Section: Editorial
On Being Served by Randall Swan
March 9, 2010Immediately after reviewing a certified letter delivered to Crotonblog on March 8, 2010, from Mr. Randal Swan, we complied with his request to remove a letter to the editor he deemed to be both false and defamatory.
In his letter Mr. Swan stated that contrary to the allegations made in the letter to the editor, he was not charged with, nor had he ever been convicted of the crime of assault. Further, he stated that the incident referenced in an appended comment to the letter to the editor did not result in the conviction of any crime, misdemeanor or violation of the law.
However, it remains factual that in 2004, three 8th grade boys trespassed on his property and a confrontation between them occurred. It also remains factual that all three of the boys reported to an interceding neighbor that during the confrontation, Mr. Swan made physical contact with one of the boys thereby causing redness and swelling on his face. It also remains factual that only after Mr. Swan admitted to making physical contact with one of the boys to the same interceding neighbor, that police were called to the scene. It also remains factual that Mr. Swan was taken from the scene in handcuffs by responding officers from the Croton police department.
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On the NCN: HARMON OPPOSITION TO WASTE $100,000+ TAXPAYER DOLLARS
November 13, 2009Posted on the NCN:
A “deepthroat” within the Harmon Opposition disenchanted with the methods being used to deceive the public confirmed the next phase of their politically motivated plan.
Sensing that they have not been successful in convincing the residents of Croton that the Harmon revitalization plan is a Democratic plot to flood the village with “Democratic constituents” by creating housing for them, they have adopted a Plan B which will be launched immediately following the passage of the Harmon zoning changes.
Plan B is an Article 78 lawsuit, which is a legal procedure that can be used to challenge a change to zoning. The Harmon Opposition knows they have no chance of winning the case because the Harmon zoning changes are based on facts and the process has been open and inclusive. But winning is not their goal, buying time to the March elections is!
You see, the plan is simply to continue the same fear mongering, misinformation campaign in greater volume and intensity into the election season and try to pick up seats on the Village Board.
Pay careful attention to who is writing letters and speaking out against Harmon revitalization on a regular basis and I am sure it will quickly become obvious who these future Croton GOP candidates are likely to be!
The deeply troubling thing about the Harmon Opposition’s Plan B is that the Article 78 lawsuit defense they will file will have to be paid for by YOU THE TAXPAYER!
— Truth Hurts
More here: http://www.ncnlocal.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=2449
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Obama: Croton was not built by 'naysayers.'
July 5, 2009President Obama devotes his address this week to remembering the “indomitable spirit of the first American citizens” who built this country and the lessons we can apply to the current challenges:
That is the spirit we are called to show once more. We are facing an array of challenges on a scale unseen in our time. We are waging two wars. We are battling a deep recession. And our economy - and our nation itself - are endangered by festering problems we have kicked down the road for far too long: spiraling health care costs; inadequate schools; and a dependence on foreign oil. […]
These are some of the challenges that our generation has been called to meet. And yet, there are those who would have us try what has already failed; who would defend the status quo. They argue that our health care system is fine the way it is and that a clean energy economy can wait. They say we are trying to do too much, that we are moving too quickly, and that we all ought to just take a deep breath and scale back our goals.
These naysayers have short memories. They forget that we, as a people, did not get here by standing pat in a time of change. We did not get here by doing what was easy. That is not how a cluster of 13 colonies became the United States of America.
Watch it:
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It's the Brown People, Stupid
June 28, 2009Recent musings from Bruce Apar’s forum on proposed zoning changes for the Harmon section of Croton:
Croton23: “The best part is…If we do start with this project, we will look more like Ossining or Peekskill- Is that what we are reaching for?”
karenmc55: “A Croton for Croton with no shame or guilt.”
Croton12: “Let’s face it. With a radical leftist single party Village Board, much like the government in Washington, the dreams of making Croton into another Yonkers, Ossining or Peekskill will come true. Greedy property owners see the gold mine in ‘affordable housing’ and staunch activists see an increased power base. Unless there is a successful legal challenge to the ruination of the Village before the majority on the board can be changed, its just time to move.”
jennifer: “The crime was more insidious. It started out as minor annoying quality of life issues: a domestic dispute here, too many bored adolescent boys hanging out there, noise and broken beer bottles. Then it escalated into burglaries and shoplifting. The small—by city standards—grammar school required a major expansion. A towering hulk of a concrete monstrosity to accommodate a surge in students became necessary.”
sensible1: “The residents, taxpayers and people with kids in the Croton schools are mad as hell and are not going to sit idle on this one either!”
wileyp86: “I want to thank you all so much for the very good info being provided. We are new in town, arrived not in time to be able to vote, but had we known this was going on, we might have thought twice. We are nons, came here for the schools, and are appalled that this is being considered here. We came here because it is a village not for the crowds, and for the schools. We are very disappointed and annoyed and you will be hearing from us if this is done.”
commonsense: With more students, and housing, comes the need for more of everything, more teachers, more room, more desks, books, labs, fields, more police, more garbage trucks, more more more more. Why on earth would we encourage that with a zoning change?
Paula Pradines: “Crotonites need to be critical thinkers and not emotional sponges when it comes to affordable housing. We all moved here to live our American Dream. This dream for many has already ended as more and more Croton seniors and lower and middle income families are taxed out of their homes. You know why your neighbors have left. Just ask the hundreds of thousands of Long Islanders who leave each year because their charming villages and lovely vistas were replaced with a kind of extended Brooklyn and Queens full of dense housing and unsustainable school and property taxes.”
Reader’s note: More racist ramblings from the North County News are available here: http://www.ncnlocal.com/bb/viewforum.php?f=1
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Miss Goodie Two Shoes
June 20, 2009“Hopeful, these forums are provided to all communities via the graciousness of the North County News.
You are once again asked to stay on the topic of this forum which is the agenda for the work session on Monday and which is still not online.
As to the rest of your comments, in this country, last time I checked, it is the right of every citizen to engage in discussion on issues that may affect their community. If you cannot see that Mr. Murray’s remarks are and were inappropriate, especially since I have no idea what he is talking about, then there is little more I can say to you.
I suggest you save your energy for the upcoming meetings on this issue. Given the backlash I am seeing against this DENSITY housing proposal, you will need it.
As for me, I am off to photograph more of the village’s wonderful HOUSES for an upcoming slideshow.”
— maria (Maria Cudequest, search) Sat Jun 20, 2009 8:19 am NCN
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Bruce Apar's Baby
In 2007, North County News Editor in Chief + Publisher Bruce Apar, started a forum, aka the NCN.
At first, Mr. Apar boastfully attacked Crotonblog for allowing anonymous commentary but now he embraces it entirely (See: Bruce Apar’s Ethical Double Standard (and Goof))
In fact, Croton’s most notorious and ugliest mud-slingers have made it their home-away-from-home.
To illustrate, here’s a sample exchange between convicted vandal maria and citizen-volunteer Kieran Murray (KM) from June 18:
KM:
Maria:
I am getting really sick and tired hearing about you shooting your mouth off about me at Gabe’s. My kids friends parents hear your nonsense and I am really getting tired of it. SHUT YOUR MOUTH ABOUT ME!
maria:
Kieran:
First, I have no idea what you are talking about. My focus has been, if you have not gathered by now, promoting our village, churches, artistic and business community. It occupies a great deal of my time, joyfully. I have not attended any of the Harmon meetings although, as is my right to do so, I have certainly contributed to the many conversations about the housing project that have occurred—especially since the Gazette’s coverage of the 6/11 meeting. My commentary has been measured, deliberate, and fact-based.
The rules of this board are clear. As you have just violated them by threatening me in a public forum, I will bring them to the attention of the moderator on Monday.
In the meantime, the topic of this forum is the work session on Monday and whether or not anyone knows the agenda since it was not online. Please at least follow that one.
Thank you.
KM:
Tell the moderator all you want, just don’t talk bad about me in public where my kids friends parents can hear.
The North County News needs to be careful not to continue to expose itself to possible litigation. In my opinion, it is knowingly letting personal attacks, slander, lies, rumor and innuendo stand as fact. By knowingly providing a platform for damaging character assasinations to continue, it is acting no differently than Got Dirt, MySpace, Craigslist and any other site responsible for providing adequate monitoring and ignoring its responsibility.
Make sure you tell the moderator that as well!
One more from June 19 between one “commonsense” and Kieran Murray:
commonsense:
Kieran, PLEASE stop with the children, already. As to whether you would want to help or not, that is absolutely up to you. But you should be looking at it more as helping your village, not just any of us.
KM:
So you think it is OK that my children are being affected? Is that what you are saying?
You know you said I know who you are a while back, I think it is time to meet face to face. I’ve had enough of you knowing who I am and me not knowing the face behind the attacks.
Put up or shut up Commonsense.
commonsense:
Attacks?
Oh, I see an attack, alright, and it ain’t coming from me.
Your statements on your positions are posted exactly as you made them. They are self-explanatory, but if you don’t agree, then perhaps you can explain why you feel they’re not contradictory.
And there’s no need for you to act like a bully.
And if you’re out there, Mr. Apar… They’re talking about you.
Oh, and by the way, since you have done such a good job at tarnishing your paper’s brand by letting Croton’s-worst dominate your message board, there’s an active boycott of buying the North County News on Croton newsstands.
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Sage Advice from NCN Forum's Truth Hurts
April 28, 2009“Jane:
Don’t let this pack of angry wolves get to you. They are pissed they lost the election and are looking for any excuse to bash the new administration.
Pettit’s paying job with the rec department didnt get cut and it is a strange conflict of interest for him to be on a committee whose recommendations could impact his own job. It’s a conflict of interest and it was the right move on the part of the new board.
Streany had his time on the RAC and its good to rotate people on and off committees to get a fresh perspective.
Responding to this crew is like leaving the heat on when all the windows are open, a needless and pointless waste of energy!”
This in response to the latest flurry from the angry squawkers over at the NCN Forum. Here’s a sample of their work:
jayoncroton: I strongly urge the posters and readers of this forum, some of whom voted for the new board, to ignore this boy. Instead, we are organizing phone calls to the press to bring this matter to their attention in a calm methodical manner in the hopes that more press will shed a light on this disturbing turn of events.
You can contact the papers by email at
http://www.ncnlocal.com/ncn_gotnews.asp
for the North County News
and for the Journal News
at 946-3600
Judith A.: “I am so sickened by this event. To think that Leo (I REFUSE to call him “mayor”) did this is appalling. Gary Petit is a fixture in Croton—-along with his wife Doreen. The two of them did more for this recreation department than anyone.
I will gladly sign any petition to get Jane Murtaugh (gee——the wife of the new TRUSTEE????!!!!) off this committee and get Gary back.
What a crock of “you know what”. All you Democrats should be ashamed of yourselves.”
jayoncroton: “No Jane there is not a parallel here.
Murtaugh
your name is MURTAUGH.
Mr. Waldman retired
Mr. Herbek retired
They were not fired.
Want copies of their retirement speeches? Look at the village website.
I have HEARD NO SUCH SPEECHES FROM STREANY OR PETTIT
No there is no parallell here Jane. Again, enough. Again I will happilly get signatures.
You said right here you wanted to be on the committee and ta-da, two seats open up, replacing two long standing contributors with vast experience in this area.
Discussion ended for my part. Again I will happilly get signatures.”
More here: GARY PETIT WAS REMOVED FROM THE RECREATION COMMITTEE
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Dear PVC Middle School Bullies, Please Read This
April 25, 2009Two Little Boys by Charles M. Blow on April 24, 2009
On April 6, just before dinner, Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover, a Massachusetts boy who had endured relentless homophobic taunts at school, wrapped an extension cord around his tiny neck and hanged himself. He was only 11 years old. His mother had to cut him down.
On April 16, just after school, Jaheem Herrera, a Georgia boy who had also endured relentless homophobic taunts at school, wrapped a fabric belt around his tiny neck and hanged himself as well. He too was only 11 years old. His 10-year-old sister found him.
Two beaming little boys, lost. To intolerance? Too tragic. More.
This is article is in response to the following letter sent to Pierre Van Cortlandt Middle School parents on April 23, 2009:
Dear PVC Parents:
On Tuesday, April 21st, 2009 a group of 8th grade boys engaged in a violent act aimed at another student. This group of boys restrained the student in question and assaulted him. As a result, the school has deemed it necessary to suspend those directly involved with this incident.
Due to the severity of the matter, the Croton Police are now conducting their own investigation. While this is an isolated case, I want to assure you that the school is taking all necessary measures to insure your childs safety.
Please note that false rumors have been circulating that have further exacerbated this situation for the victim. We request that all members of our community be supportive and sensitive to this.
We hope this matter is resolved as soon as possible. We also want to express how proud we are of those students who came forward in support of the student who was harmed. It takes great courage to step forward under such circumstances.
If you have any questions or concerns please feel free to call me at 914-271-2191.
Sincerely,
Barbara Ulm, Ed.D., PVC Principal
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Croton GOP Slams LoHud: "Endorsements are for those who don't want to do any homework!"
March 16, 2009In their final throes, desperate Schmidt loyalists have again switched tactics in their war on Leoism.
Like suicide bombers, they have resorted to soiling their own nest by enthusiastically spamming every topic in the NCN forum with the same message over and over again. That message: a cherry-picked version of the 2009 political endorsement by The Journal News editorial board.
But as they sometimes say in the publishing world: Stop the presses!
In 2008, Robert Wintermeier wrote the following in response to last year’s endorsement…which did not go the Republican way:
“For the 15 years that I’ve been involved in local politics, I don’t believe more than a handful of Croton Republican Committee candidates received the endorsement of the Journal News and still won! In addition, I don’t recall their endorsement showing up in any of our literature in the rare instances when they supported our candidates.
Personally, I don’t believe a media endorsement is as meaningful as meeting the candidates face to face, knowing their political philosophy and doing lots of research. Endorsements are for those who don’t want to do any homework!
As I’ve stated publically, I have voted for several local and national Democrats (I loved Zell Miller and would have voted for Lloyd Bentsen if he had run for President) whose political philosophy most closely reflects my own. You need to be a fool to blindly accept a media endorsement or to continually vote for a party candidate that doesn’t reflect your own beliefs and standards!”
PS. The NCN goons further qualify this year’s endorsement by labeling the paper, owned by media conglomerate Gannett, as being liberal. So…Karl Rove.
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Pedestrians Cross at Own Risk in Schmidt's Croton
March 14, 2009
At the dangerous intersection on South Riverside Avenue and Maple Street in Mayor Schmidt’s Croton, drivers are permitted to illegally park their vehicles over the sidewalk at the strip mall next to the Croton Colonial Diner. And when vehicles are parked there, passers-by are forced to move into harm’s way.
Worse, a close examination of the satellite map reveals that there is no safe alternate route for pedestrians when their right-of-way is obstructed by law-breaking drivers.
Why is it that in Croton, the laws meant to protect Crotonites are ignored by the mayor?
PS. This ain’t the first time Crotonblog has expressed its concern for public safety in this parking area. To see what we mean, read “Why Is Croton So Selectively Enforcing Its Laws, Mr. Mayor?,” published on July 8, 2007 and “The Disaster at the Intersection of Routes 9A and 129 in Croton,” from June 26, 2007.
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Not Enough Ado about Poo 'round Town
March 11, 2009When an editor at Crotonblog nearly stepped in an enormous pile of dog excrement last Saturday, March 7, in front of the now-shuttered Italian restaurant on South Riverside Avenue, we realized that tutto wasn’t so bene. So we made a mental note of its presence. Imagine our surprise to discover this morning that the indelicate pile has been an impediment to pedestrian progress for five days now. Unlucky pedestrians have stepped in it and have our sympathies. Portions of this dung pile have gotten a foothold and have been carried all over Croton.
March 7, 2009, Day 1
Must have been a St. Bernard—or a horse.
March 11, 2009, Day 5
Not exactly footprints in the sands of time.
We know that it’s the responsibility of dog owners to clean up after their animals. We know that it’s the responsibility of property owners to keep their sidewalks safe, clean and free of debris. We also know that except for the fire and police departments, Village government shuts down over the weekend. And when a property owner fails to comply, come Monday, that’s when the village’s code enforcement officer is supposed to take action to deter a repeat offense. Under Mayor Schmidt’s management, that does not happen.
In Mayor Schmidt’s Croton, nothing is ever done to make the Village look clean and tidy even though there are vacant stores everywhere. A do-nothing mayor presides over a village that in highly trafficked places looks shabby, unkempt and neglected. Yes, we said neglected. The mayor, a notorious hot-head, neglects to protect residents from irresponsible landlords by failing to direct Croton’s highly-paid village manager to enforce its ordinances.
The dumpy appearance of Croton decreases our property values. Then, taxes go up as the value of our homes go down. Next, services are cut to give the appearance of keeping taxes low. And where ever he can, Shifty-Schmidty imposes increasing fees on every kind of Crotonite activity. Yet his lax government ignores the opportunity to gain revenue from fines resulting from code violations.
P.S. An editor of Crotonblog was stalked by two self-appointed guardians of the public weal (definition) in an automobile with NY license plate DVE-9771 who was reporting over a cell phone on our presence and interest in the excrement. Both are members of the Croton fire department.
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Schmidt's Croton, July 2008
March 1, 2009Under Schmidt, village code violations are not enforced and routine maintenance is ignored.
Link to set: http://www.flickr.com/photos/28307334@N07/sets/72157614536239811/
Link to slideshow: http://www.flickr.com/photos/28307334@N07/sets/72157614536239811/show/
For more of the same, please visit http://www.schmidtbrennankonig.com.
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Doris, You Bitch!
February 26, 2009By now, many of heard of the dreaded NCN forum run by Mayor Schmidt loyalist and convicted local vandal Maria Cudequest.
Over there, and despite touts of civility ruling the day, the lynch mob rules. And if you’re Kieran Murrray, or somehow connected to the Harmon Econmic Development Committee, this is the kind shit, from Doris, that you need to prepare for:
A SUBJECT NO ONE HAS YET ADDRESSED IS WHO WILL REALLY BENEFIT FROM THIS GRANDIOSE PLAN OF MR. MURRAY? AS I UNDERSTAND IT, MR. MURRAY IS A DEVELOPER, ALSO ON THE COMMITTE IS JULIE WIEGAM, WIFE OF CANDIDATE LEO WIEGMAN WHO IS AN ARCHITECT. AM I THE ONLY ONE WHO SMELLS SMETHING ROTEN IN DENMARK? ALSO HARMON RESIDENTS NEED TO KNOW THAT WHEN MR. MURRAY WAS THE OWNER OF THE APARTMENT BUILDING ON CROTON POINT AVENUE, THE GATEWAY TO CROTON, THE RESIDENTS OF WAYNE STREET HAD TO GO BEFORE OUR VILLAGE BOARD TO TRY TO BRING HIM INTO COMPLIANCE WITH OUR CODES. GARBAGE PAILS WERE ON THE ROAD 24/7 THE PLACE WAS A MESS AND THEY HAD TO CONTEND WITH CARS THAT CAME AND WENT AT ALL HOURS OF THE NIGHT. SOME OF THE RESIDENTS THERE WERE HEARD TO CALL HIM A SLUM LANDLORD, OR SO THE GRAPEVINE SAYS.
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Mayor Schmidt and the Case of the Missing YouTube Channel
January 22, 2009Readers, please note that the video box on our homepage is no longer displaying clips from Kwilly’s YouTube channel.
Unfortunately, Crotonblog learned that Kevin W. Davis, aka Kwilly, decided to remove certain videos from his channel after being threatened with a lawsuit by the Croton Republican Committee on behalf of Mayor Gregory Schmidt.
For readers who never saw Mr. Davis’s clever political videos (screenshots below), he presented video clips of village board meetings interspersed with explanatory captions, and accompanied by appropriate music. A Star Wars parody was among the themes documenting the mayor’s hot-tempered mistreatiment of residents and humiliation of fellow board members during televised board meetings. It seems the Republicans are so thin-skinned they couldn’t take Stewart-Colbert parodying common on TV.
Mayor Schmidt’s unprofessional conduct is nothing new. For nearly six years as a trustee and mayor, he has exhibited explosively intimidating behavior toward anyone who disagrees with his unusual approach to mayoring.
