the Democratic candidate for mayor, receive fewer votes than any other candidate in that election, but earnest and hard-working Trustee Leo Wiegman also was evicted from his seat on the dais by gum-chewing author Susan Konig.
Crotonites are fond of wearing T-shirts emblazoned with the slogan, “Croton is a dam town.” They could just as easily be wearing T-shirts proclaiming, “Croton is a Democratic Party town.” Or so one might have thought. Nothing is foreordained in this life, but going into that election the registration numbers were a Democratic campaign manager’s dream. See for yourself: 46.9 percent of Croton’s voting population was registered as Democrats, compared with 26.7 percent who registered as Republicans. A third group constituting 24.0 percent of voters registered with no party affiliation. Bringing up the rear were the 2.5 percent of voters who chose to register with the Independence, Conservative, Right to Life, Libertarian or Working Families parties.
There are almost twice as many registered Democrats as Republicans in Croton. There are also almost twice as many Democrats as nonaffiliated registrants. One doesn’t need to be a statistician to recognize that for Republican candidates to prevail they must create their majority from Republicans, those registered with no party affiliation and disaffected Democrats.
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February 29, 2008
A New Feature! NCN’s Goof of the Week
Errors at the North County News continue to abound. This week’s lollapalooza shows that the North County News not only needs a fact checker to correct inaccurate information in its stories, it also needs a copy editor to pull up the newspaper’s socks grammatically.
Consider this from a story in this week’s issue by Adriane Tillman and headed “Changing of the Guard at Croton Police”:
A recent, quiet, unceremonious changing of the guard saw Croton’s Dennis Coxen retire after 22 years as police chief, and former Lieutenant Anthony Tramaglini assume the reigns.
Ms. Tillman obviously meant that newly installed Chief Tramaglini assumed the reins. There is a not-so-subtle difference between reigns and reins, although they are pronounced alike. We are indebted to The American Heritage Dictionary for the following contrasting definitions:
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February 27, 2008
Goofs Galore at North County News
The North County News is headquartered in Yorktown Heights. It purports to cover the northern part of Westchester County and the southern part of Putnam County. Whenever a newspaper tries to cover such a broad area, it inevitably invites scrutiny. As soon as North County News reporters venture away from home base, Crotonblog finds that they get into trouble—largely with facts.
The North County News also publishes an electronic edition mirroring in part the print edition. Here, under the rubric “Local Towns” they attempt to provide coverage of news items over the broad area in which they hope to increase their circulation. The North County News does not seem to appreciate the subtle differences between town, villages and hamlets in this part of the world. These are the names of the seven communities listed as “local towns”: Yorktown (T), Ossining (V,T), Croton (V), Peekskill (C), Somers (T), Cortlandt (T) and Putnam Valley (T). Of these seven, (and depending how Ossining is categorized) four or five are towns, one or two are villages and one is a city.
Omitted from the North County News’s list of “local towns,” and presumably not covered are the following Westchester communities: Buchanan (V), Briarcliff Manor (V), Montrose (H) and Verplanck (H). Of these the first two are villages and the other two are hamlets. Omission may be as good a reason as any for residents not to read the North County News. So much for the North County News’s rather selective coverage of local communities under the misleading rubric of “local towns.”
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February 17, 2008
There’s Something Rotten in Denmark—and in Croton Government, Too
At the village board meeting on January 29, 2008, current Village Treasurer Abraham Zambrano was named Interim Village Manager following the surprise resignation of longtime Village Manager Richard Herbek. Mr. Zambrano is expected to fill the posts of village treasurer and manager until March 28, 2008. What happens after that date has not been made clear, other than that after that date, Mr. Zambrano becomes Acting Village Manager. What is most peculiar is that no one is asking any questions about this peculiar and self-perpetuating line of succession. Or what happens next.
At the coming village board meeting on Tuesday evening, February 19, at 8:00 p.m., a resolution will be introduced retroactively raising the salary of Village Treasurer Abraham Zambrano by $35,000 from $125,318 to $160,318. This would put Mr. Zambrano’s salary for managing a tiny village very close to Andy Spano’s annual income of $160,760 for managing the entire county of Westchester—a difference of only $442, to be exact. According to our sources, the resolution was authored by Mr. Zambrano.