Mr. Davis was not alone in noting Mayor Schmidt’s belligerent style. Over the past three years, Crotonblog has published its own verbatim clips on Google Video and included them in our editorial blog posts about Croton’s Republican mayor, trustees, and supporters.
Hence, here are some clips from our Google Video archive. For having posted these, we anticipate receipt of a lawyer letter from the Republican Committee. We welcome a test of our free speech rights.
Screenshots of the missing YouTube channel
Click on image to enlarge.
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Crotonblog, Refreshed
January 12, 2009After an admittedly long time, the Crotonblog site redesign is well, pretty much up-to-date. Of course, a website is never done. Rather, they are in perpetual state of “works in progress.” That said, we’d appreciate your feedback on the newly-refreshed site.
Some other enhancements:
- To simplify the commenting process, readers are no longer required to be logged into TypeKey to leave a comment.
- Also new are threaded comments, which creates the ability to directly feedback with another commenter.
- Our search engine now provides results from lots of different local sources that includes; Crotonspace, HudsonRiver.com, HudsonValley.org, LoHud.com, The New York Times, News 12 Westchester, North County News, The River Journal, Westchester.com, Westchester.gov, The Wall Street Journal, and the Westchester County Business Journal. Click here to try it out.
- On every blog post is a small, green ShareThis button that makes it a snap to forward to a friend.
- Classified ads, powered by a Craigslist feed, have been added to the homepage. To insure that your ad shows up here, be sure to indicate that your item is for sale in Croton on Hudson when posting.
- Local news headlines, powered by Yahoo! Pipes, returns search results for Croton on Hudson from Google News.
To expand our editorial offerings for ‘09, we are looking for three new bloggers to contribute to Crotonblog. If you’re interested, please tell us in three paragraphs about your column idea by using this form. Nom de Plumes welcome.
Please send us your Letters to the Editor by clicking here.
Oh, happy New Year too.
— The editors
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Crotonblog Endorses the Obama-Biden Ticket
November 3, 2008In the past, we have not made a practice of endorsing any candidates for national public office. However, because of the significance of the issues at stake in the upcoming election on Tuesday, November 4th, and because of the despicable way the McCain-Palin campaign has been conducted, Crotonblog breaks with its tradition and urges the election of Barack Obama and Joe Biden.
We must admit that we were impressed when John McCain was hoping to be nominated by the Republican Party and took a firm stand against torture. But that was then and this is now. No longer is John McCain the affable old maverick who would banter easily with reporters on his bus called the “Straight Talk Express.” It is expected that every politician will fib a little about generalities, and hope that they go unnoticed. But no one anticipated a McCain campaign that scrupulously avoided the issues worrying voters today: the faltering economy, falling real estate values, a looming recession and rising unemployment—all the product of the inept Bush administration from which Mr. McCain has tried vainly to distance himself.
Instead we are exposed to a campaign built solely on lies and misrepresentations about Mr. McCain’s opponent. But the lies go even further. Mr. McCain even lies about himself in the face of incontrovertible evidence. The economy is the chief concern of voters today. John McCain was captured on tape saying, “The issue of economics is not something that I’ve understood as well as I should.” This tape is played frequently on opposition commercials, yet Mr. McCain flatly insists that he never made this statement.
In addition to having been a consistent supporter of the policies of George W. Bush, John McCain made a ludicrously unsuitable selection for the vice presidency. His choice of Sarah Palin, governor of Alaska for less that two years, and former mayor of a “city” of some 8,000 residents, who was plucked from political obscurity, demonstrates that he lacks the good judgment that is the prime qualification for the job of president. In this, Mr. McCain has also shown himself to be impulsive and irresponsible, willing to risk everything on one throw of the dice.
McCain’s choice of a running mate on the eve of the Republican National Convention set off an initial wave of excitement later belied by the reality of her shallowness. At the outset, Mrs. Palin revealed her abysmal ignorance early in the campaign by being unable to name any newspaper or magazine that she read regularly or identifying a single Supreme Court decision with which she disagreed. She was immediately shielded from contact with reporters who might ask embarrassing questions at press conferences. Revelations about her costly campaign wardrobe and bloopers about her interpretation of the vice president’s job description are now raising fresh fears that Sarah Palin is dragging down the Republican ticket.
Continue reading "Crotonblog Endorses the Obama-Biden Ticket."
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The Beginning of the End? Or Is It the End of the Beginning?
September 14, 2008We at Crotonblog apologize for the extended hiatus from publishing that occurred during the past month. As it turned out, we never made it to Paris or even la plage at Deauville. In fact, we never got closer to any plage other than one on Cape Cod. Sun and sand and the cleansing vistas of a serene Plymouth Bay from the windswept dunes of the Cape invited reflection.
We had a lot to reflect on. Crotonblog first saw the light of day on January 14, 2005. That’s 1,358 days or three years and 245 long days ago. We made a few mistakes (we like to call them missteps) since then. But we also learned something about the perils of publishing. Our intention when we started Crotonblog was to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. Some of the stories we reported had unforeseen results and seem to have “stirred up the animals,” as an unhappy zookeeper might say.
We’ll spare readers a detailed inventory of some of the incidents we have experienced that might make the milk of human kindness turn sour in anybody.
- Our children being intimidated in Croton schools for their parents’ supposed sins.
- Receiving anonymous hate mail addressed to our associates and us.
- Receiving an odoriferous package of “gorilla feces,” also sent anonymously.
- Being subjected to harassment—a nighttime alcoholic visitation and harangue by a drunken citizen of this village of brotherly love.
- Being stalked and followed by another citizen for printing—from the public record—the truth about his past tax evasions.
We could continue with this doleful recital, but we think you get the idea. Can we be blamed for thinking that the bloom has gone off the rose?
Perhaps readers will understand why we have spent the past month trying to decide whether the game is worth the candle. We are simply not bold enough to allow our decision to be based on the turn of a card or the toss of a coin. Two readers have already given us a glimmer of encouragement in their comments to our piece about Crotonblog’s vacation. Another longtime reader and contributor sent us an e-mail describing how much he misses Crotonblog.
So, we leave the future of Crotonblog to Croton’s citizens of good will. We’re not asking you to tell us that you love us. The big question is: Despite cowardly attempts at intimidation that are bound to continue, should we resume publication of Crotonblog? Please tell us: What would you do?
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Bruce Apar's Ethical Double Standard (and Goof)
July 23, 2008In the 99th Assembly district bitter words are being exchanged between challenger John Degnan and incumbent Greg Ball. The latter is accused of mailing out campaign literature containing lies about his opponent.
The North County News, which advertised for a copy editor recently, still needs the services of a good copy editor or proofreader. The current edition features an editorial written by Editor in Chief + Publisher Bruce Apar from which we extracted the following gem:
“A Degnan supporter has been sending anonymous letters to Ball supporters that claim to tell the truth about Ball. Whoever it is didn’t even have the strength of his or own convictions [sic]. Sending anonymous letters is an act of cowardice. Enough already.” (Mr. Apar obviously tripped over “his or her.”)
As the target of many snide remarks from a small band of vicious posters on the NCN chatroom, Crotonblog feels that turnabout is fair play. The phrase “act of cowardice” has been heard before at NCN. When that newspaper began a competing blog unimaginatively called “Croton Blog,” readers who posted comments were required to reveal their identities. Mr. Apar piously explained that anonymous comment on a blog was “an act of cowardice.” The real Crotonblog was regularly reviled for allowing anonymous comments.
NCN’s blog with the copycat name, however, was really a chatroom. It was soon closed down because of low participation. Mr. Apar next started a series of community chatrooms pompously described as “forums.” To encourage participation, the naïve former requirement that posters reveal what Mr. Apar had described as “their own legal names” was abandoned.
Continue reading "Bruce Apar's Ethical Double Standard (and Goof)."
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Sick. Sick. Sick.
July 20, 2008The bucolic village of Croton-on-Hudson is a little corner of Paradise where Happiness with a capital H reigns supreme. Or so one would have to believe to judge by the many protestations of sweetness and light by a small band of residents intent on proclaiming Croton to be a heaven on earth.
But suddenly there is trouble in Paradise. Someone out there doesn’t like Crotonblog. In fact, someone doesn’t like us so much that they took the trouble to mail a package of odoriferous material to us. It arrived yesterday.
Crotonblog is not so much bothered by the contents of this package as we are by the thought that among our neighbors there are people sick enough to go to the trouble and expense to do something like this. It is, we suppose, the ultimate poison pen letter.
Our initial impulse was to turn the matter over to the Croton Police Department. A wise friend advised us not to bother. It does not come within their jurisdiction, he pointed out. He advised us to turn the package and its contents over to the Postal Inspectors. According to our friend, the little-known Postal Inspection Service, the law enforcement arm of the US Postal Service, have a high rate of success in solving crimes involving use of the mails. Those who have used the mails to defraud or threaten others have found to their sorrow that the Postal Inspectors are relentless and have ways of tracing mailed material or discovering the identities of such mailers.
To the list of those in Croton who have had their tires slashed, their cars keyed, or their houses egged, add the name of Crotonblog. We have been the recipients of a package whose disgusting contents were labeled “Gorilla Crap.” What is so disquieting to us is the thought that out there is a person who did this may be someone among our neighbors, perhaps even among our friends, Chaucer’s “smiler with the knife beneath the cloak.” Someone in Croton sick enough to consider this some kind of a joke.
But there was a telltale giveaway in the package, revealing that the sender was not so clever after all. Crotonblog thinks the residents of Croton should know about the presence of a mentally ill person in our midst. The person who perpetrated this has done more harm to Croton’s image than any public airing of a difference of opinion could have caused.
Sick. Sick. Sick describes the perpetrator to a T, a letter in his name. We’ll withhold the rest of the clues to his identity for the Postal Inspectors. Crotonblog reproduces below a photograph of the contents of the package:
Click image to enlarge.
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A Modest Proposal
July 1, 2008If our recent inventory of commercial properties reveals anything, it is that when renters decamp they often do not remove the signage and other accoutrements of their occupancy. Instead these discouraging evidences of past occupancy remain, grim reminders in many cases of a failed business venture.
Instead of wringing its collective hands, crying crocodile tears and expressing concern over the sad state of Croton’s commercial properties, there is something that the Schmidt administration can do to remedy this situation. Crotonblog proposes that the village quickly pass an ordinance that would require renters to remove all signage and other evidence of their business presence from the exterior of a rental property. If the renter leaves without abiding by the ordinance, the responsibility then will devolve upon the landlord to remove signage and similar materials within 30 (or 60) days of the renter’s departure, or face a stiff penalty.
A simple step like this would remove an unsightly impediment to rental and facilitate early occupancy of Croton’s numerous unsightly empty properties. It’s a wonder that no one has thought of this solution to a continuing problem a long time ago.
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Crotonblog Responds to Comments on the Essay on Civility
May 31, 2008We thank the too-few commentators who responded to our request that critics define civility for us—but none ventured an opinion on the meaning of civility. Unfortunately, the essay generated more heat than light. Here is our response to the comments on civility and censorship in the chronological order in which they were posted:
“sdavidson”
This critic led off with, “Calling Abe Zambrano stupid is not civil. You can say that he did something stupid, but to imply that he himself is stupid is uncivil, and indeed stupid.” What Crotonblog had said was, “How can one courteously say that Treasurer Abe Zambrano, now bucking for Village Manager after only four years as Village Treasurer, was stupid and unprofessional for sending out phony water bills?”
We don’t know what the commentator’s definition of “stupid” is. “The Random House Dictionary of the English Language” defines stupid as “slow to learn or understand; obtuse” and “tending to make poor decisions or careless mistakes.” We therefore stand by our guns in the use of the word. Stupid is the proper word to describe someone who aspires to appointment as Village Manager and makes a rash, unprofessional judgment call. And if the village board should consider Mr. Zambrano for the post of Village Manager, we urge the board members to take into account that his unprofessional act was reported in newspapers all across the United States and made Croton a national laughing stock.
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The Genesis of the Crotonblog-NCN Feud
May 27, 2008Crotonblog is grateful for the several expressions of loyalty by its readers that are posted elsewhere on the blog. So that readers do not get the impression that we have a pathological fixation with the back-alley three-card monte game the NCN forums represent, we hasten to explain the reasons for our adversarial position.
It all began when Crotonblog was mercilessly attacked on the original NCN’s Crotonblog rip-off, called Croton Blog by NCN, and this continues to this day on its replacement Croton forum. The trumped-up charge is “Crotonblog is tearing the village of Croton apart.” At village board meetings, Croton’s mayor, Gregory Schmidt, and trustee Thomas P. Brennan also have made this slanderous charge. And Mayor Schmidt, in an explosive outburst before customers at the Black Cow coffee house, lost his cool and repeated the hyperbolic charge before astonished customers.
On NCN’s Croton forum, Crotonblog’s respect for the principle of anonymity has been falsely compared to regrettable instances of false identity creation or identity theft on the Internet that have led to fatal consequences. It is interesting to note that the only recorded abuse of anonymity on Crotonblog was committed by one Maria Cudequest, who is now the principal contributor to NCN ‘s Croton forum.
Crotonblog’s initial reaction was to ignore the NCN forum’s incessant attacks. However there comes a time when an annoying horsefly’s buzzing persistence can no longer be ignored, and so we swatted it. Based on solid research, we exposed the ridiculous charade of the NCN forums in the article entitled, “The Phony Blogging Activities of The North County News.” We call this “running up the rattlesnake flag,” the famous 1775 Gadsden Flag. Its motto, “Don’t Tread on Me,” told King George III to exercise caution—angry colonists can strike back.
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The Phony Blogging Activities of The North County News
May 23, 2008At first glance the forums of The North County News seem to be thriving. Closer examination, however, reveals that the whole operation is a Potemkin village. For readers unfamiliar with the allusion, so-called Potemkin villages were fake settlements consisting of little more than facades erected at the direction of Russian courtier Grigori Alexandovich Potemkin to impress Empress Catherine the Great during her visit to the Crimean peninsula in 1787.
The NCN forums had their inception in a single blog begun in 2006 by that newspaper, which boldly appropriated the name Croton Blog. We say, “boldly appropriated” because Crotonblog had commenced operation a year earlier, and its name was protected by copyright. The NCN blog’s sole purpose was to accommodate the small number of former contributors to Crotonblog who were unhappy with its policy of accepting anonymous contributions and comments. Eventually sensing that its initially naïve policy of insisting that all contributors must reveal their identities and sign their own names was inhibiting reader participation, the newspaper decided to follow the practice of the blogging world and accept anonymous contributions and comments on a new next generation of blogs.
Accordingly, in November of last year, the Croton Blog was mercifully killed and a dozen forums were set up—ten for communities in northern Westchester, one in southern Putnam County, and another to serve the whole of Westchester County. The result of this new effort to create a presence in northern tier communities has been a mixed bag, to say the least. Although a handful of Croton residents hijacked the Croton forum and now monopolize it like a chummy private fiefdom, the results for the other forums have been desultory.
Consider these statistics: In the seven months since the forums were started, of the eleven communities selected to host forums, three (Chappaqua, Mt. Kisco and Pleasantville) have had zero participation by readers. The postings in three other communities (Somers, 1; Katonah, 2; and Ossining 5) can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Here’s the rest of the dismal picture: Cortlandt, 11; Putnam Valley 12; Peekskill, 17, Yorktown, 21—or a total of only 69 postings. What is so curious about this numbers is that, with the exception of one Katonah posting by a resident of Croton about the Katonah Museum, someone in the employ of the North County News made each of these 69 spurious postings.
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On Civility and Censorship: An Essay and a Challenge
May 12, 2008From time to time, Crotonblog has been attacked by commentators and by a competing chatroom on the grounds that there should be more “civility” in the content of its editorials, contributions and reader comments. Readers only have to look at the content of other media—partisan TV commentators and stations, partisan columnists and newspapers, and, most of all, the ultra-partisan exchanges between competing politicians—to know that civility is a scarce commodity everywhere in the United States, especially in the winner-take-all world of politics.
Mark Twain is reputed to have made the sage observation that “everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.” Crotonblog would paraphrase this to, “A few critics complain about a lack of civility on Crotonblog—but nobody seems to be able to define what they mean by civility.” Should Crotonblog be more civil than radio, TV, newspapers and magazines, the Internet, and political discourse? Compared to the Fox TV news channel or the New York Post, we are eminently civil, despite the fact that it is difficult to view kindly those who judge a person’s patriotism on the basis of his willingness to wear a flag pin. Their narrow-minded attitude would make Nikita Khrushev one of the most patriotic leaders of all time. It was he who pioneered the whole flag-pin nonsense.
Where We Stand
First, let us state Crotonblog’s position: We do not censor speech, however derogatory, mean-spirited, or offending it may be. We do attempt to intercept statements that could be libelous, but since the targets of criticism or satire on Crotonblog have been public officials or public figures, and because satire cannot be libelous, we have seen almost nothing that has had to be excluded. We can exert no initial control over comments made through the TypeKey commenting authentication service.
Having encouraged readers to speak their minds freely without let or hindrance, we are made uncomfortable by any suggestion that we should pass judgment on what others may say or write, or the manner in which it is expressed. Regrettably, we have been largely unsuccessful in our campaign to get commentators to restrict their comments to the subject of an article or letter to the editor, and to refrain from attacking one another.
It is our considered feeling that we need open dialogue in this country more than ever, especially after the repeated assaults on freedom of speech by the present administration under the guise of the global war on terrorism. Moreover, we see no advantage to attempting to define what can be said under arbitrary rules for so-called civility when no such rules govern the public discourse being carried on everywhere around us. Wait till you see the excesses of the coming electoral campaign.
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Meet Tony Conetta: Robert Moses He Ain't
May 4, 2008One 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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Where We Stand: Crotonblog Responds to Mayor Schmidt's Irrational Outburst
April 27, 2008
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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The Facts Behind the Thornton Case
April 14, 2008Because 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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When Is a Blog Not a Blog?
March 31, 2008The 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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Another North County News 'Goof of the Week'
March 22, 2008In 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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Notes on the Recent Croton Election
March 19, 2008We 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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The Uncivil War Within Croton
March 17, 2008There 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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A Call to Arms
March 2, 2008Tom 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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A New Feature! NCN’s Goof of the Week
February 29, 2008Errors 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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Goofs Galore at North County News
February 27, 2008The 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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There’s Something Rotten in Denmark—and in Croton Government, Too
February 17, 2008
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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The World According to Trustee Candidate Joann Minett
February 13, 2008For 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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The North County News Ain't Payin' Attenshun
January 26, 2008We at Crotonblog consider it to be our duty to make sure The North County News gets its facts right, even though they only occasionally report on events in the village of Croton. The North County News is still committing factual errors that should not be made by a newspaper that likes to think of itself as a newspaper of record. In a story this week about a New York State Department of Environmental Conservation grant of $50,000 to Croton’s elementary school, North County News reporter Adriane Tillman misspelled at five different places the name of the beloved teacher for whom the school is named, calling it the “Carrie Tomkins Elementary School.” The correct spelling of her name, of course, is “Carrie E. Tompkins.”
A small matter, you say? Not when the correctly spelled name is emblazoned on the front of the school in large letters. North County News reporters and the paper’s copy editor owe it to the village to spell names correctly and to get facts right. Ms. Tillman is hereby requested to come to the front of the class and write the “Carrie E. Tompkins Elementary School” one hundred times on the blackboard.
The exterior of the Carrie E. Tompkins Elementary School (click on photo to enlarge).
Carrie E. Tompkins lived at 140 Grand Street and taught at Croton’s second school a few doors away. The first public school was the modest wooden house at 49 Old Post Road North. The Grand Street school building later was converted for use as a firehouse for the Columbian Hook and Ladder Company and the Chemical Engine Company. Modified again in 2000 to handle larger vehicles, it is still used as a firehouse. Ms. Tompkins’ house later became the longtime home of the popular Gallagher’s II restaurant. For anyone wanting to identify Ms. Tompkins’ former home, 140 Grand Street is now the location of Friend’s Bar.
How did Crotonblog happen to become the fact-checker for The North County News? Here’s how it came about: In 2006, after the death of founder John Chase, one Bruce Apar, with no newspaper experience, was appointed to the self-denominated twin roles of “Editor + Publisher” of the award-winning North County News. His first act was to fire the entire staff of dedicated journalists one by one and replace them with a pickup team of neophyte sandlot players. His peremptory action in ruthlessly dumping loyal longtime employees set off howls from readers who canceled subscriptions at an alarming rate.
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Correcting Misconceptions About Croton’s Zoning Code
January 25, 2008I had hoped not to get into the minutiae of zoning, but in a comment to my screed on the historical roots of Croton’s planning problems, “Just the Facts” exhibited a glaring level of ignorance about Croton’s zoning law and how it came into being. He claimed that I had said “zoning laws created the strip malls that populate Croton today.” I wrote nothing of the kind. From this erroneous statement, he projected that he was “not sure such conclusion is valid” and then added, “the question is whether or not zoning laws existing at the time these strip malls were built prohibited or restricted more traditional forms of development.” This latter statement does not recognize the prescriptive nature of Croton’s zoning code or that it has remained virtually unchanged over a half-century.
I burnt the midnight oil to write the following in the interest of correcting his misconceptions about zoning and to tell the history of Croton’s zoning code for those who are interested in the subject. As with the catchphrase, “Guns don’t kill, people do,” it can be said “Zoning codes do not create strip malls, people do.” I shall demonstrate the truth of the latter statement. “Just the Facts” does not appear to be familiar with Croton’s zoning code then and now, so let me explain them for him and other interested readers. Croton’s current zoning code is based on an off-the-shelf zoning code, adopted more than a half-century ago. About 90 percent of the original zoning code is still embodied in the present code. Many changes were superficial, such as changing formulas for calculating required parking spaces. I encourage him and others interested in zoning to read it on the village’s web site.
Euclidean Zoning Codes
Croton’s zoning code is a Euclidean zoning code. It takes its name not from the Greek “father of geometry,” but from the community in Ohio made noteworthy by a Supreme Court decision in 1926. This landmark case (Village of Euclid, Ohio. vs. Ambler Realty Co.) opened the door for communities across the United States to establish zoning codes. In fact, most of the zoning codes in the U.S. today are Euclidean zoning codes. Euclidean zoning is notable for its lack of prohibitions or restrictions on particular specific kinds of development. For example, Euclidean codes do not say, “Nail salons are permitted.” nor do they say, “Tattoo parlors are forbidden.”
Instead, Euclidean zoning is characterized by the division of land uses into specified zoning districts delineated on a plan or map. In the code’s text, dimensional standards place limitations on structures built on lots within each zoning district are provided. These typically take the form of setbacks, height limits, dimensional standards, such as minimum lot sizes, lot coverage limits, etc. that place limitations on the amount of development allowed to take place on lots within each type of district. Typical categories of land-uses in Euclidean zoning are single-family residential, multi-family residential, commercial, and industrial. Prescribed uses within each district usually exclude other types of uses (thus, residential districts typically disallow commercial or industrial uses). Some accessory uses may be allowed in order to accommodate the needs of the primary uses, such as home or professional offices in residential districts.
Euclidean zoning has been popular because it is straightforward and extremely effective. It is unusual in its ease of implementation—it provides one set of explicit, prescriptive rules without getting involved in whether a specific business is allowed or denied. Moreover, it has a long-established legal precedent, and architects, engineers, design professionals and planners are familiar with it.
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Trouble in Paradise: Croton’s Rocky Romance with the Automobile
January 18, 2008Editor’s note: This is the second part of a two-part series on Croton’s planning problems. For Part One, see “The Historical Roots of Croton’s Planning Problems.”
The concept of a marketplace is scarcely new. Ever since the earliest communities of the Middle East, and later in the Greek agora, lively marketplaces have always been public spaces, part of the fabric of life in villages and small towns. But, despite their inviting openness, modern strip malls really aren’t public spaces. Instead, they are private spaces masquerading as public spaces. People are permitted to come and go, and there are no admission fees—but those who do enter are guests of the developer. The mall owner is also entitled to control all activities that go in the parking area and the mall. This means no free speech, no right of public assembly.
American shopping malls were new phenomena of the Automobile Age. They had little in common with the social life of the community in which they were located. They existed in virtual isolation, surrounded by a bleak acre of black asphalt crowded with parked cars and connected to the world outside by a common thread, the ubiquitous automobile. Although ordinarily located at the edges of towns, in Croton shopping malls were permitted to cluster in the heart of the village, taxing an inadequate street grid whose layout predated the American Revolution. The friendly village marketplace of small shops was suddenly displaced by a scattering of impersonal marketplaces in whose vast asphalt deserts automobiles driven by strangers weaved and circled, endlessly searching for a place to park.
Cooler heads among village officials and grocery-chain executives should have seen that the supermarkets anchoring the shopping center strip malls were a concentration too ambitious to be supported by the surrounding population. Moreover, their presence strained Croton’s grid of narrow village streets—thoroughfares more appropriate to horse-drawn wagons. Not only did Croton’s three supermarkets compete with one another for a limited number of customers, their individual specialty departments spelled the doom of old-fashioned stores. Supermarkets sold groceries in competition with grocery stores; they sold meat in competition with meat markets; they sold vegetables in competition with vegetable stores. They even sold newspapers and magazines and forced the neighborhood combinations of candy store-tobacconist-newspaper vendor to close. The stakes were high, and competition was intense.
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The Historical Roots of Croton's Planning Problems
January 17, 2008The problem with the many solutions being offered to solve Croton’s declining attractiveness to retail enterprises is that all fail to recognize that the suggestions propose to treat individual neighborhoods piecemeal instead of treating Croton as a whole.
Croton originally had two retail neighborhoods. One was located along Grand Street in the Upper Village, and dated from stagecoach days in the 18th century. The second, clustered around Croton North Station and the “landings” (docks) in the Lower Village, had been spawned by sloop, steamboat and railroad traffic in the 19th century. Each was firmly entrenched within a residential area.
In the early part of the 20th century, another retail strip sprang up along a short portion of South Riverside Avenue to serve Clifford Harmon’s burgeoning new Harmon-on-Hudson community created in 1907. By then-existing standards, linear parking on village streets was adequate. Although Harmon was absorbed by Croton in 1932, it managed to retain a surprising amount of separate identification, even having its own Harmon post office until the 1960’s.
Croton’s Population Growth
First, let’s examine Croton’s growth patterns. The following table portrays the growth of Croton’s population during the 20th century:
1900: 1,533
1920: 2,286 (+753, 49.12%)*
1940: 3,843 (+1,657, 72.48%)**
1960: 6,812 (+2,969, 77.26%)***
1980: 6,889 (+77, 1.13%)
1990: 7,018 (+129, 1.87%)
2000: 7,606 (+588, 8.38%)
————————————————————————
*Attributable to the electrification of the Hudson Division of the NY
Central and the opening of the Croton yards and shops in 1913.
**Attributable in part to the acquisition by Croton-on-Hudson of Harmon and Mt. Airy.
***Attributable to the post-World War II building boom.
The year 1960 represents a watershed date. In the sixty years between 1900 and 1960, the population of Croton grew by 344 percent. In the forty years between 1960 and 2000, its population grew by less than 12 percent. This shows near saturation in population.
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'We'll Believe Enforcement is the Policy in Croton When We See It'
January 16, 2008Remember that strip mall at the foot of Maple Street (Route 129) in Croton? The one so badly designed that vehicles blatantly park anywhere and everywhere, even on the sidewalk and on the tiny strips of grass struggling to survive? Yet Croton does nothing to stop them.
After two years of vain waiting something is finally about to happen. A “sidewalk and landscape improvement project” grant has finally been issued by New York State. Because Route 129 is a state highway, Croton is now awaiting a work permit from the Department of Transportation to “replace the sidewalk, add curbing and provide a defined parking plan” for the area in front of the vacancy-prone strip mall at the intersection of Hudson and Maple streets.
The potential for accident or injury to pedestrians at this strip mall always could have been reduced if the village had only enforced its own laws. Over the years, Croton has turned a blind eye to violations when vehicles regularly parked on the sidewalk. In fact, many vehicles, including large pickup trucks, still straddle the sidewalk.
Such violations block safe passage by pedestrians, forcing them to detour around the illegal parkers and walk through the vehicle parking area. This puts them in danger of being struck by vehicles. In the meantime, Croton’s parking enforcement people are busy enforcing parking violation in Croton Commons and the Van Wyck shopping center, two nearby private areas policed by Croton’s parking enforcement people.
Crotonblog reserves judgment on this long-awaited project. If the curbing is not unusually high, we predict that the violators will be back even before the concrete has set. But will such blatant violations then draw a citation from Croton’s parking enforcement people? What’s your guess?
Related:
- “Why Is Croton So Selectively Enforcing Its Laws, Mr. Mayor?,” July 8, 2007
- “Yoo Hoo! Mayor Schmidt. Your Slip Is Showing!,” July 4, 2007
- “The Disaster at the Intersection of Routes 9A and 129 in Croton,” June 26, 2007
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Of Hometown Newspapers and Clouded Crystal Balls
January 14, 2008In a recent obituary a New York Times writer described The Journal News as “Croton’s hometown newspaper.” Crotonblog would beg to differ. Croton’s hometown newspaper is The Gazette. The Journal News, with its broad-brush coverage, can hardly be described as any Westchester community’s hometown newspaper, any more than USA Today, another Gannett newspaper, could be described as New York City’s hometown newspaper.
In last Friday’s tabloid section of The Journal News called “The Line,” a writer named Ted Mann ventured his predictions of the winners in the upcoming Golden Glove awards. Mr. Mann also writes for a Gawker-style Lohud namedropping blog called Suburbarazzi. It’s a smart-ass virtual rag with a low readership, probably because it is so hard to find among Lohud’s bewildering array of blogs and Internet features.
Thanks to the writers’ strike, a low-key version of an awards ceremony was held in Hollywood last night. Crotonblog was curious to see just how prescient was Mr. Mann when we read the names of winners of Golden Globes this morning. We regret to report that his crystal ball is extremely cloudy and needs a good cleaning with Windex.
Mr. Mann is not a regular film critic for The Journal News, and it shows. Of the twenty-five categories in which Mr. Mann picked winners, he got only eight—or 32 percent—right, and a whopping 68 percent wrong. We cannot avoid the feeling that Mr. Mann would have done better if he had merely closed his eyes and stuck a pin at random in the names of the nominees.
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Fast Times at Ridgemont High the Village Board
January 13, 2008
A funny thing happened at last Monday night’s village board meeting—or so the Republican majority thought. It set a record for brevity.
After only 15 minutes since starting and three speedily-passed resolutions later, the mayor, nervously shuffling papers, sounded like an inexperienced substitute teacher who had run out of lesson material. With a high-pitched giggle, he remarked, “I think we need to slow it down. We’re breaking land speed records here.” Then he added, “Don’t say that out loud, right?”
But to Trustee Susan Konig, sounding like a student anxious to be somewhere else, the promise of early dismissal from “meeting hell” obviously was the best offer of her busy day. She piped up, “It’s okay. Keep going.”
Immediately thereafter, Village Manager Richard Herbek, an always anxious-to-please classmate, gave out with a hearty “Hahr, hahr, hahr, hahr, hahr!” He was already imagining himself back in Briarcliff Manor by 9:00 p.m.
Teacher’s pet Trustee Thomas Brennan lightheartedly repeated the mayor’s caution, “Don’t say that out loud.” By now everyone knew there would be an early dismissal bell.
Viewers at home could see the wheels beginning to turn under the mayor’s glistening pate. Recovering from his nervous laughter and trying to restore decorum, the mayor suddenly remembered he was on TV and said, “Heh, hmm. People may tune in right now and go, “What happened? They never had a meeting tonight.”
Then, in a deja vu moment, Trustee Brennan reminded everyone that they’ve always had short meetings lately by offering this reminder: “We’ve said this before.”
Crotonblog has never thought the Schmidt team was very adept or serious about governing. Monday night’s brief dog and pony show only proves us right. You don’t believe us? See for yourself.
Video clip:
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Thanks a Whole Helluva Lot, Mayor Schmidt
January 4, 2008At this time, it is customary for publications to review news events of the year just past and to take note of some of the high points. Crotonblog is pleased to follow that custom but has altered it by taking note of the low points in Croton’s governance in 2007. The following are ten awards various organizations have bestowed upon our Mayor Schmidt:
1. The William Marcy “Boss” Tweed Award for Civic Improvement. Earned for encouraging persistent and unsuccessful litigious legal actions racking up $1,500,000.00 in unnecessary legal fees with nothing to show for it other than the court’s blessing of 1A Croton Point Avenue as a waste-disposal site.
2. The Phineas T. Barnum Trophy for Bamboozlng the Public. Given for promising to correct the sinking parking lot. Instead, the parking lot is still sinking at an alarming rate. You responded to the “lowered” services by raising the already-high parking fees for residents and nonresidents alike two years in a row.
3. The Jacques Cousteau Medal for Best Underwater Parking Lot on Any Metro North Line. This award, inscribed with the motto “Park at Your Own Risk” in Latin, is also endorsed by the American Car Repairers Association for bringing the most business to its members. For your failure to prevent damage to cars parked at the Village lot by closing off sections susceptible to flooding before storms, this award also includes a special citation engrossed on parchment. The Village, of course, denies any responsibility or liability for damage.
4. The Richard Milhous Nixon Prize for Neglect of Water Infrastructure. Instead of a water-main replacement program to continue to carry Croton’s famous pure water, we can now look forward to a continuously leaking and deteriorating water distribution system. Your scheme to make these problems go away was to inject deleterious chemicals into our award-winning water, making it our own Watergate scandal.
5. The Herbert Hoover “Prosperity Is Just Around the Corner” Award. Given for looking the other way while a depression took place in local commercial real estate as evidenced by the growing number of ultra-visible empty storefronts. As a former head of the chamber of commerce, your failure to spearhead efforts to recover from this disaster is unforgivable. No wonder Croton’s home prices were shown to be among the lowest five in property appreciation in Westchester County.
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Crotonblog's Top Twenty
December 31, 2007As 2007 staggers to a close, Crotonblog would like to thank our letter-writers, commenters and readers for their support and contributions to our Web site.
As we look back on the past year—and our continued growth—Crotonblog would like to share this interesting statistic: the top-twenty stories most-read by our readership.
- Man Drowns at Mayo’s Landing in Croton-on-Hudson
- Croton’s Commercial Real Estate ‘Album of Shame’
- Updating Crotonblog’s ‘Album of Shame’: Another Croton Business Bites the Dust
- Freedom of Speech Knows No Geographic Boundaries: Strange Behavior at the Black Cow
- I, Too, Have a Dream
- A Baker’s Dozen: Thirteen Reasons for Croton’s Business Recession
- Occidents Will Happen: Mayor Greg Schmidt Cuts Ribbon at New Nail Salon
- ‘By Their Works Shall Ye Know the Schmidt Administration’
- Trash Talk: Alliance Party Candidates Still Peddling Their Big Lie
- Why Is Croton So Selectively Enforcing Its Laws, Mr. Mayor?
- Nordica Drive Residents Cite Swimming as ‘Illegal’ at Mayo’s Landing
- The Uses of Anonymity: Everybody’s Doin’ It
- Train Station Traffic Lights Could Solve Congestion Woes on Croton Point Avenue
- Is Croton-on-Hudson the Most Dog-Unfriendly Village in Westchester?
- Yet Another Nail Salon to Open in Croton-on-Hudson
- Croton GOP Candidates Lose Republican Party Line
- Croton’s Bleak House Six Long Months Later
- The Croton Follies: A Report on the Village Board Meeting of July 16, 2007
- Marie Yurchuk Takes a Swipe at Crotonblog. We Respond
- A History of Parking Rates, Commuters, and Croton
To put the popularity of these stories in perspective, in 2007, Crotonblog served 91,000 visitors who viewed 184,000 pages. Additionally, during each of those visits, Crotonblog readers spent 2:45 minutes on the site and looked at 2.2 pages.
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Another Empty Campaign Promise by Mayor Schmidt Bites the Dust
December 21, 2007It started innocently enough at the December 17th village board meeting when Kevin Davis asked Trustee Tom Brennan for an update on his dormant initiative for a new community center. Mr Davis asked, “For my Christmas present for the village board, I am reviving the community center issue. Three months ago, I came to the village board and brought up the community center issue about the survey. The survey results just came out and all that has happened since then to my knowledge is a work session. Trustee Brennan, has anything else happened regarding the community center since three months ago?”
What he got in response was a big mouthful of lip service from Trustee Brennan. Left flat-footed by his own inaction over the past two years, Mr. Brennan awkwardly tried to dance around the issue by assuring Mr. Davis (and onlooking residents) that much was going on “behind the scenes.” To quote his exact Brennanisms, he said, “Well the only thing that’s really happening is that we’re trying to meet with other, other agencies I would say in the village—not agencies but other groups to see if we can formulate other uses that are out there, other buildings, structures. We’re working behind the scenes with different people in the village to see if there is anything else out there besides building a stand-alone building. And that’s really all that’s happening right now Kevin. We’re trying to get some information behind the scenes.”
But Mr. Davis would not let up. He went on to remind the Republican board majority that actions do speak louder than words. Sensing that Mr. Brennan had goofed badly, Mayor Schmidt jumped in to lend Mr. Brennan a helping hand, an action he soon may regret.
Mayor Schmidt claimed to be talking to the fire department about giving up existing space in Croton’s firehouses for public use—presumably to be managed by Croton’s Department of Recreation.
Crotonblog has heard these kinds of calming assurances from Mayor Schmidt and Trustee Brennan before. Dazzled by the prospect of the village finally recognizing that Croton’s huge infrastructure problems made it financially impossible to consider the proposed community center, and puzzled by the idea of substituting Croton’s three firehouses as stand-ins for a community center, Crotonblog did a little sleuthing.
It turns out that Mayor Schmidt and the head of the recreation department had a meeting with the fire chief about Croton Seniors using the Harmon firehouse. This is especially curious since the seniors group already has a room for its use in the Municipal Building. That’s the whole of the progress toward a community center.
If any readers are gullible enough to regard Mayor Schmidt’s statement as indicating any kind of forward action leading to a community center and bearing any resemblance to the truth, Crotonblog has a bridge it would like to sell them. To add a little whiff of ceremony to this whole affair, Crotonblog hereby confers on Mayor Schmidt the Baron Munchausen Award for Flagrant Prevarication with Oak Leaf Cluster. By earning it with this latest whopper, he has really outdone himself.
Video clip (link):
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Crotonblog's Creed: A Restatement of Principles
December 6, 2007Because the person using the screen name of Benedict is a newcomer to Croton, Crotonblog feels compelled to respond to Benedict’s suggestion in a comment that it turn itself into “a great virtual town hall”—in short, to turn itself into a chat room. Village Board meetings are held twice a month and are the perfect venue at which citizens can air their views on any topic.
Crotonblog’s original electronic-age purpose was to bring newspaper-quality information and pertinent opinion to citizens quickly because print newspapers now do this belatedly and are declining in circulation. Newspapers do comment editorially on issues in partisan fashion. And newspapers do recommend candidates for public office and praise them or criticize them unmercifully after they are elected. Crotonblog claims the same privilege and indeed does the same. We have no intention of changing what we originally conceived to be Crotonblog’s purpose or operating methods, or to trim our sails to suit changing political winds.
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'By Their Works Shall Ye Know the Schmidt Administration'
December 2, 2007Almost three years ago, the Republicans sent the following letter to village residents. In it, they enunciated the principles under which they intended to govern, if elected. Let us now put their letter under the microscope and shine the hard light of truth on what they promised to do and compare it with what they accomplished. Here are their campaign promises and what they actually did. Crotonblog calls the comparison myth versus reality:
Dear Village Resident:
On March 15, 2005, you will be voting for a new mayor and two trustees. Over the course of the next seven weeks, you will hear and read many things about all of the candidates. Understanding that the dissemination of accurate information is vital to the process, we provide for you, our Statement of Principles and ask for your support.
We are committed to:
THEIR LIE: Establishing a non-partisan committee of residents, including seniors and teenagers, to make the long recognized need for a community center a reality. THE TRUTH: Nonpartisan, our foot. There was only one Democrat in the group. And a community center is no nearer reality than it was more than two years ago.