In short, for managing Croton with an annual budget of 14 million, Mr. Zambrano would be getting nearly as much as Andy Spano gets for managing Westchester County and its annual budget of $1.7 billion (actual amount: $1,702,848,487). Thus, although Westchester’s budget is 121 times the size of Croton’s, their salaries will be almost the same. Something’s very much out of whack here in Croton.
There are several aspects of this deal that are particularly odoriferous. First, Mr. Zambrano has never exhibited any masterly managerial qualities in his role as treasurer. In fact, it will be recalled, he has shown himself only to be little more than an unimaginative, plodding, green eyeshade bookkeeper who pleases the mayor by not making waves. We know him as the admitted author of the scheme that sent inflated phony water bills to village residents. Intended to scare them into installing remote water meters, his scam miscarried and made Croton the laughingstock of the nation. The Zambrano-generated imbroglio caused victimized residents to set up such a howl, it became a national scandal from coast to coast after the Associated Press picked up the story (from ABC 7online.com).
Now we are led to believe that Mr. Zambrano has so much managerial talent he can do two high-level jobs without breaking into a sweat. This is indeed curious since we were given to understand that Richard Herbek was a veritable workhorse who put in 16- to 18-hour days. One cannot be blamed for thinking that there cannot be much to Mr. Zambrano’s job as treasurer if he can now be both village treasurer and village manager without batting an eyelash.
Complicating the growing belief that something is rotten in Denmark other than overripe Havarti cheese is the fact that the village has created no search committee to find a candidate to fill Mr. Herbek’s shoes. Rumors are flying that hint of a palace coup of unbelievable Machiavellian craftiness—all hinging on the outcome of the upcoming election. Stay tuned.
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February 13, 2008
The World According to Trustee Candidate Joann Minett
For a newspaper with pretensions to being the newspaper of record for communities in the northern part of Westchester County, the North County News makes a surprising number of factual errors. A news story in this week’s issue contains many transgressions. In the story titled “Croton Voters to Choose from Four Board Candidates,” we read:
Minett, 42, is a part-time lunchroom supervisor at Carrie Tomkins Elementary School, and a mother of three. She’s also a community activist. Minett frequents village board meetings and has attended all the Comprehensive Plan sessions. She’s served on the Bicycle and Pedestrian Safety Committee for the past two years.
The first and most obvious error, of course, is in the newspaper’s reference to the school. It is the Carrie E. Tompkins Elementary School. As all Croton residents and readers of Crotonblog know, the Carrie Tomkins name should be correctly spelled as Carrie E. Tompkins. We caught this error in another North County News story two weeks ago and corrected it, telling Ms. Tompkins’s story in the process (see: “The North County News Ain’t Payin’ Attenshun”). North County News staff obviously does not read Crotonblog’s stories critical of that newspaper.
Mr. Bruce Apar, Editor + Publisher of the North County News, may be spending too much time at Club Fit in Yorktown Heights trying to shed weight and not enough time at his newspaper. He keeps the public advised of his progress in bulletins that appear from time to time on his personal blog. For those few who might be interested in his corporeal statistics, he crowed that he lost all of nearly four pounds. We have news for Mr. Apar. “Man bites dog” is news; “Man loses four pounds” is not news. If he doesn’t show more progress than he has demonstrated so far, Club Fit may find itself being referred to as “Club Fat” for its lack of success with Mr. Apar.
As eager TV pitchmen are fond of saying, “Wait, folks, that’s not all. There’s more.” Indeed there is. The North County News is obviously willing to accept as factual anything a candidate says. Regrettably, its account of Mrs. Minett’s civic endeavors is full of erroneous statements that result from its failure to check a few facts. Mrs. Minett is indeed a community activist if you define activism as appearing at village board meetings and haranguing members tiresomely, to the accompaniment of wild arm movements and facial gestures.
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