THEIR LIE: Creating new permanent ball fields for our youth’s sport programs. THE TRUTH: Not true. No new permanent fields were created. And they voted “NO” to an agreement with Westchester County under which Croton would maintain the ball fields at Croton Point for exclusive use by Croton kids.
THEIR LIE: Continuing the fight to keep the Millennium Pipeline out of our village. THE TRUTH: It was NY State’s Coastal Zone Management guidelines and the Local Waterfront Revitalization Committee with the participation of Bob Elliott, Fran Allen, Ann Gallelli, Leo Wiegman, Charlie Kane that had already won this battle.
THEIR LIE: Implementing an ongoing program to cleanup and beautify our villages entrances such as those off of Route 9. THE TRUTH: There is no evidence that anything has been done.
THEIR LIE: Retaining a business consultant to look into ways we can enhance the shopping experience in our village. THE TRUTH: No business consultant was retained. It was Ann Gallelli on her own initiative who formed and created the Business Development Committee chaired by Kiernan Murray and made up of property owners in Harmon.
THEIR LIE: Improving the accessibility of our local government. THE TRUTH: What a laugh! They refuse to use e-mail. They failed to hold special Saturday office hours as promised. They are never out and about and are seldom seen in the village.
THEIR LIE: Prioritizing the needs of our village over regional concerns. THE TRUTH: Without regional cooperation we get nothing done—and the Schmidt administration, even with regional cooperation, gets nothing done because they have no network.
THEIR LIE: Being an environmentally conscious administration. THE TRUTH: This is total lip service. They cannot point to a single concrete environmental action initiated by them.
THEIR LIE: Emphasizing fiscal responsibility. THE TRUTH: What a joke! They continue to ignore the budget and break the bank with needless expenditures. For example: (1) a foolish community center survey, (2) wasteful costs of a possibly unnecessary exploration of Eminent Domain, and (3) continuously wasteful legal expenditures.
And we will NOT negotiate with Metro Enviro. THE TRUTH: Not true. Metro Enviro is long gone, and the Republicans have spent over $150,000.00 in “discussions” and “negotiations” with Greentree over possible purchase or seizure of the property by eminent domain.
THEIR LIE: Finally, as the 2005 campaign season begins, we pledge to stay focused on the concerns of our fellow residents and the issues before us. Please feel free to contact any and all of us with your questions, concerns and issues. THE TRUTH: Left unsaid in this statement is that the door is only open if the residents are fawning supporters. A deaf ear is turned to residents who are independents or non-supporters!
You be the judge. Has the Schmidt administration delivered what it promised in 2005? Crotonblog’s answer is a resounding NO!
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Saying Goodbye to Verdana
November 27, 2007We hope you like our new look. After more than a week of experimenting with permutations and combinations of type fonts, Crotonblog has fixed on what we believe are the most readable fonts and point sizes for text, heads and subheads.
The text is set in Garamond, and it’s the last word in dignity and class. You are reading it right now. Garamond has long been preferred for use as what typographers call a bookface because of its ease of reading and popularity with book designers. One of the oldest of fonts, it takes its name from that of Claude Garamond, a French typecutter active in the 16th century.
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Get the Lead Out—Out of Your Pants, That Is
To justify her minority vote against injecting chemical additives into Croton’s water, Trustee Ann Gallelli asserted her conviction that the Schmidt administration had not done enough to inform residents about the pros and cons of the issue.
Crotonblog would point out that if the Democrats had felt strongly enough about what goes into the human alimentary canal versus what’s going to go into the village’s aging water mains, a mass mailing to residents would have done the trick. Political activity doesn’t have to wait until a month or two before the next election to awaken from its annual Rip Van Winkle somnolence.
Moreover, it’s still not too late. If the Democrats feel that protocol or law was violated in the Schmidt administration’s ramrodding of the issue through in an unseemly hurry, they can still hasten down to White Plains and endeavor to get a judge to issue a restraining order. Paragraphs 15-22 of Chapter 223 of the Village Code about water purity might be a good place to start.
It seems that with the advent of televised village board meetings, the Croton political scene ain’t what it used to be. Even when their best interests are at stake, residents prefer to remain passive spectators watching from the comfort of their homes. Hasn’t the Croton Democratic party ever heard the classic entreaty, “Don’t just stand there—do something!”?
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Editorial Note to Crotonblog Readers:
November 21, 2007We are experimenting with typefaces that will make the text of Crotonblog more easily readable by readers. Please bear with us while we decide on the proper combination that will assure greater legibility.
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A Practical Plan to Solve Croton’s Water Problems—and End the Additive Controversy
November 14, 2007An undetermined number of Croton residents are unhappy with the Mayor’s plan to inject chemical additives into Croton’s famously pure water. In the absence of any questionnaire circulated among residents, the exact number of people who are for or against this proposal has not been determined.
Freedom of choice is one of the benefits of democracy. We are free to get a flu shot or to decline to get one. We are free to send our children to public schools, private schools, and church schools or to school them at home. We are free to vote or not to vote, although too many of us are too lazy to show up at the polls.
Crotonblog detects signs indicating that additives are now a done deal. What is so annoying about the present controversy is that freedom of choice is being taken from the residents of Croton and placed in the hands of three elected officials, none of whom are health professionals or biochemists.
If a national bottling company were to approach Croton with a proposal to bottle Croton’s water, this village would fall over itself to facilitate such a venture. It has even considered—although not very seriously—the idea of bottling Croton water itself. A bottling company, we might add, would only be interested in Croton water before chemical additives were injected into it.
It so happens that the presence of chemical additives has no effect on the human body in water used for dishwashing, clothes washing, bathing and showering, even tooth brushing because no water is ingested in the process. Crotonblog has devised a plan so beautiful in its simplicity and practicality that the Schmidt administration would be foolish to turn it down.
Under Crotonblog’s plan residents could obtain “old-fashioned” Croton water without derailing the proposal to inject additives into the water. Because the additive program requires a separate building, there would be ample opportunity for the village to divert water before the chemical additives are injected.
Continue reading "A Practical Plan to Solve Croton’s Water Problems—and End the Additive Controversy."
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Mayor Schmidt Decisively Takes Charge: 'We'll Look Into It'
November 9, 2007
You say you want a doggie park,
A place for dogs to run and bark,
And a chance to canoodle
With a cute little poodle?
Here’s what we’re gonna do:
“We’ll look into it.”
You say that the alley behind Zeytinia
Smells like a street in old Abyssinia?
You can stop all your moaning
And grumbling and phoning,
Here’s what we’re gonna do:
“We’ll look into it.”
You say your water’s brown?
Well, so do others here in town.
Instead of new mains
To get rid of the stains,
Here’s what we’re gonna do:
“We’ll look into it.”
Our parking lot’s a great place
For Olympic swimmers to race.
If your car’s wet inside
And you’re fit to be tied,
Here’s what we’re gonna do:
“We’ll look into it.”
You think your taxes are high?
And those sewer fees are a lie?
Then just you wait
‘Till next year in ’08,
Here’s what we’re gonna do:
“We’ll look into it.”
With empty storefronts galore,
Who would want to open a store?
Merchants let out a yelp
But the Mayor’s no help.
Here’s what we’re gonna do:
“We’ll look into it.”
You say that you want no zinc
In the Croton water you drink?
Don’t believe what we say,
Please just go away.
Here’s what we’re gonna do:
“We’ll look into it.”
Maria’s secret e-mails are a sham
And her advice not worth a damn.
I just hide them away
And to complainers I say,
Here’s what we’re gonna do:
“We’ll look into it.”
Verse by Croton’s Own Poet Laureate
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The North County News 'Goof of the Week'
November 7, 2007The North County News has done it again. Their sloppy reporting this week calls attention to their continuing need for accurate fact checking. In a story detailing the history of the affordable housing project in Croton to be known as Symphony Knolls, reporter Adriane Tillman describes the property as having been owned by “Levenia McClure who lived in the house at 15 Mt. Airy Road into her 80s.”
For the record, Ms. McClure’s name was Levina—not Levenia. A genteel lady who served juice and cookies at parties for her pupils, Levina McClure figures in Home Before Dark, Susan Cheever’s memoir of her father, John Cheever. Both father and daughter took piano lessons from Levina McClure. One of John Cheever’s first stories written in Westchester was titled “The Music Teacher.”
Also for the record, Levina McClure was born October 27, 1911, and died June 1, 2003. This would have made her almost 92 at the time of her death. By our reckoning, it can quite accurately be said that she lived into her 90s.
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Croton Blows It, Again: Flooding Swamps Train Station Parking Lot
November 6, 2007Like a beaming first-time grandfather, village manager Rick Herbek rounded out last night’s whirlwind 45-minute board of trustees meeting with accolades galore over Croton’s hi-tech weather station mounted atop its DPW garage.
Flooding at the Croton-Harmon train station commuter parking lot on November 6, 2007.
The instrumentation includes a live webcam pointed directly at the flood-prone lot’s sections G and H. An imposing installation of meteorological instruments measures weather conditions and reports live weather data to a public village web page.
Fancy stuff, to be sure. In addition to contacting parking lot customers by e-mail, the village purchased a solar-powered roadside alert sign to warn commuters of potential upcoming bad weather conditions. Apparently village officers pay no attention to the impending disasters regularly signaled by its own weather equipment.
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All Dressed Up and No Place to Go: North County News Throws in the Towel
November 4, 2007Ever since The North County News set up a blog with the avowed purpose of taking readers away from Crotonblog, we have been looking back over our collective shoulders at this upstart. Calling itself The Blog Cabin, a name more appropriate for the organization of Gay Republicans, it has been so far behind Crotonblog the simile “eating our dust” could hardly be applied.
In creating this mean-spirited blog, The North County News wrote that “in addition to our backyard of Yorktown, we instinctively knew the second logical community to use as a cornerstone is Croton.” Sounding more like a pompous Fourth of July oration, The North County News also wrote, “The good people of Croton are in dire need of a virtual gathering place that respects the democratic diversity of opinion and the baseline integrity of full disclosure, namely, posters not afraid to sign comments with their full legal identity.”
The newspaper and its blog then proceeded to attack Crotonblog for allowing anonymous comments, a time-honored practice with a history going back to the anonymous Federalist Papers and even earlier. The authors of the Federalist Papers later were revealed to be Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and Westchester’s own John Jay, all founding fathers of our democracy.
Crotonblog became so tired of these snide attacks on our tolerance of blogging anonymity, we began to read The North County News carefully and catalog its errors. Only after we published a slew of its serious errors of fact, history and geography with the suggestion that the newspaper’s editor would be better advised to tend to his knitting and concentrate on newspaper publishing, did the attacks cease.
It is no tribute to that newspaper’s journalistic “instincts” to reveal that their “Yorktown blog” attracted the less-than-astronomical number of only two user comments since its inception in April of this year. During the same period The North County News’s imitative competitor of Crotonblog attracted 330 comments. The only problem with that statistic is that almost all 330 comments were made by the same half-dozen people, making it look like the product of an inbred West Virginia community.
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North County News Still Can't Get Its Facts Right
October 30, 2007We hate to keep criticizing the North County News for errors it makes in its news reporting. If it hopes to extend its circulation to areas far beyond its headquarters in Yorktown, it owes the readership it seeks a much higher level of accuracy.
In a piece entitled “Croton board reconsiders water additive” in the October 10 issue of the North County News, its reporter Adriane Tillman wrote, “The village wants to add the chemical (zinc orthophosphate) to the water to reduce corrosion of the pipes that are leaching copper and lead into the water and causing brown water.”
Crotonblog would point out that it is not copper and lead leached into Croton’s water that cause “brown water,” but rather the archaic design of the water distribution system that leaves some households located on dead-end stubs—water mains in which water tends to stagnate and cause the Village’s cast-iron water mains to rust.
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Back from the Brink, Again
October 16, 2007Once again wiser heads prevailed at Monday night’s (Oct. 15) village board meeting, October 15. A series of impassioned speeches by citizens revealed that they were both concerned and confused about the proposal to add chemicals to Croton’s water. Unfortunately, instead of achieving clarity, the issues become more clouded with each successive meeting.
Major Complaints
A principal concern of speakers was that the Village had not publicized the issue of chemical additives enough. For his part, the Mayor insisted that wide publicity had been given in the past to the issue. An examination of published materials shows this to be untrue. The 2006 Water Quality Report, for example, mentioned the Chazen Group, but said that it had completed “a report on the feasibility of a corrosion control system to help alleviate complaints about discolored water, to lower lead and copper levels, and to help prolong the life expectancy of the water mains and service lines throughout the Village.” Note that nothing is said about additives.
Crotonblog would point out that postponing a vote on the question of chemical additives to still another board meeting is simply not a satisfactory reaction. If the Village were as proactive as it claims to have been, it would have scheduled an information meeting long ago at some place like the high school auditorium at which residents could gather and thresh out their concerns.
Speaker after speaker also implored Village board members to find a solution to the Village’s water-main problems, one that did not involve adding substances that might have a potentially deleterious effect on the health of residents, especially their children.
The Village’s Double-barreled Quandary
At the meeting, it quickly became obvious that the Village is facing two problems:
Corrosion of the Village’s own water mains, largely made of cast iron and subject to rusting from standing water caused by stubs at the ends of dead end-streets; and
A separate problem caused by the use in older Village homes of lead and copper pipes with lead-bearing solder joints.
The first thing the Village should do to give residents a handle on the problem is to exhibit a map showing the dates when the various Village water mains were laid beneath Village streets. Before the Mayor again uses scare tactics and assures residents that a water main-replacement program is financially unfeasible, the Village should demonstrate that it is aware of the magnitude of the problem and estimate the future cost of replacing aged mains.
The Village’s water emerges from Croton’s wells carrying no lead or copper. Nor does it pick up either of these metals in its journey through Village water mains. It is only when the water leaves the Village’s distribution system and enters each home’s pipes that a potentially dangerous situation arises.
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What If They Are Wrong? A Guest Editorial
October 13, 2007In the classic film “Casablanca,” Capt. Renault (played by Claude Rains) asks self-described saloonkeeper Humphrey Bogart, “What in heaven’s name brought you to Casablanca?” Bogart’s answer is, “My health. I came here for the waters.” The Captain looks puzzled. “The waters? What waters? We’re in the desert.” Bogart shrugs. “I was misinformed.”
Each year as many as 98,000 Americans die because of medical errors by trained health care professionals. Surprisingly, this number is greater than the numbers who die every year from highway accidents, breast cancer or AIDS. No one will ever know how many die because of errors by nonprofessionals, including well intentioned but uninformed bureaucrats.
Following scant public discussion about options or effects on humans or pets, Croton residents are discovering that the composition of their water may soon be altered with additives. But what if the assurances of product safety offered to the mayor and trustees by additive proponents turn out to be wrong? Given the failure to investigate potential dangers and alternative courses of action, a reasonable person might ask: Which of you who are about to vote on the upcoming resolution is satisfied that the issues have all been thoroughly explored?
Let me stipulate that I believe Mayor Schmidt and the four trustees who will be voting Monday evening are sincere in their desire to do what is right. But what if they are wrong in accepting the assurances of the people who are trying to sell this additive program to the village? Other communities have taken the same advice, they argue. Should that alone sway Croton’s decision? New York City’s water is drawn from the Catskills, but it is so pure the state does not require it to be filtered. Neither does Croton’s water require filtration. The city does not add zinc orthophosphate to its water.
Mayor Schmidt is a licensed health professional. As a Doctor of Chiropractic, he is required to have detailed knowledge of human anatomy and particularly of the skeletal and nervous systems. I cannot imagine him making a diagnosis based on evidence as sketchy and anecdotal as that offered in support of this additive proposal. The four trustees include a steamfitter, a former IBM employee, a railroad executive, and a housewife-author and mother of four young children. None has any specialized knowledge in the areas of water chemistry or health. Will their consciences be clear if they vote to move ahead in the face of skimpy, incomplete research?
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A Simple Solution to the Impasse over Croton's Water
October 9, 2007Ever since the Mayor’s scheme to adulterate Croton’s highly touted water with chemical additives was put forward, Crotonblog has been hoping someone would come forward with a solution. Suddenly it dawned on us! There is an uncomplicated way to give village residents a voice in their own future.
A Questionnaire Is the Answer
New York State law rules out a referendum in this case. But a questionnaire would be an entirely legal way to ascertain residents’ attitudes toward additives—one with plenty of precedent, and an eminently fair method of measuring public opinion.
As we all know, Croton is comfortable with questionnaires—in fact, Croton loves questionnaires. Consider these examples: To find out whether residents wanted changes in the Zoning Ordinance, Croton sent out a questionnaire that told the village what it wanted to know. To find out whether residents wanted a Community Center, and what facilities it should offer, Croton sent out a questionnaire and gathered the desired information.
But did Croton’s officials make any effort to ascertain residents’ opinions about injecting chemical additives into Croton’s water? No, Mayor Schmidt made absolutely no attempt to discover residents’ feelings. His actions say plainly, “Who gives a damn about what the people want?” To this we say, “Just a minute, Mr. Mayor. You work for us—not the other way around.”
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The Case Against Mayor Schmidt’s Scheme to Add Chemical Additives to Croton’s Water
October 7, 2007
The suddenness and lack of meaningful discussion of the Mayor’s scheme to inject chemical additives into Croton’s water has alarmed many residents. Historically, so-called “brown water” in certain Harmon and Croton neighborhoods has been a problem in this village for as long as we can remember.
In part, it is the result of faultily designed dead-end water lines that limit active flow of water. But we were always assured that it posed no problem to health. Suddenly, it has become a threat as serious as bubonic plague—the “Black Death”—that swept across Europe and Asia in the 14th century.
Croton residents deserve better treatment at the hands of its elected officials.
Crotonblog questions the headlong rush to attempt to correct this condition precipitously and without careful study. Simply stated, our concerns are that chemical additives could be injurious to the health of residents, particularly infants and growing children, and to the elderly with weakened or compromised immune systems.
All the assurances of the safety of this scheme by the contractor who stands to profit from a no-bid contract with the Village count for naught.
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Pardon Us for Preening
October 6, 2007When the prestigious New York Times asked Crotonblog for permission to reprint portions of our editorial condemning the plan to inject chemical additives into Croton’s water supply, it took us about a tenth of a second to agree.
Readers will find it reprinted on page 15 of the Westchester Section of tomorrow’s Sunday Times (October 7, 2007) and titled “Drink Zinc?” Before, only Crotonblog readers were aware of this nefarious plan to change the character of Croton’s famous water. Now all of Westchester County is aware of what’s going on in Croton.
We called the chemical additive scheme a “plan” in the two paragraphs above. The quick succession of presentation at one village board meeting, and the attempt to pass a resolution at the very next board meeting makes Crotonblog think that we should have called it what it now seems to be—a “plot.”
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A Narrow Squeak: Croton's Water Supply Gets Last-Minute Reprieve from Chemical Additives
October 2, 2007
Last night Croton pulled back from the brink. At last, cooler heads prevailed. In response to growing health and safety concerns, trustees applied the brakes to Mayor Gregory Schmidt’s headlong attempt to wangle an exclusive, no-bid contract for a Poughkeepsie engineering firm.
His blatantly obvious objective is to allow this company to adulterate Croton’s unique water with a chemical substance so dangerous in bulk as to require special training for the village employees who would handle it. Why he is pursuing this so single-mindedly is a mystery.
Until recently, Mayor Schmidt has managed to conceal his hot temper and vindictive personality from public view. His outbursts in private meetings with staff and trustees, however, are legendary. According to those who have felt his wrath, he rants and raves, curses, pounds the table and throws books around. An old German proverb best describes this: “Ein Engel auf der Strasse, ein Teufel im Hause.” Translation: “An angel in the streets, a devil at home.”
You’ve heard about books and plays that are banned in Boston for salaciousness. Last night Crotonblog was banned in Croton for no reason at all. Bob Wintermeier, Croton’s ever-vigilant guardian of the village exchequer, approached the microphone armed with a thick sheaf of papers intending to discuss zinc orthophosphate. As soon as he voiced health concerns and attempted to present evidence gleaned from Crotonblog’s report on the dangers of the dangerous chemical our Mayor proposes to add to Croton’s water, Mayor Schmidt exploded and openly rejected the sincere, painstaking research of a supporter who has remained loyal to him through thick and thin. The Mayor’s attempt to muzzle a citizen, one of his most loyal constituents, failed abysmally. Undaunted, Mr. Wintermeier had more than enough other research gleaned on his own to make a significant case against a precipitous vote.
The Mayor announced that he would not allow anyone to present information posted on Crotonblog that was not individually signed. This edict, of course, also removes from consideration every report from government agencies that are parties at interest in this crucial public health issue. Hitler’s Third Reich was famous for its frenzied book burning of works that displeased its mad Führer. Last night marked the 21st century equivalent: blog banning. Croton Mayor Schmidt’s refusal to allow information obtained from a legitimate electronic medium to be presented at an open public meeting because it displeases him sets a precedent of dubious legality. That this action violates every tenet of our guarantee of freedom of speech apparently escapes Mayor Schmidt, who piously opens every board meeting with a ritualistic schoolroom pledge of allegiance to the flag—but not to the Constitution.
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Searching in Vain for Charlie Road in Cortlandt
September 8, 2007
Earlier this year, Crotonblog suddenly received attention from an unusual source. Although we had never mentioned its name, a once well-respected weekly newspaper headquartered in Yorktown Heights began attacking us. The paper was obviously determined to expand subscriptions in communities on the perimeter of its overambitious coverage area. A seemingly defenseless blog that had done nothing to annoy that newspaper seemed like a ready-made victim.
Under the direction of one Bruce Apar, newly robed with the high-sounding but awkward title of “Editor-in-Chief Plus Publisher,” The North County News embarked on a campaign to secure subscribers by courting a few local malcontents unhappy with Crotonblog for following the almost universal practice of allowing anonymous comments signed only with a screen name.
Ugly Rumors
We had heard the many rumors circulating about the wholesale firings and forced resignations at The North County News after Mr. Apar’s arrival. These were accompanied by almost unbelievable reports of meetings, pep talks, and morale-building e-mails where before had been only the good-natured camaraderie of a small business. In the past, rank and title meant nothing, and everybody pitched in to extract something to be proud of from the inevitable disorder of a newspaper’s editorial office.
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The Uses of Anonymity, Part Two: Hazards of the Internet
August 24, 2007Let’s face it! For the average unsuspecting user, the Internet can be as perilous as a back alley in Baghdad. Creators of the Internet never anticipated it would become a place where danger lurks. In the beginning, it was the province of collegial users in academia and the Department of Defense. In the mid-1990s, however, following the invention of the World Wide Web, the Internet was thrown open to consumers around the globe. They embraced it excitedly, first as a fad, then as a convenience. It is now virtually a necessity.
The Internet has revolutionized advertising, the delivery of news, and personal messaging and will communications, supplanting direct mail and letter writing. We use it to do our information gathering and our buying of everything from groceries to antiques. It is on the brink of changing how we pay our bills and how we do our banking—once a foolproof method of protecting it from cheats and scammers is developed.
But, like everything else of value in this world, the Internet quickly attracted the attention of clever criminals. Yes, we said criminals. Before long, the trusting and gullible who innocently flocked to the Internet like sheep waiting to be sheared, found themselves shorn of everything ranging from their names and identities to the entire contents of their bank accounts.
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The Uses of Anonymity: Everybody's Doin' It
August 17, 2007What can one say about a so-called journalist who “reviews” a Crotonblog article before it has even been published? Bruce Apar, who lays claim to the self-bestowed title of “Editor in Chief plus Publisher” of The North County News, has done that with the article you are about to read.
Mr. Apar isn’t much of a journalist. He was so mixed-up about happenings in the historic Underhill House in his hometown of Yorktown Heights that in his newspaper he asserted Major John André was French, and claimed the British arrested him there during the Revolution. How confused can one get?
Mr. Apar got just about every fact wrong: Major André was British; Yorktown Heights (then called Hanover) was in American hands; American militia members arrested André later in Tarrytown. On another occasion, Mr. Apar wrote in his newspaper that Indian Point was in Montrose. Anyone concerned about the threat this ticking bomb poses to life and limb knows it’s in Buchanan. So much for Mr. Apar’s abilities as a journalist.
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Echoes of the Past: When Anonymity Was Abused and Readers Were Conned
When Crotonblog began, today’s sorehead critics did not hesitate to embrace anonymity. In fact, they welcomed it and wallowed in it as eager users. Robert Wintermeier adopted the name “Croton Taxpayer” as his cover, and was all over Crotonblog like a bad smell. But anonymity and its protective qualities can be abused. Early in its existence, Crotonblog was subjected to a tidal wave of identity falsification intended to deceive readers.
Maria Cudequest became so enamored of anonymity, she adopted a host of simulated names, each with its own personality and political attitude to match, and then literally flooded Crotonblog with comments. To allay suspicion, when referring to herself she even had one of her cast of characters misspell her name, Cudequest, as Cudaquest in making reference to her. Needless to say, her stable of nonexistent commenters all echoed the party line—hers.
How does Crotonblog know this? The enterprising Ms. Cudequest was obviously unaware that every computer linked to the Internet has an identifying address known as an “I.P. (Internet Protocol) address” whose location can be traced. Within a comparatively short time, Crotonblog was deluged with a total of 109 comments signed with various names. These included culliganman, identified as someone named David Culligan, and another with the attention-getting name of puppuluv, purportedly an individual named Danny Corso Puppuluv. Crotonblog’s diligent research revealed that the family name of Puppuluv (pronounced “pup-you-love,” which alone should have been a giveaway) was nowhere to be found in genealogical records or in the massive Social Security records.
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Freedom of Speech Knows No Geographic Boundaries: Strange Behavior at the Black Cow
August 9, 2007Our Mayor makes no secret of his antipathy to Crotonblog for exercising its right of freedom of speech in criticizing him and his administration. A disturbing incident that occurred as recently as Sunday, July 29th, in the Black Cow coffee house bears close scrutiny.
We have it on reliable authority—from a person who was very much present when the incident occurred—that Mayor Greg Schmidt, speaking in a very loud voice and obviously agitated, “accused Crotonblog and other blogs of leading to the demise of society.” In high dudgeon, the Mayor added, “Crotonblog was tearing up the social fabric of Croton and ruining people’s lives with libelous statements.” According to our informant, “the Mayor was very loud and fast-talking, and people were staring at him. He continued to yell … even as he was leaving and the door was closed and [he] was walking to his car in the parking lot.”
It ill behooves our politically ambitious Mayor, who refuses to acknowledge Crotonblog’s questions and who does not respond to e-mail messages sent to him, to pretend to be a judge of the effect of blogs and other technological advances upon our society. We would also remind the Mayor that the First Amendment is still in force in the Constitution, although one of his supporters has made the extraordinary suggestion that it does not apply to small-town politics.
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Time to Clean House: Notes on a Rundown, Nearly Empty Blog Cabin
July 27, 2007We must admit that we occasionally check up on “The Blog Cabin,” the blog set up by the North County News as part of its vendetta launched against Crotonblog. Intended to build that newspaper’s circulation in Croton and describing itself as “the first civilized and sensible blog for the citizens of Croton,” it’s patronized exclusively by the small group of malcontents who expressed unhappiness with Crotonblog’s policy of accepting anonymous comments to its postings.
There’s an amusing side to this new kid on the block. The people for whom this blog was tailored always insisted on calling Crotonblog a “chat room,” which it most decidedly is not. Yet the blog to which they have transferred their occasional allegiance is exactly that—a chat room of the lowest or most primitive order, with absolutely no input from its sponsors.
It has always escaped us why the identity of the person making a comment is more important to these small-minded people than the content of what is being said. As it turned out, guileless persons who have innocently revealed their names on Crotonblog have often been denigrated with verbal abuse that has bordered on being menacing.
Surprise, surprise! It turns out that the misfits for whom the new chat room was created do not make much use of it. During the month of July, for example, comments have appeared on only about 50 percent of days, rendering it not very useful for average readers seeking new and up-to-date news. Besides, the sporadic Blog Cabin’s chat room postings resemble a kind of cliquey exchange between insiders. One member’s comment tends to elicit a gushy and insincere thank-you note from another member of the group.
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Roundabouts Reduce Traffic Congestion, Increase Pedestrian Safety
July 26, 2007In recent studies conducted by the National League of Cities, one of the main concerns facing local governments was growing congestion. Many of these problems were associated with signalized interchanges.
Enter concrete pavement roundabouts. In congested areas, they have been proven to not only reduce congestion but also provide enhanced safety. And, concrete has the durability to take the constant vehicle-turning movements. Formally known as traffic-calming devices, concrete roundabouts enable the movement of heavy traffic volumes during peak operating hours.
Concrete pavement roundabouts provide safety and aesthetic benefits to interchanges while easing congestion.
When properly designed, they can ease traffic congestion by keeping traffic moving at a deliberate and steady pace. A single lane roundabout can accommodate more than 2,000 vehicles per hour from all entry legs. Two- and three-lane roundabouts can handle traffic volumes of 4,000 and 8,000 vehicles per hour, respectively.
Traffic calming is one area that all city officials agree needs to be addressed, especially in areas that must accommodate heavy vehicle traffic, as well as pedestrians and bicycles. Moreover, the intersection of Benedict and Cleveland is in need of being rebuilt as a roundabout, for many reasons. Ask anyone who uses the intersection or has seen it used just how dangerous it can be. Why wait for a major accident or a fatality to fix this obvious and long-standing problem? Ask for the state’s help, and Rebuild the Benedict/Cleveland circle!
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Setting the Record Straight About Croton Point
July 23, 2007Crotonblog is not given to springing to the defense of the Journal News, the local outlet of the Gannett chain, America’s largest newspaper publisher in terms of daily circulation. In their July 19 story about the unfortunate drowning of Gary Roberts at Mayo’s Landing, they published a sidebar map showing the sites of six drownings in Croton since 1994 and listing the names of the victims.
This story led to the posting of comments “correcting” the Journal News for its erroneous statements that the drownings at Teller’s Point (satellite map) took place in Croton. As comments to the Journal News story, two “corrections” appeared on the Journal News web site signed by “Darlat,” pointing out that Croton Point Park was now owned by Westchester County and was therefore no longer part of Croton. A similar “correction” offering essentially the same misinformation and signed with the name “Maria Cudequest,” appeared on the site established by the North County News, which riskily insists that commenters sign their names.
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Adventures in Journalism: The North County News Does it Again
July 10, 2007
The North County News, a weekly newspaper headquartered in Yorktown Heights, claims to serve all the communities of northern Westchester. That’s a tall order for a paper that doesn’t even send reporters to attend the board meetings of the several communities it purports to cover.
In the current issue and on its website, an editorial commentary about the Paramount Center for the Arts by the paper’s pompously titled “Publisher & Editor-in-Chief” Bruce Apar caught our attention. It says, “Then there’s the singular support Paramount Center receives from Entergy, known hereabouts as the owner-operator of the twin plants at Indian Point Energy Center in Montrose.”
Entergy may be known “hereabouts” (which we presume to be The North County News editorial offices) as the owner-operator of the twin plants at Indian Point Energy Center in Montrose. But anybody knowledgeable about this part of northern Westchester knows that Indian Point is in the incorporated village of Buchanan, not in the hamlet of Montrose.
This isn’t the first gaffe in which Mr. Apar has revealed his appalling lack of local knowledge. Earlier, he waxed eloquent about how French Major John André was captured by the British in the Underhill house in Yorktown Heights. The problem, of course, is that Major André, the spy with whom traitorous American General Benedict Arnold had conspired to sell the plans of fortifications at West Point, was British not French, and he was captured not in Yorktown but in Sleepy Hollow. Crotonblog called this mangling of history to Mr. Apar’s attention, but he never acknowledged our correction nor the full extent of his own screw-up.
Continue reading "Adventures in Journalism: The North County News Does it Again."
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How Wrong Can You Be, Mr. Wintermeier?
May 20, 2007“It was a pleasure to see the volume of folks visiting this blog increasing,” Robert Wintermeier wrote on May 19 on a competing blog.
Increasing? Oh, yeah? You’d better sharpen your pencil, Mr. Wintermeier. A regular fixture at village board meetings who likes to think of himself as the moral and financial conscience of Croton, Robert Wintermeier was writing about the blog established by the North County News for the specific purpose of enabling Cudequest & Co. to have a place to chat among themselves. A statistical analysis of this new blog reveals the facts to be otherwise.
During the Civil War, Gen. Robert E. Lee never referred to opposing generals by name or as “the enemy.” To the gentlemanly general, they were simply “those people.” And Crotonblog will similarly spurn this rabble and their competing so-called blog, and refer to them as “those people.”
Ironically, the competing blog created specifically for those people (and Crotonblog uses the term “competing blog” advisedly) is neither a blog nor is it competition. Those people who are now making use it of are the same people who (1) tried unsuccessfully to get the village of Croton-on-Hudson to shut Crotonblog down; (2) tried to deny Crotonblog access to the filmed record of board meetings; and (3) have persisted to this day in their mistaken characterization of Crotonblog as a “chat room.”
Well, those people have finally gotten their wish. Sensing an opportunity to take advantage of the bitter differences of opinion that often prevail in local and national elections, the North County News has provided those people with a venue in which they can talk to one another. It’s the chat room cum bulletin board they have long desired. At last, they have a place where they can exchange compliments, massage each other’s egos and swap back-fence gossip. Hell, if that’s their bag, they could have achieved the same goal by merely trading e-mails or subscribing to the restricted circulation rag emanating from Cudequest & Co.
Continue reading "How Wrong Can You Be, Mr. Wintermeier?."
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We Hate to See You Go, We Hate to See You Go
May 15, 2007Readers will recognize the time-honored refrain that begins with the words shown above. The occasion that prompts our breaking into song is the launch of a new blog by the North County News. Designed specifically to attract Croton’s malcontents, this so-called blog caps the North County News’s on-again, off-again campaign against Crotonblog. The single issue? Crotonblog’s sin of accepting anonymous contributions or comments from whistle blowers or others who have reason to want to protect their identity—an almost universal practice in the blogging world.
The North County News is a formerly respectable newspaper that unceremoniously dumped its capable staff last year, engaged an experienced Gannett journalist as managing editor, and acquired a pick-up team of amateurs. It has been desperately striving to get a readership foothold in communities outside its home base, Yorktown Heights. As a community newspaper covering distant communities like Cortlandt, Croton, Ossining and Briarcliff, the North County News is as phony as a three-dollar bill when compared to the knowledgeable reporting of a newspaper like The Gazette.
The newest North County News blog bills itself as “the first civilized and sensible blog for the citizens of Croton.” This phrase is strongly reminiscent of Fox News’s description of itself as “fair and balanced.” The ringmaster of the one-ring circus that is the North County News is one Bruce Apar, peripatetic editor of electronics industry trade magazines, who is in over his depth on a weekly community newspaper. He wears two hats, one as Editor-in-Chief and the other as Publisher. In Crotonblog’s humble opinion only people with two heads should wear two hats—and Cousin Brucie Apar doesn’t seem to have two heads—just one big one.
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More Revealing Wisdom from Klaatu. A Traditional Ceremony Has Nazi Party Overtones
May 3, 2007
American school children rendering the Bellamy Salute as they say the Pledge of Allegiance.
Do Croton parents know that the ceremonious Pledge of Allegiance with which school activities are opened each day in Croton has shady beginnings? Do Croton’s village board members who open each public meeting with this same 115-year-old children’s pledge know that the author of that pledge was a spiritual godfather to Hitler’s Nazi party and the straight-arm Nazi salute?
In addition to the eyebrow-raising revelations about Croton’s salary giveaways for management employees by interplanetary space traveler Klaatu, he drew on his encyclopedic knowledge of American mores and morals to raise the above questions. Klaatu’s home, you may recall, is an undiscovered planet 250 million miles away (which would place it somewhere between Jupiter and Saturn). During his brief sojourn here, twice each month he would watch Croton’s village board meetings with great interest and perplexity.
Klaatu wondered why village board members open each meeting with an archaic ceremony in which everybody stands and earnestly proclaims their patriotism by reciting the children’s Pledge of Allegiance to the flag. Until our visitor revealed its history, Crotonblog had not been familiar with the origins of this children’s school pledge. Nor did we know why it was a fixture at Croton’s village board meetings dedicated to the transaction of municipal business. The sight of five male and female officials ceremoniously proclaiming their patriotism was a source of amusement for the space visitor.
“Surely, no one doubts the loyalty, patriotism or Americanism of Croton’s village board members,” Klaatu suggested, “so why do they feel compelled to publicly pledge allegiance to a mere emblem?” He suggested that it would make more sense if village board members were to affirm their intention to respect the Constitution, or at least the Bill of Rights, as well as to obey state and local laws. He said, “I am reminded of the legend of William Tell, a Swiss patriot, who refused to show deference to another symbol—the hat of Austrian tyrant Gessler on a pole—and was forced to shoot an apple atop his son’s head as punishment.”
Continue reading "More Revealing Wisdom from Klaatu. A Traditional Ceremony Has Nazi Party Overtones."
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Klaatu Returns to Planet Earth. Lands in Croton-on-Hudson Instead of Washington
April 27, 2007We don’t hear much about UFOs these days, but after a visit from a mysterious interplanetary traveler recently, Crotonblog discovered that they do indeed exist. Visible marks left by his spacecraft can still be seen in the soft earth of the adjoining yard. Having traveled from a planet some 250 million miles away, he gave his name as Klaatu. He wanted to understand life in a small American suburban town, and had chosen Croton as the subject of his study. “I visited your planet once before to bring an anti-war message to the people of the Earth,” he told Crotonblog. “In fact they made a film in 1951 about that visit. It was called The Day the Earth Stood Still.” Tall, soft spoken and gracious, he bore a striking resemblance to British actor Michael Rennie who played the part of Klaatu in that film.
In the time he spent in Croton, Klaatu became fascinated by our village’s election practices. He was puzzled that each year in early spring its “friendly” citizens divide into two factions and proceed to hurl bitter insults at one other in a contest to govern this little community numbering less than eight thousand souls, most of whose males and many of its females desert the village each weekday to work elsewhere. He became a regular watcher of village board meetings on Channel 78 and on his own impressive portable computer, an advanced device like nothing seen on Earth.
Quite familiar with American culture, politics, history and even financial matters (TV, radio and telephone communications easily travel through outer space), he was surprised that remuneration for the posts board members seek, governance of the village, was a mere pittance. “I find it hard to imagine what kind of talent your village attracts when remuneration is at what elsewhere on your planet would be described as coolie wages,” he remarked. “An annual wage of $5,000 for the mayor and $3,000 for each of four trustees can only attract either dedicated self-sacrificing types, flagellant masochists or power-hungry individuals.”
When he learned that the actual day-to-day operation of the village is left to hired professionals, he pointed out that their super-generous pay and more than ample benefits far exceed any amount they might earn in the sharp-elbowed world of harsh, competitive business. Klaatu found it remarkable that, insulated from the struggle and strife they would have faced in the world outside, these employees are ensconced in their cushy jobs virtually for life, and only death or the most egregious acts of moral turpitude would cause them to be removed.
Klaatu was particularly intrigued by Croton’s 2007-08 budget of almost $16 million and particularly by its salary scale, which he termed “munificent.” He then proceeded to draw facts from his prodigious memory bank and pointed out to Crotonblog some eye-opening statistics. “Under your system of government in Croton, increases in salary and benefits are mandated by contracts with the various classes of employees. But did you know,” he asked, “that this tiny village has just given a 5% raise to the village manager and that he now earns $176,029?” Crotonblog stammered, “Well, no. Few of us in this village know this. It must be buried in the budget that was passed by the Republican majority.”
He continued, “And do you know that at $176,029, your village manager now makes more than the governors of 47 of the 50 states that comprise the United States? Only the governors of California, New York and Michigan make more than your village manager. For example, Eliot Spitzer, the governor of New York, whose salary is $179,000, earns only a measly $2,971 more than your Village Manager. Can you believe it? Mr. Spitzer earns a mere three grand, I believe you call it, more than your village manager for running a state with a population of 19 million and a budget of $120.6 billion. To use another expression that I picked up here, ‘Something’s badly out of whack.’ In the case of the Michigan governor, Jennifer M. Granholm, with a salary of $177,000, she makes only 971 bucks, as you call your dollars, more than your Richard Herbek for running a state with a population of 10 million and a budget of $43.4 billion.
“But, closer to home, the unkindest cut of all is this: For running the business of the tiny village of Croton, with a population of about 7,800 and a budget of under $16 million, Richard Herbek, the village manager, at $176,032 earns a salary larger than the Westchester County executive. Yes, more than Andy Spano, a veritable human dynamo who, for a mere $160,760, manages the entire county of Westchester, with its population edging close to a million and a budget of $1.7 billion.”
Klaatu went on, “Next, let’s look at the salaries of the village engineer and village treasurer, who each received a whopping 8.5% increase. Daniel O’Connor, the village engineer, and Abraham Zambrano, village treasurer, now earn $128,786 and $125,318 respectively. Did you know that they both take home more than the governors of 35 of the 50 states? In other words, these two guys individually earn more than the governors of 70% of the states of the United States. In addition, the village engineer has also been given an assistant engineer at a starting salary of $80,000—a nice bonus. And by the way, wasn’t Mr. Zambrano the architect of the phony water-bill scam that was written about in newspapers all across the United States, the one who angered and upset local residents with his unfeeling stupidity?”
“As for Ken Kraft, the superintendent of public works, who received a 5.5% increase, at a salary of $110,169, he now makes more than the governors of almost half of the 50 states—24 states, to be exact. What’s so incomprehensible about the increase given to Mr. Kraft,” Klaatu continued, “is that at the April 16th village board meeting at which the Democratic trustees declined to vote for the unreasonable increases in the fees charged for parking at the village’s parking lot, your Mayor Schmidt publicly berated Mr. Kraft. Mr. Schmidt unmercifully ripped him up one side and down the other for his failure to maintain the station parking lot, and placed the blame on him for the many complaints about deterioration of services voiced by parking lot users at the April 9th budget meeting.”
Klaatu put down the pencil he had been using to make his calculations and leaned back in his chair. “Frankly speaking,” he said, “in my estimation, the residents of Croton are paying too much for what they get. I do not understand how you people can survive fiscally with such largesse and why you put up with it.” He added, “Or how long you can survive without causing village citizens hard pressed by taxes to move elsewhere. Somebody has not been paying attention and has been ‘giving away the store,’ as one of your expressions has it.”
Klaatu suggested, “Perhaps the people are diverted by the meetings that are a sop to the people to give them the impression that this is democracy at work.” He himself had been fascinated by the spectacle of the semi-monthly meetings at which the five members govern the destinies of this little village. He noted that such meetings were usually poorly attended by village residents, although members of pressure groups with their own agendas could be counted upon to be in attendance and to be very vocal. He liked our description of them as “the usual suspects.”
“What you have in your village is the paradox of five people earning a total of $17,000 a year for their services directing the activities of four persons earning a total of well over a half million dollars annually, and whose salaries are augmented handsomely whether they performed well or not and whose jobs have turned into sinecures. It’s like a cozy little club of insiders looking out for one another. Funny thing, I thought Republicans were supposed to be in favor of reducing taxes.”
With that, he announced, “I regret that I must say goodbye and return to my own planet now. Heed well my warning about village finances.” We shook hands and said our farewells. Exhibiting surprising grace, he walked with long strides across the yard to the gleaming metallic spaceship. As he mounted the sloping ramp, Klaatu turned and winked at Crotonblog knowingly. He called out, with an attempt at an Arnold Schwarzenegger accent, “I’ll be back.” Then the ramp was drawn up and closed behind him. With a giant whoosh, his spacecraft lifted upwards and was gone.
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Fate Sealed, Croton Parkers Don’t Have to Take It Anymore
April 22, 2007Is Croton’s fee-setting policy based on the philosophy that we will sock train station parkers with all that the traffic can bear? It seems that way. But the inept Schmidt administration may be forgetting Aesop’s fable about the couple who, in search of immediate reward, killed the goose that laid a golden egg. Croton’s shortsighted actions to increase revenue from its down-at-the-heels station parking lot are proving to be downright disastrous.
Whenever parking lot users complain about deteriorating conditions at the lot and the unjustified rate increases, Mayor Schmidt’s insensitive response is the tired old promise to do better, followed by his self-serving, imperious rationalization. “These are the rates we charge,” he intones repeatedly, almost as a mantra. He also is not above mouthing a blatant lie, “We run the parking lot like a business.” What a laugh! Mr. Mayor, do you know any successful business that cuts services and simultaneously raises prices, as Croton does? Mr. Mayor, do you know of any mindful business that ignores the pricing structure used by its competitors, as Croton does? Mr. Mayor, do you know any business that damages or destroys its customers’ property and then denies responsibility, as Croton does?
Pricing any service or commodity can be a ticklish operation in which many factors are at work. Fail to take them into consideration, and one risks killing the goose that lays the golden egg. On an annual basis, residents will now pay $600 a year and nonresidents $1,032 a year. Add these numbers to M.T.A. commuting fares, and residents are paying $3,156 annually to get to work and nonresidents are paying $3,588. As discontent rises, for every discouraged nonresident who no longer parks at Croton’s station parking lot and whose space is then given to a resident, the village stands to lose $432 annually.
Run like a business? Mayor Schmidt has got to be kidding. In Croton, the Mayor and his two newly elected hand puppets named Tom and Sue have a complicated scientific formula: They decide how much will be needed to cover this litigious village’s anticipated legal expenses and adjust parking rates accordingly. On the other hand, at the Cortlandt station (map), parking lot prices are sensibly set on a sliding scale. Pay your Cortlandt parking fee annually instead of quarterly, and you get a 10% discount.
The prospect that a user of the Croton lot could go elsewhere and save money is indeed real. The Mayor has simply neglected to do his homework, so Crotonblog has done it for him. Croton nonresident parkers can switch to Cortlandt and, despite the fact that their monthly commutation train fare will go up $38 because of the change, at the end of a year, those who switched from Croton to Cortlandt will have saved as much as $235.62. And this despite the fact that at Cortlandt parkers also have to pay a sales tax on fees because the lot is run by a private entity! In addition to the dollar savings, parkers at the Cortlandt station lot, which is about to be enlarged, will find it more easily accessible, safer (it adjoins the State Police barracks), and is not flood-prone but dry as a bone.
Nor is the Mayor above telling bald-faced lies to justify Croton’s exorbitant prices. When a lot user compared Croton’s excessive charges with the low prices at other lots along Metro North lines, an ill-informed Mayor countered by saying dismissively, “Oh, those are lots owned by the M.T.A.” The lot user immediately shot down that lie by reading the names of the owners of the lots. They were all municipalities just like Croton. The most telling remark was made by Maria Cudequest to justify Crotons disastrous pricing policy of punitive setting of nonresident rates: ”I don’t intend to subsidize residents who live in communities whose taxes are significantly less than ours.” The irony is that the Mayor apparently does not recognize how damning of his tax policies is that revealing remark—but vigilant Croton voters have taken note of it.
Despite emotional but valid objections from residents and nonresidents alike, Croton’s ham-handed Mayor is about to raise parking rates unconscionably again. Between 1999 and 2007, the residential parking fee went up 37% and the nonresidential fee rose 59%. Both increases are astronomical, especially in the face of declining services. They also reveal a disturbing willingness to consider all parking lot users as cash cows waiting to be milked, not to mention a strong bias against nonresidents that may prove to be disastrous in the end. Unlike Metro North, Croton does not have a monopoly on parking facilities. Mayor Schmidt should therefore not be surprised to discover that many unhappy Croton station parkers have taken their business elsewhere. Emulating the character played by Peter Finch in Paddy Chayefsky’s 1976 award-winning movie “Network,” they will all roll down their car windows and shout as they depart, “I’m fed up and I’m not going to take it anymore!”
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Mr. Moore's Mirthless Musings Mostly Malarkey
April 5, 2007In a letter in last week’s Gazette, James R. Moore took an undeserved swipe at Crotonblog for posting and allowing anonymous commentaries whose tone does not please some who read them.
Not so fast, Mr. Moore; anonymous speech is protected. The Supreme Court has repeatedly reaffirmed the constitutional right to speak anonymously. In MacIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission, the Court wisely wrote, “Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority.” Further, in Talley v. California, the court said that “an identification requirement would tend to restrict freedom to distribute information and thereby freedom of expression.”
At Crotonblog, we tend to think it’s the transparency of blogging that has gotten Mr. Moore’s goat. Unlike letters in newspapers, blog readers can immediately interact with an article, letter or comment for the world to read and respond to in kind—a far cry from a “chat room.”
Two lies appeared in Mr. Moore’s letter that demand correction: First, Mr. Moore made it appear that the anti-Regus Industries letters from Massachusetts and Ohio were official communications from each state. Hardly. Each was written in form-letter style by a Maria Cudequest out-of-state cohort.
Second, Mr. Moore, a Republican, counseled readers not to trust anyone in politics. That’s not surprising. His hero, George W. Bush, has been called this country’s worst president for reasons that become increasingly apparent with each passing day. What Mr. Moore really means is don’t trust anyone except the Schmidt-Brennan-Konig team.
But that, too, is not surprising, although it’s closer to belly-laughable. Greg Schmidt and his team were totally dishonest in the run up to the recent village election. For example, they created a number plucked out of thin air and said baselessly that 30,000 trucks would rumble through the village if the “cash for trash trio” of Gallelli, Kane and Wiegman succeeded in re-opening what they insist on calling “the dump.” How about the lower-than-a-snake’s belly tone of that attack?
Yet, pseudo-faithful candidate Susan Konig told the biggest whopper of all. While campaigning, she publicly slandered Ann Gallelli by saying she had her driveway plowed by the village. So deceitful was his running mate’s behavior, Mayor-elect Schmidt apologized at the village board meeting on election day eve for his part in “election season craziness.”
So, Mr. Moore, if that’s the kind of integrity that floats your boat, we wish you well on your journey.
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North County News Attacks Crotonblog. We Raise the Rattlesnake Flag and Correct Their Errors.
April 3, 2007
Crotonblog has been on the receiving end of repeated attacks by Bruce Apar, the pompously titled Editor-in-Chief & Publisher of the North County News and his staff. These attacks were a desperate attempt at circulation building for a sick newspaper. Last year this once respected and formerly professionally edited newspaper abruptly dumped its award-winning staff. Now, using a pick-up team, it attempts to cover the broad area of the northern tier of Westchester towns with little success. Its readership in Croton would hardly fill the lobby of the Croton post office.
We offer two lessons to Mr. Apar and the North County News:
Lesson 1 (Civics): The issue chosen by the North County News to attack Crotonblog on was protected anonymous speech. Like blogs everywhere, Crotonblog’s contributors and commenters are invited to sign their names or to use a nom de plume, if they so desire. Anonymous speech has a long tradition dating back to this country’s founding. Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and Westchester’s own John Jay wrote the Federalist Papers under the pseudonym of Publius. An often-cited 1995 Supreme Court ruling in McIntyre vs. Ohio Election Committee held that “protections for anonymous speech are vital to democratic discourse. Allowing dissenters to shield their identities frees them to express critical minority views….Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority….It thus exemplifies the purpose behind the Bill of Rights and of the First Amendment in particular to protect unpopular individuals from retaliation….at the hands of an intolerant society.”
Anonymity gives protection to those concerned about economic or political retribution or even threats to property—the latter already a reality in Croton. The misguided attack of the North County News on Crotonblog received only one complimentary comment: an email from one Maria Cudequest praising the “campaign” against anonymity.
Talk about the pot calling the kettle black! It is to laugh. Ms. Cudequest has the distinction of being the first and only person to be banished from access to Crotonblog. Her offense was that she created multiple counterfeit fictitious names appended to comments all originating from the same I.P. address. This fraud gave the false impression that a great many individuals supported her point of view. In such comments, she would often misspell her own name to give the impression that the nonexistent writer was unfamiliar with the proper spelling. Not infrequently, one of her phony individuals would compliment another of her phony individuals on a point well taken. The following are some of the pseudonymous names she employed in her brazen scam: Culliganman, Deepsix50, Hopeful, Maria, Puppuluv, William Rooney.
Lesson 2 (History): In a piece entitled “Talking Points,” (incidentally, the name is borrowed from the popular Josh Marshall Internet site), Bruce Apar bemoaned the fact that he had not met three persons associated with Yorktown Heights. In addition to John W. Chase, the paper’s founder, and Charlie Murphy, “father of Yorktown lacrosse,” he regretted not meeting Isaac Underhill. In the latter case, he managed to get everything laughably wrong. Here’s what he wrote:
“Neither did I meet Isaac Underhill in whose house on Hanover Street 225 years ago French Major John André was captured by the British in the Revolutionary War.”
Crotonblog is no expert on the details of the Benedict Arnold treachery, but this statement did not sound right. We consulted a local history society. Here’s what we found:
Editor-in-Chief & Publisher Apar got only one fact right: the Underhill house (which still stands, by the way) is indeed on Hanover Street (it’s at the intersection with California Road).
Messrs. Chase and Murphy both died in August of 2006. But for Mr. Apar to meet Isaac Underhill would have been quite a feat. He died in 1814.
Despite his name, Major John André was not “a French major,” but a major in the British Army. The son of a Swiss merchant who settled in London, he was commissioned in 1771. At the time described, André was serving as aide-de-camp to Sir Henry Clinton, whose troops were then occupying New York City. Having crossed the Hudson carrying maps and documents obtained from Gen. Benedict Arnold and hoping to reach British lines in southern Westchester, he traveled from King’s Ferry in Montrose by a circuitous route posing as “John Anderson.”
Major André stopped briefly at the Underhill house, but it was not “225 years ago.” Do the arithmetic, Mr. Apar: it was well over 226 years ago. He purchased breakfast there on Saturday, September 23, 1780. Because of recent depredations by foragers, Mrs. Underhill could only offer him “supawn,” a humble porridge of corn meal and milk.
Major André was not “captured by the British” in the Underhill house, a statement that makes no sense at all since he was British.
Later that same day, Major André was stopped and searched by American militiamen on the Albany Post Road (today’s Route 9) at Tarrytown, just below a brook called Clark’s Kill. Because he wore civilian clothes and the incriminating documents were found hidden in his stockings, he was arrested as a spy and later hanged.
To help Mr. Apar get his paper back on track factually, Crotonblog has rewritten his erroneous item. It is offered to him here for use as his printed correction:
CORRECTION: I need to brush up my knowledge of local history. Last week I wrote about Isaac Underhill and the Underhill house on Hanover Street. Contrary to what I wrote, British Major (not French Major) John André was in the house briefly more than 226 years ago (not 225 years ago). He was not “captured” by the British there, but merely stopped for breakfast on September 24, 1780. Disguised as “John Anderson,” a civilian, Major André carried documents provided by traitorous American General Benedict Arnold. Later that day, as he was making his way south on the Albany Post Road toward the British lines at Dobbs Ferry, André was stopped and searched by American militiamen in Tarrytown. When incriminating papers were found in his stockings, he was arrested as a spy, tried and convicted. Despite his plea to George Washington to be shot as a soldier, he was hanged at Tappan, N.Y., on Oct. 2.
For managing to get every verifiable historical fact wrong in a 28-word sentence, Crotonblog hereby ceremoniously awards Bruce Apar, Editor-in-Chief & Publisher of the North County News, a dunce cap of large and handsome design. If this abysmal performance represents Mr. Apar’s standard of journalistic accuracy, what conclusions can we draw about the rest of his newspaper? We suggest that Mr. Apar, who has no background as a newspaper journalist, would be wise to abandon his futile efforts to build his paper’s circulation by attacking what he considers to be competing media and turn his attention to quality control. After exhibiting such gross factual errors, the North County News can hardly be considered to be an authoritative newspaper of record.
The Gasden flag was first dislpayed by American colonists to warn the British about their harsh repressive measures.
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Mark Aarons Attacks Crotonblog. We Run Up the "Don't Tread on Me" Rattlesnake Flag
March 29, 2007
Mark Aarons, eminence grise of the self-disenfranchised Croton Republican Party, wasn’t content with printing scurrilous lies to discredit Crotonblog in The Gazette’s issue of March 15. He wasted space by repeating the identical canards in the March 22 issue. Crotonblog wonders whether Mr. Aarons, a local attorney, missed some lectures at law school when rules of evidence were discussed.
The object of his false accusations was our occasional feature, “The Nathan Bedford Forrest Awards,” in which we point out the frequent instances when Crotonblog has beat the Journal News to a story. Our choice of Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest was calculated. He was the Civil War’s most successful general and created tactics of mobile warfare still studied in military staff schools. Our reason for choosing him? His philosophy was to get to the battlefield first. A quick study in military science and tactics, Forrest had enlisted as a private and, without formal military training, rose to the rank of lieutenant general. It is interesting to note that Gen. Forrest’s personal bodyguard consisted of eight black former slaves who accompanied him into the army of the Confederate States. The Union Army was a segregated army—in fact, unlike the Confederate Army, segregation continued in the U.S. Army until President Harry Truman abolished it in 1945.
So, here’s our response to Mr. Aarons: He twice claimed that Nathan Bedford Forrest was one of the founders of the Ku Klux Klan. Forrest was not. He was never even a member of that organization. Although he supported the Klan’s resistance to Republican carpetbaggers who poured into the South to profit from reconstruction, he quickly condemned acts of violence in a South that had descended into lawlessness and advised the organization to disband.
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Crotonblog Endorses Gallelli, Odland and Wiegman
March 19, 2007Much is at stake and riding on tomorrow’s election in Croton. It represents a golden opportunity for citizens of good will in Croton to restore reason and decorum to village government. To this end, Crotonblog endorses the team of Ann Gallelli, Sally Odland and Leo Wiegman. Here are only two of our reasons for making this endorsement:
The Case Against the Alliance Party: Blatant Lies and Misrepresentation of Facts. Croton voters can strike a blow for truth and reason by rejecting the small group that calls itself the Alliance Party and whose specialty has been purveying groundless fears. By spreading outright lies and distortions as reasons for concern for the public health and welfare and without citing any scientific evidence, these rabble rousers have created a veritable universe of lies, even enlisting citizens of other states to put pressure on Croton voters in support of their fabrications.
Some of their mean-spirited falsehoods have reached astronomical proportions. For example, in presentations at public meetings and in its printed materials, the Alliance Party claims that any return of a C&D materials-handling operation to 1A Croton Point Avenue will bring 30,000 trucks a year to Croton. During the election campaign, this number mysteriously jumped from a previously widely touted 20,000 trucks a year.
Let’s examine the arithmetic behind this number: If we assume that the site operates 8 hours a day, 5 days a week for 52 weeks of the year and subtracting 10 days of closure for legal holidays, this yields 124,200 minutes of annual operation. To accommodate 30,000 trucks a year, which is to say 120 trucks a day, would require one truck to enter the facility, unload and exit every four minutes—a miracle of scheduling and a physical impossibility. Yet the Alliance Party insists that 30,000 trucks a year will beset Croton. Alliance Party Mathematical Accuracy Score: Zero.
The Case Against the Alliance Party: Harassment of Village Board Members. This same small group has not hesitated to impugn the motives of trustees and citizens who do not agree with them, going so far as to make libelous charges of graft and accusing certain board members of being “on the take.” This crowd complains about the honest criticism leveled at them on Crotonblog—yet they applaud crudely drawn cartoons depicting their opponents as low forms of life. An anagram of ALLIANCE is ALL NICE. Don’t you believe it.
By voting for candidates who offer a rational and reasonable level of discourse in local government, you will signal to the irresponsible rabble-rousers that you are tired of their semi-monthly harangues that monopolize village board meetings. You know who they are—the usual suspects: The officious individual who flounces in like a call house madam and proceeds to lecture the board. Her prolix performance over, she gathers up her legal pads and exits; the nitty-gritty of village business is not her concern. Then there’s the unctuous individual who only lacks the standard green eyeshade and sleeve-garters of the mousy bookkeeper; his specialty is to seek clarification of the obvious. Then there’s the adenoidal former village trustee who manages to mangle the English language even more than Prof. Irwin Corey. And there’s the professional mom whose schtick is saying in her “widdle girl” voice, “I’m just a housewife who doesn’t understand how government works.” We must not forget Croton’s scenery-chewing male prima donna who alternates between threatening bodily harm to trustees and threatening to move from the village. And, last but not least, with luck we might even discourage the sour-tasting dyspeptic effusions of our tiresome, cud-chewing, self-appointed village scold with a distorted sense of village geography. One interesting demographic statistic: Many of the usual suspects are comparatively recent arrivals from elsewhere. Crotonblog wonders whether the Bronx and Brooklyn have fobbed off their malcontents on Croton?
Twice a month, village board members are subjected to insults in two successive nightly sessions labeled “Citizen Participation” in which the participants exhibit the anger and unreason of a lynch mob. Even more damaging, the venomous vituperation of this group tends to discourage other citizens from speaking out in meetings or in the pages of local newspapers out of fear of being verbally attacked or of having the paint on their automobiles “keyed” in retaliation. Crotonblog knows whereof it speaks. Alliance Party Good Citizenship Score: Zero.
For these cogent reasons, Crotonblog urges all citizens of goodwill who care about Croton and its public face to put a stop to the growing influence of this know-nothing band of rabble-rousers. We urge a vote for the team of Ann Gallelli, Sally Odland and Leo Wiegman. Vote, vote as if the quality of your life and the life of this village depended on it. Because, when the chips are down, that’s really what’s at stake in this election.
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Candidate Schmidt Dummies Up Under Crotonblog's Barrage of Questions
In the past year Crotonblog politely posed a series of 16 questions to Mayor Dr. Gregory Schmidt in our regular column titled “What’s up, Doc?”. Here are the questions we asked Mayor Schmidt and his considerably less-than-eloquent answers.
| OUR QUESTIONS | HIS RESPONSE |
| 1. Why do Croton Republican lawn signs include a website address that doesn’t exist? | nothing |
| 2. Why does the Croton Republican’s website include a purloined copy of the village’s $20,000 logo? | zip |
| 3. Now that Croton Republican Committee Chairman Rob DiFrancesco has been fired, who’s in charge of your party? | zilch |
| 4. When news of Croton’s “fake water bill” scam made national and international news, you said nothing. Why? | zippo |
| 5. Is Croton really going to spend millions on a new community center based on your survey initiative that yielded paltry results? | zero |
| 6. When your single-issue supporters misuse the privilege of addressing the board of trustees, how come you never call the meeting to order? | blank |
| 7. Why did your hand-picked village attorney remain on the payroll after she chose not to renew her contract with the village? | diddly squat |
| 8. Why did it take you and Trustee Brennan two years to send out a simple community center survey that still has not been tabulated? | goose egg |
| 9. Why did you invite Regus Industries’ principal to meet with the board in July 2006, and rebuff him ever since? | naught |
| 10. Your supporter Richard Pellicci went ballistic and demanded that the he not be photographed when addressing the board. Why did you allow his request to stand? | cipher |
| 11. Croton has spent over $1.4 million in legal fees related to the waste transfer station located at 1A Croton Point Avenue. How do you expect the village to keep paying for your “no negotiate” stance? | nichts |
| 12. Each year the Croton Rotary Club, of which you are a member, holds an annual car show at the train station parking lot. No one is ever asked to pay for parking during the event. So, why did you want to charge parkers who attend Clearwater? | rien |
| 13. The village assessor forgot to extend property tax credits to seniors in 2006. Why did you refuse to offer them tax credits for their overpayment? | nada |
| 14. Why did you vote against a resolution to retain an attorney who specialized in eminent domain law in connection with 1A Croton Point Avenue? | niente |
| 15. You voted to authorize $175,000 in spending to build a skatepark in Croton. Why did you decide to attach a fee for use by Croton residents? | nihil |
| 16. Why was nothing done about the suggestion to bottle Croton water and sell it? | nullity |
Based on this unresponsive record, who could possibly think that the Sphinxlike Gregory Schmidt, who doesn’t even answer citizens’ emails, deserves to be re-elected mayor of the Village of Croton-on-Hudson?
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Shooting Off Your Mouth and Shooting Yourself in the Foot: The Case Against Candidates Schmidt and Brennan
March 15, 2007Any first-year law student could spot the fatal flaw in the Schmidt-Brennan position on 1A Croton Point Avenue. It can be summed up with the “P word”—Prejudice, spelled with a capital P and illuminated by flashing red lights. Simply stated, both incumbent candidates have violated the precept that public officials must remain impartial and free of prejudice in all matters they rule on.
One monumental problem evolving from Schmidt and Brennan’s hardnosed position was hinted at in the recent Journal News article on the Village’s appeal of Judge Nicolai’s ruling in state supreme court. In that article, datelined Feb. 25 and titled “Croton appeals transfer station ruling,” Mayor Schmidt is quoted as saying he was awaiting a favorable ruling in federal court that would tell Regus that they must apply for a special permit. Left unstated was the obvious inference that such an application would summarily be denied by Croton.
Unfortunately for the citizens of Village of Croton-on-Hudson, from the get-go Mayor Gregory Schmidt and the Deputy Mayor he appointed, Tom Brennan, have been both loud and intemperate in their condemnation of Regus Industries. Given the years of outspoken prejudice by Schmidt and Brennan against the site and against Regus, the likelihood that Regus would receive a fair and impartial hearing under a Republican majority range from zero to none.
If Mayor Schmidt and Deputy Mayor Brennan should be re-elected and should Susan Konig ride in on their coat tails, the resulting Republican majority would reject a permit application by Regus. Regus most certainly would then sue the village, citing overt prejudice. Regus could place into evidence Republican campaign promises and abundant film clips clearly demonstrating the Mayor’s and Deputy Mayor’s prejudgment of a Regus permit application.
Paradoxically, the only way Croton can now forestall a continuation of the never-ending parade of onerous, expensive lawsuits would be for the Village to grant Regus a special permit. If Messrs Schmidt and Brennan were honest with voters, they would acknowledge their prejudicial actions and admit that the Village now faces a classic case of what has been called “Hobson’s choice,” which is no choice at all. Thomas Hobson (1544-1631) of Cambridge, England, rented horses and gave his customers only one choice: “Take the horse nearest the stable door.”
In the face of such easily demonstrable partiality and prejudice on the part of Messrs. Schmidt and Brennan, the village would likely lose any suit and consequent appeal. In fact, the court itself would probably impose a special permit allowing waste transfer activities at 1A Croton Point Avenue, in effect holding a legal gun to the Village’s head and telling it, “Grant the permit now, or else!” A clear case of shooting yourself in the foot.
Listen carefully, voters! Every time Messrs. Schmidt and Brennan speak out publicly against this enterprise in a cheap ploy to win votes, they add fuel to the forthcoming legal conflagration, consigning the village to future lawsuits. At the very least, their behavior leaves the village wide open to an Article 78 lawsuit for having made arbitrary and capricious decisions. Thanks to Messrs. Schmidt’s and Brennan’s propensity for shooting off their mouths, Croton’s depleted coffers will continue to be drained by the mounting expenses of defending itself against needless, self-inflicted legal actions.
As for the implications for voters in this election, Crotonblog would call to mind the sage proverb attributed to Ben Franklin: “He who lies down with dogs should not complain if he rises up with fleas.”
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Seven Goofs in 90 Minutes Set New Record in LWV Debate
March 13, 2007Croton Republican candidates for mayor and trustee played fast and loose with their presentations during Tuesday night’s League of Women Voters debate at the Stanley H. Kellerhouse Municipal Building. Try these on for size:
It may be an effective sales tactic for Susan Konig while on the air at Sirius Radio with husband Dave, but to plug her book during a candidate debate was shameful—not funny.
When Neil Haber asked the trustee candidates “What specific ideas or proposals do you have to increase the non-residential tax base of the village of Croton?”, candidate Konig said “Well, that’s a good question. Um, I don’t know, Neil, just to be perfectly honest with you if I have um, plans to increase that tax base.” Candidate Brennan said, “That’s a very good question, Mr. Haber. Okay? And there isn’t a lot of answers to that question. Okay? But I can give you a couple synopses about the way I feel about that. I think our candidates probably have some good answers to that question. And one of them would probably be maybe some type of ah, situation down at the train station where maybe some type of low income housing or some kind of shops would be put in down there for some type of tax base.”
Mayor Dr. Gregory Schmidt, it was Elmer Fudd not Bugs Bunny who would have said “Wailwoads of Mass Destwuction”. Your punishment is to watch 24 hours of Loony Tunes without a bathroom break.
Mayor Dr. Gregory Schmidt, repeat after me. Say it again and again. Crotonblog is not a chat room. If you call Crotonblog a chatroom again, we’ll make you write “A blog is a blog” one hundred times on the blackboard.
You lied when you predicted that 30,000 trucks would clog the streets of Croton—that would be one truck every 4 minutes of every work day. No facility could handle that many trucks. We challenge you to show the public how you came up with that phony number.
Paralleling the Bush administration’s use of Weapons of Mass Destruction to justify an unprovoked attack on Iraq, local Republican candidates have stolen a page from the party’s playbook and continue to harp on a single issue, 1A Croton Point Avenue. Sorry, folks. It worked once—but we’re not falling for this tactic a second time. Go peddle your lies elsewhere.
It was stupid of you mayor to expect both Metro North and Hudson National Golf Course to pay sewer rents when their water usage doesn’t wind up in Croton’s sewers.
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The Insidious Campaign to Spread Fear and Loathing in Croton
March 6, 2007Beginning in 2001, a cabal of neoconservatives in a cleverly orchestrated campaign of fear and lies led the people of the United States to believe their safety was threatened by Iraq. The result was that this great nation engaged in a costly and disastrous war in the Middle East in which no national interest was at stake. Proof of this statement is abundantly available in your daily newspaper or on the evening TV news.
For several years, a cabal with hidden motives—but masquerading behind concern for public health and safety—has been conducting a similar campaign of fear and lies directed at the voters of Croton and intended to sow seeds of distrust in local government. They have even enlisted residents of faraway communities to participate in their cleverly orchestrated campaign by using their form letters created at 84 Grand Street.
Want proof of the second statement? Crotonblog has privately obtained copies of two letters intended for the editor of The Gazette that were widely circulated to voters in Croton by Croton Republican Committee Secretary and Carrie E. Tompkins Elementary School employee Joann Minett on Sunday, March 4. The reason advanced by Ms. Minett for the failure to publish them was that too many local letter writers had already flooded the paper’s pages with letters. Crotonblog would like to think that The Gazette did not publish them because the base motives of their writers were only too flagrantly obvious.
Crotonblog is not at liberty to disclose how we obtained copies of these letters. We are happy to publish them here, however. We ask readers to examine them carefully. The Russians have an expression, “Kak stranna” that fits this situation wonderfully. It means “How strange.” How strange that two persons in communities 600 miles apart should write letters virtually identical in structure and message.
How strange that two persons in communities 600 miles apart should write letters with identical salutations: “My name is Deb Roth…” and “My name is Linda Richmond…”
How strange that two persons in communities 600 miles apart should write letters concluding with instructions to Croton voters about how to vote, and with veiled threats to Croton officials. Ms. Roth: “I know that if I were a Croton resident I would support only those candidates who put their children’s health first over profit from trash. You know who you are.” Ms. Richmond: “We hope all of Croton officials will get on board or in the absence of that, that you will consider electing officials who have rejected negotiation.”
Conveniently omitted from each letter were some salient facts—namely that these communities and their problems do not remotely resemble Croton. Ms. Roth lives in a section of northeastern Ohio so heavily polluted that in 1969 the Cuyahoga River, which empties into Lake Erie, actually caught fire. Ms. Roth’s community, Leavittsburg, is on the Mahoning River, a river polluted by steel mills in the 19th and 20th centuries and also by human waste; Leavittsburg did not get a water treatment plant until the 1960s. Since 1988, the Ohio Department of Health has advised against swimming or even wading in the Mahoning River and against eating fish caught there. The pollutants in the Mahoning are trapped behind the ten dams used by mills to cool newly forged steel. As a result, its water was so perpetually warm it was known as “the river that never froze.” The Army Corps of Engineers has estimated that it would take 15 years to clean up the polluted Mahoning River.
Ms. Richmond lives in Woburn, Massachusetts, the town featured in the book titled A Civil Action, later made into a movie of that name starring John Travolta. Book and movie told the story of the families of eight leukemia victims who sued Beatrice Foods and W.R. Grace and Company in 1981. Their plants were accused of dumping industrial solvents and polluting wells used as sources of drinking water, thus causing cancer in the victims.
Readers will draw their own conclusions from the two letters, shown here as Exhibit A and Exhibit B. These may constitute the first known instance of carpetbagging by e-mail.
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Exhibit A:
“BRING TO GAZETTE PLEASE February 5, 2007 Dear Editor: My name is Deb Roth, president of Our Lives Count in Ohio. I have previously written about our problems with the Warren Landfill and Regus. Despite this and the warnings of your local Drs. Cosentino, Kleinman and Kochanowitz, some Croton officials still continue negotiations for a deal. I believe it is time to repeat only some of my July 2006 Gazette letter. This information is also in Croton’s legal documents: 1) As a result of illegal dumping violations the Ohio EPA, entered into a negotiated consent agreement with Warren Recycling/Warren Hills signed by Gordon Reger of Regus Industries. Failure to comply resulted in a contempt charge with a large fine that is still not resolved in 2007. Another contempt charge is still in process. 2) Not only did Regus fail to meet the agreed upon negotiated consent order, they repeatedly violated state and federal environmental laws, including the discharge of surface runoff and leachate into the Mahoning River (under Regus Manager Barley). Our river is just as important as the Hudson. Their failure to comply resulted in action by USEPA (superfund) to remediate H2S health emergency issues and shut the site down. I know that if I were a Croton resident, I would support only those candidates who put their children’s health first over profit from trash. You know who they are. Sincerely |
Exhibit B:
“Feb. 24, 2007 Letter to the Editor My name is Linda Raymond. In the past, I have written to you about our community, which is facing a similar unregulated rail situation as Croton. Indeed, despite repeated claims by some former village officials that Croton is all alone, nothing could be further from the truth. All over the country communities are facing similar potentially unregulated rail wastes operations by rail. As I wrote previously in 2006, the Woburn Neighborhood Association, Inc. of Woburn, MA has been fighting for environmental justice in a similar unregulated regional waste facility here on the Woburn/Wilmington MA line. Once again, we applaud citizen’s efforts to do what is right for the community of Croton-on-the Hudson, NY—and those officials who choose not to negotiate at the same time they are allegedly fighting for their rights with the STB. By continuing to negotiate in 2007, some Croton officials are once again setting a dangerous example for the rest of the country. It is most remarkable to see only some of the following states coming on board in commenting in rejection to the proposed rail facility New England Transrail similar to Croton: Maine, New Jersey, New York, Illinois, Colorado, Massachusetts, etc. We hope all of Croton officials will get on board or in the absence of that, that you will consider electing officials who have rejected negotiation. Not only for Croton, but for any other community facing similar issues Linda Raymond, Chairwoman, Woburn Neighborhood Assoc., Inc.—Woburn, MA 01801” |
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Monica Sabia Attacks Crotonblog, We Respond
March 3, 2007The following letter to the editor appeared in The Gazette this week:
“To the Editor, I’ve known Greg Schmidt for 17 years and he is a nice guy. So nice that I was shocked that he wanted to enter the political arena. Still surprised all the time that he has been mayor, that he suffers the local slings and arrows and is still nice. Wants to help, wants to fix things. Believes in fighting the good fight, and believes in his community. Asks opinions, and listens to answers. Listens. I cannot pretend to speak to the biggest issues of this campaign; I don’t go to the meetings and I hardly hang around the village much these days. I tried to read the Croton Blog but such was the vitriol and inanity that my computer resigned in protest. So for me it’s a matter of trust, of someone I believe in to represent me and to consider my issues. Here’s my personal rubric: Were I rendered incapable of driving, and had to choose our mayor and some of the Powers That Be in the Democratic Party, geez, Greg would win. I have seen the PTB’s hunched over the wheels of their not-so-small, energy-inefficient autos, so hell bent on their destination that heaven help anything or anyone in their way. In all the years I’ve lived in Croton (23) I don’t think I have ever seen Greg Schmidt behind the wheel of a car, yet he is the one I trust to ask for directions. — Monica Sabia, Croton-on-Hudson”
Crotonblog’s comments: Ms. Monica Sabia’s letter compares the lot of Croton’s mayor, in office less than two years, to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune endured by Hamlet, Shakespeares long-suffering Danish prince. She also admits that she doesn’t understand the issues of the campaign, so she devised a new yardstick by which to evaluate candidates: She will vote for them on the basis of the fuel efficiency of the vehicles they drive.
By her own admission, Ms Sabia also says she doesn’t get around much anymore, and she has never seen the Mayor behind the wheel of a car. The logic of this escapes us. The home of her hero, Mr. Nice Guy Gregory Schmidt, is strategically located between his chiropractic office and the Stanley H. Kellerhouse Municipal Building, so Ms. Sabia on Finney Farm Road isn’t likely to see him behind the wheel of his Ford pickup truck. Nevertheless, Crotonblog can assure her that the Mayor has been spotted locally in precincts he cannot possibly have reached on shanks mare.
And if her computer gave up the ghost because it couldn’t handle the bitter truths Crotonblog dispenses, we suggest that she contact a reputable PC diagnostic and repair service like Computers on Hudson.
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Mardi Gras—A Night of Surprises at Croton's Village Board Meeting
February 23, 2007The day before Ash Wednesday is celebrated in New Orleans and elsewhere as Mardi Gras—Fat Tuesday—a day of celebration and gluttony before the forty-day Lenten season sets in. Croton’s Village Board meeting was held last Tuesday, Feb. 20, a day late, displaced by the almost meaningless Presidents Day. The latter is a holiday not given over to celebration of this nation’s presidential heritage but devoted to the promotion of white sales by suburban department stores.
Croton’s Mardi Gras board meeting turned out to be a succession of surprises. Surprise No. 1 was the welcome absence of any phony William Rooney letter on the agenda intended to serve as a laughably obvious excuse for comment by so-called “concerned citizens” too lazy to wait for the period given over to citizen participation. Apparently Crotonblog’s harsh light of exposure nipped in the bud plans cooked up by this noisy group of tiresome rabble-rousers for packing future board meetings (see: “Croton Republicans Conspired to Hijack Village Board Meeting”).
Surprise No. 2 was the revelation that the Village had concluded an agreement to purchase the so-called “Katz property,” thus dooming any likelihood that it might be developed commercially. Although the resolution to buy this property was unanimous, taxpayers may wonder at the precipitousness of the decision to purchase and remove from the tax rolls a sizable parcel for which the Village has no plans for present or future use.
Surely Croton is not going to acquire every piece of real estate that comes on the market. To help pay for the 2.5 newly acquired acres, why doesn’t Croton sell the site of the former skate park? That property, close to the Route 129 exit ramp of the Route 9 Expressway, would make an excellent site for a professional building.
Surprise No. 3 was another threat by Richard Pellicci (see: “An Out-of-Control Richard Pellicci Rages Over ‘Listening Session’”), perennial foe of any development of the property known as 1A Croton Point Avenue, made against Democratic members of the Board. Mr. Pellicci intoned ominously, “If my property decreases in value [as a result of Board actions in negotiating and striking a deal similar to the Katz agreement], I’m going to come after you.”
Such foolish attempts at bravado and bogeyman intimidation are ludicrous in a volatile and inflated real estate market subject to many outside forces. For years the County’s dump on Croton Point had no effect on Croton’s real estate values, nor did the village’s proximity to the New York Central’s rail yards and shops make it any less attractive to home seekers—but then Mr. Pellicci has lived here for only a comparatively short time.
Mr. Pellicci’s house on Radnor Avenue, formerly owned by the gentle and well-liked dentist Dr. Charles E. Jurka, is nowhere near 1A Croton Point Avenue. Complainant Pellicci would have a difficult time convincing a court that Board actions were in any way responsible for his not achieving his desired selling price. Crotonblog’s advice to the perpetually unhappy Mr. Pellicci is to sell now near the top of the market and get out of town. We’ll even help you pack.
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The Plot Thickens: The Cabal Against Crotonblog
January 30, 2007Crotonblog seems to have acquired its own axis of evil. Our response to Marie Yurchuk's attack on Crotonblog in the pages of The Gazette (see: "Marie Yurchuk Takes a Swipe at Crotonblog. We Respond") has elicited three orchestrated responses from three nattering nabobs of negativism, Joann Minett, Richard Pellicci and Marie Yurchuk. Although they disdain Crotonblog and become annoyed when their names appear in it, we are nevertheless taking the liberty of publishing their three letters responding to our response to Mrs. Yurchuk's original attack.
First up, Marie Yurchuk...
To the editor,This is in response to Mr. Weale's comments about my recent letter to the Gazette.
1) Mr. Weale claims that the Croton Democratic website does not refer residents to the Crotonblog. It doesn't now but it did. A Google cached copy shows that village residents were advised to "sign up for daily email updates of new items posted" on the blog throughout 2006.
2) Mr. Weale claims that my letter was filled with "misinformation" and was non-specific. Here's what traditional media like the Journal News and the Gazette have to say specifically:
a) The blog did post that resident Bob Wintermeier used the "n word" implying the racial slur. He did not. (Journal News, March 16, 2006: Anonymous accusation draws fire.)
b) The blog did post and anonymous and false claim that a former trustee "stole soda." (Same Journal article. In that article, Mr. Weale said that the blog "generally does not censor comments, cannot verify their truth and allows for anonymity.")
c) The blog did post the claims of a former trustee who stated that residents fighting Regus or pre-emption issues were engaged in "half truths and rumors." Those residents set the record straight in three recent letters to the Gazette (Brady, Roth and Raymond). There's more but I'll stop here.
Mr. Weale tells us that many comments fall under "political satire" and are not subject to libel laws. He says that blogging is in the future. God help us all if this is the future where you can say online anonymously what you would not say out loud about your neighbors at a meeting or a signed letter to the paper.
The truth is that people all over are fighting those bloggers who do commit libel or defame and that they are winning. In Yonkers, a court has ordered a blog to turn over the IP addresses and related information of certain posters. In Putnam, an official won a $25,000 judgment a poster who claimed that she had altered records (Journal News Oct. 28, 2006: Libel verdict in Southeast).
Dan Gillmor, director of the Center for Citizen Media, said this in the March 2006 Journal article: "People who read anonymous postings should give then zero credence in most cases."
Citizens who believe that what they have to say is important sign their own names. That's what it all boils down to. I am not alone in my respect for Mayor Schmidt and Trustee Brennan who by Mr. Weale's own admission, have refused invitations to post in such places.
— Marie Yurchuk, Croton-on-Hudson
Followed by Richard Pellicci...
To the editor,This is in response to Mr. Weale's letter to the Gazette defending the Crotonblog stating it is not a chat-room. At a recent board meeting I quoted from an article in the Wall Street Journal of December 20, 2006 by Joseph Rago entitled "The Blog Mob, written by fools to be read by imbeciles."
"The blogs are not as significant as their self-endeared curators would like to think. Journalism requires journalists who are at last fitfully confronting the digital age. The bloggers for their part produce minimal reportage. Instead, they ride along with the Main Stream Media like remora fish on the bellies of sharks, picking at the scraps."
My opinion concerning the Croton "blahblah" blog could not have been stated better. Fact, there was a link from the Croton Democratic website to the Crotonblog. It has now been taken off. (I have a saved screen shot of it in case anyone is interested.) Maybe because of the recently won libel lawsuits, maybe because our Croton Democratic candidates Gallelli, Kane and Wiegman do not want to be guilty by association to Crotonblog's commentaries concerning residents by its illustrious anonymous posters this close to election time, who knows.
So, Mr. Weale, you wonder why Mayor Schmidt and Trustee Brennan will not post on Crotonblog. Please!
As a democrat, I advise the majority of Croton's tunnel vision democratic voters, as always, to get the facts folks, get the facts.
— Richard Pellicci, Croton-on-Hudson
And finally, from Joann Minett...
To the editor,I'm writing in response to a letter written by Mr. Weale in last week's Gazette.
Yes, Mr. Weale this is the 21st century. And with that comes all new forms of communications over the net, new dangers, risks and crimes. As responsible people we must be careful of what the internet can do. We must adjust our life styles to many forms of angers.....sexual predators, thieves and liars.
I find the Croton Blog, as I do any blog or chat room to be a black hole of evil in Cyberspace. In regard to the Croton Blog, I have come to the conclusion that it is a nasty forum of life, deception and division. It has been a site that has festered very poor commentary and behavior. The people who visit the site and write lies and defamations against their neighbors hide behind anonymous names. I just prefer to call them cowards. Despite all that is "free speech," which is the foundation of our country.
People should take the Croton Blog for what it really is.....entertainment, and not take it as a source of accurate information.
Everyone knows that a major source of lies and defamation came from our own x-trustee Georgianna Grant who accidentally wrote her name on her entry. She has a long history of Wee-Will entries in which she found the need to write misinformation (proven misinformation) under a false name as to not be accountable for it and to better her party. Sorry Mr. Weale, but it is she, and her friends, that have helped to peg the Croton Blog site as a political one.
I'm glad that Mr. Schmidt and Mr. Brennan chose not to visit this black hole for comments. I commend them for that. It shows that they are men of good character. Should anyone want to find correct information in regard to our village, its policies, or should anyone like to express their opinions and concerns, they should attend the village board meetings, call the offices, or visit the village website. Otherwise you will get misinformation, lies and deception on the Croton Blog site.
— Joann Minett, Croton-on-Hudson
We won't bore readers with refutations to their long-winded complaints, except to say that we did purposely refer to Robert Wintermeier's use of the "N" word in the headline of a news story. The reference, of course, was to his single-minded objection to negotiations of any kind over the former Metro Enviro property at 1A Croton Point Avenue. Our use of the phrase "N word" in the headline is known journalistically as a "teaser" to prompt viewers to read the piece. But such subtleties are beyond these pathetic people, who will create issues that don't exist to further their desperate, small-minded causes. What is more, these people are apparently not aware that in any legal action the first question asked of both parties by the presiding judge is, "Have efforts been made to resolve the matter amicably through negotiation before resorting to legal action?"
We shall probably use the "N word" again, applying it to Joann Minett for her nutty concept of Croton geography, to Richard Pellicci for his no-talent cartoons depicting people he dislikes, and to Marie Yurchuk for her longstanding negativism dating back to the time when her children were in Croton schools and she was regarded as a thorn in the side of the school administrators.
The anti-Crotonblog crowd makes much of our provision of anonymity to those making comments, an almost universal practice in the blogging world. The vehemence of their attacks on Crotonblog demonstrates why some readers will not comment without the protective cloak of anonymity. Interestingly, those who are now so opposed to anonymous comments on Crotonblog had no objection to anonymity when Crotonblog began. In fact, they were so enamored of anonymity they became frequent anonymous commenters on Crotonblog (see: "Maria Cudequest Forgetting Her Own Experience with Croton's 'Local Internet Chat Room'"). Frequent, that is, until we discovered they were abusing the privilege. Comments signed with a half-dozen different pen names were appended to the same article. We discovered that these emanated from a single computer user located at 84 Grand Street and quickly put a stop to this deceitful practice (see: "A Penal Process Known as Banishment... Explained"). So much for their mealy-mouthed objections to anonymity.
What these three nattering nabobs of negativism need is a theme song. Crotonblog suggests that the perfect one for them would be "Whatever It Is I'm Against It," the song Groucho Marx sang in the movie "Horse Feathers." Here's how it goes: "Whatever it is I'm against it. No matter what it is or who commenced it, I'm against it. And even when you've changed it or condensed it, I'm against it."
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CORRECTION
January 8, 2007Crotonblog erred in our Editorial titled “What Were Croton Officials Thinking When They Faked Residents’ Water Bills?” We ascribed the first publication of the story to Robert Marchant and The Journal News. Mr. Marchant apparently got wind of his story from The Associated Press news wire.
Crotonblog has recieved the following email from David Bauder, who was mentioned in the false water bill story.
“I have a small correction on the piece I just happened to see on the water bill controversy. It was my colleague, Jim Fitzgerald of The Associated Press, who broke the story—not the Journal News.
— David Bauder”
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Marie Yurchuk Takes a Swipe at Crotonblog. We Respond
January 5, 2007In a letter to the editor published in The Gazette on January 4, 2007, Ms. Marie Yurchuk expresses the hope that the Croton Democratic Committee website will no longer advise residents to seek information about the village from “a local internet chat-room” and cites a link on that site that “takes residents to this chat-room where Democratic officials post commentary and where misinformation and other strangeness are abundant.”
Ms. Yurchuk’s letter is itself so full of “misinformation and strangeness,” Crotonblog hardly knows where to begin. Crotonblog has visited the Croton Democratic website and can find no place on the Democratic site where such a link appears. After signed informational comments were posted by Democratic trustees on Crotonblog, Crotonblog specifically addressed e-mails to Messrs. Schmidt and Brennan inviting them to post similar comments and messages for the edification of residents. Twice Messrs. Schmidt and Brennan did not respond to these invitations.
In her letter, Ms. Yurchuk makes several references to Crotonblog as a chat-room. Ms. Yurchuk and other critics, including Maria Cudequest and Richard Pellicci, persist in mischaracterizing Crotonblog and making similar wild charges about the content of its postings. They need to come into the 21st century and familiarize themselves with blogging practices and with blogging’s vocabulary.
Crotonblog is not, we repeat, not a chat room. A chat room is, by definition, a site on the Internet where a number of users can communicate in real time. A blog, on the other hand, is an online chronological log that makes provision for readers to make online comments anonymously and outside the control of the blog operator. Like it or not, anonymity is a feature of the blogging universe
Because Ms. Yurchuk’s other charges are so wild and nonspecific, Crotonblog will not even dignify them with a defense or a rebuttal—except to say that Crotonblog cannot be held responsible for anonymous letters sent to political candidates through the mails. Many of the comments to which she takes exception were part of satirical postings, an accepted form of expression in political commentary and, incidentally, outside the reach of libel laws.
If Ms.Yurchuk’s letter is intended to be the Croton Republicans’ first salvo on behalf of Messrs. Schmidt and Brennan in the upcoming political campaign for mayor and trustee, Crotonblog respectfully suggests that next time the Republicans get a bigger gun than a peashooter.
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What Were Croton Officials Thinking When They Faked Residents' Water Bills?
December 29, 2006Although the odor still permeates the air, the dust from Croton’s officially imprimatured water bill hoax may have settled enough for Crotonblog to analyze the reverberations and implications of this example of fiscal bad management. Crotonblog offers this piece as a follow-up to the “What’s Up, Doc?” piece of December 22 entitled, “Are Croton Officials for Real? Or Do They Just Play at Being Officials on TV?”
Every community is interested in the image and public face it projects, the way the world sees it. Croton boasts of its history as the starting point of the Old Croton Aqueduct, the engineering marvel that supplied pure Croton water to New York City in 1842. Croton is proud of the massive Croton Dam, reputed to be the second largest cut-stone structure in the world after the Pyramids of Egypt (although the dam is not in Croton but actually in Cortlandt). Croton also basks in its cultural heritage. In the early years of the 20th century, it was a bastion in the fight for women’s suffrage. Making it a veritable “Greenwich Village of the North,” the bohemian journalists, novelists, poets, playwrights, actors and artists who settled in Croton’s bucolic precincts made the world sit up and take notice.
But that proud history and heritage have all been eclipsed by one tragicomic managerial decision that left an ugly stain on Croton’s good name and now throws into question the administrative oversight of this tiny village of some 7,800 souls. Are the unelected, appointed officials of Croton autonomous, with the Mayor and members of the Board of Trustees serving only in an occasionally advisory capacity? Or are the elected officials truly in charge, in which case either the water-bill hoax had their blessing or it represents monumental aberrant behavior and notoriously bad judgment on the part of the unelected, appointed officials involved.
There may be some elected officials—but few residents—who will want to play down what happened and sweep it under the proverbial rug. Among the unanswered questions in this sordid affair is why the village government felt it had exhausted all traditional avenues of communication before concocting and resorting to an underhanded ruse. Did the village note in its monthly newsletter that certain residents were dilatory about responding to requests to set up an appointment? Did the village send certified letters to wayward residents to ensure that they had received proper notice and establish proof of receipt? Was the residents’ tardy behavior mentioned in public as a nudge at broadcast board meetings?
Did the village make arrangements to perform the desired installation at hours other than so-called “normal business hours” on weekdays to accommodate commuters who are away from Croton during the day? If so, did the village supply postage-paid reply cards on which residents could set their own appointment times? Or does the village insist that the Water Department’s working hours are so absolutely inflexible that “it’s our way or the highway”? (In this case, the highway turned out to be the low road.) Yet the village can respond to water emergencies 24 hours a day. There are many imaginative strategies by which the desired cooperation could have been achieved without resorting to the subterfuge of false billing.
One of our obligations as adults in our society is to set an example for young people. What kind of an example did village government set in this instance except to show young people that any means, however underhanded and reprehensible, are acceptable to achieve an end? If the net result of this incident is that young people trust government even less than they already do and become even more cynical about the world we are leaving them, then what happened has long-lasting and earth-shaking dimensions, and must be roundly condemned. It is bad enough that our national government used lies and deceit to trick this country into a futile and bloody war. Has deception as policy now trickled down to the ultimate local level, a tiny village? If so, then from top to bottom it is a dishonorable world we have made and which we will bequeath to our children.
The inevitable follow-up to the question asked in the title of this editorial is “And what has their hoax wrought?” To understand the magnitude and the consequent impact of this foolish decision to scare residents into compliance by using the power of government to manipulate the village’s supposedly impregnable record-keeping systems, Crotonblog has examined how the rest of the world saw the incident.
The story began, of course, with a December 21 report by Robert Marchant of the Journal News, a Gannett newspaper. Gannett just happens to be the largest chain of newspapers in the United States. Although The Journal News often has difficulty breathing life into pallid news stories originating in this part of Westchester, when the water bill hoax story fell into their laps, they knew they had a story with “legs,” and they knew exactly what to do with it. In newspaper parlance, they “fronted” the story. They not only put it on the front page, they made it the day’s lead (pronounced “lede”) story, positioning it “above the fold”—on the top half of the front page. This makes it visible to readers even before the newspaper is unfolded, signifying that in the editors’ eyes this was the most important news story of the day.
Associated Press writer Jim Fitzgerald also recognized it as a story of wider significance and rewrote Marchant’s account for a national audience. And what a national—or rather international—audience it turned out to be! Newspapers as well as radio and TV stations in the U.S. and Canada immediately picked up the embarrassing story and ran with it. It would be no exaggeration to say that the report spread like a California wildfire. Ironically, publicity hounds like Donald Trump cannot buy fast-breaking saturation exposure like this. His publicists would give their right arms for the kind of notoriety this story achieved. Even the respected financial magazine Forbes saw the hoax as an unusual action by a governmental entity and reported it.
It remained for the freewheeling blogging world to latch on to the story and provide the most pithy and scathing judgments on the Zambrano-Herbek folly. One blog labeled the story as “weird news” and described Croton-on-Hudson as “the village of the scammed,” a play on the title of the cult film classic, “The Village of the Damned.” Another advised readers to stay away from New York, calling it “The Vampire State,” twisting the state’s own self-applied motto, “The Empire State.” But the unkindest cut of all was the perhaps inevitable reference on one blog to Croton-on-Hudson as “Scrotum-on-Hudson.”
For all these reasons Crotonblog feels justified in asking Croton officials what they were thinking when they embarked on this Nixonian tactic. Can you imagine the uproar that would have ensued had any of the monopolistic public utilities—ConEd, Verizon or Cablevision—had tried to pull off a shabby stunt like sending fake bills as a device to get customers’ attention? Crotonblog’s reaction to the unseemly mess is to give the back of its hand to Messrs. Zambrano and Herbek. Nice going, fellas. You really did Croton proud. And, incidentally, you just happened to set a new record for adverse publicity. Even stories about child molestation by clerics don’t get this kind of attention.
To show readers of Crotonblog how far and how fast the story traveled, here’s a small sampling of the story’s embarrassingly wide exposure: Radio and TV: Fox News, ABC News, CBS News, NBC News, 1010 WINS (NY), WTOP (DC), WJLA (DC), WRAL (NC), CBS2 (CA), CBS4 (FL), CBS5 (WI), CBS7 (IL), KSL-TV (Salt Lake City). Newspapers: Akron Beacon-Journal (OH), Albany Times Union (NY), Ann Arbor News (MI), Bay City Times (MI), Belleville News-Democrat (IL), Biloxi Sun-Herald (MS), Bismarck Tribune (ND), Boston Globe (MA), Bradenton Herald (FL), Casper Star Tribune (WY), Centre Daily Times (PA), Charlotte Observer (NC), Columbus Ledger-Inquirer (GA), Contra Costa Times (CA), Denver Post (CO), First Coast News (FL) as “strange and unusual news,” Flint Journal (MI), Fort Wayne Journal Gazette (IN), Fort Wayne News-Sentinel (IN), Ft. Worth Star-Telegram (TX), Grand Rapid Press (MI), Helena Independent Record (MT), Houston Examiner (TX) as “strange news,” Jackson Citizen Patriot (MI), Kalamazoo Gazette (MI), Kansas City Star (MO), Lakeland Ledger (FL), Lansing Bureau, Lexington Herald Leader (KY), Macon Telegraph (GA), Miami Herald (FL), Minneapolis-St. Paul Pioneer Press (MN), Monterey County Herald (CA), Muskegon Chronicle (MI), Myrtle Beach Sun-News (NC), New Orleans Times Picayune (LA), Newsday (NY), NY Daily News (NYCity), NY Post (NYCity), Saginaw News (MI), San Jose Mercury News (CA), Sioux City Journal (IA), South Florida Sun-Sentinel (FL), Staten Island Advance (NY), The State (SC), Toronto Globe & Mail (Canada), Washington Post (DC), Wichita Eagle (KS), Wilkes-Barre Times-Leader (PA), Worcester Telegram (MA).
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Crotonblog's Roll of Honor: 156 Who Voted Against the Iraq War
November 10, 2006Four years and one month ago, on October 11, 2002, a crucial vote was taken on a joint resolution that enabled President George W. Bush to wage the unpopular war that we are still fighting in Iraq (news). In the 100-member Senate, 21 Democrats, one Republican and one Independent voted nay on that joint resolution allowing President George W. Bush to go to war with Iraq. In the 435-member House of Representatives, 126 Democrats, six Republicans and one Independent also voted nay on the same resolution.
Had a majority of senators and representatives voted against this irresponsible resolution, more than 2,800 members of our armed forces would be alive today. Follows are the names of the senators and representatives who had the courage to resist the stampede to a foolish war. History has proven them to be right.
Continue reading "Crotonblog's Roll of Honor: 156 Who Voted Against the Iraq War."
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Halloween Safety Tips for Croton's "Goblins"
October 28, 2006Prevention of accidents is always better than engaging in vain regret. Any accident or injury to a child is always tragic. Old-fashioned common sense can prevent accidents from happening on Halloween. Here are some safety tips for children and adults that will make for a safe Halloween:
Motorists should watch for children darting from behind parked cars and be on the lookout for children, especially children in dark clothing, walking along roads, medians or curbs on Halloween.
Parents of trick-or-treating children can get so caught up in the spirit of fun themselves at this holiday they might forget some simple safety rules that could save headaches and heartaches. Having a safe Halloween will make this ancient holiday even more fun.
The following are a few common sense tips that can help:
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Two Wrongs Don't Make a Right...
October 4, 2006The Happy Tots Child Care Center moved back in to the Church of the Holy Name of Mary on August 15, 2006. The school program first set up back in the gym and then moved back into four classrooms. And since then, the Happy Tots staff has not willing to sign a temporary lease that would terminate on December 31, 2006. Thereby, no lease currently exists. Why would the church allow that to happen?
In the meantime, the Church of the Holy Name of Mary raised the rent by a whopping 38%. Worse, for the program, is that Happy Tots Child Care Center now has half the space they originally had. The school now requires less space now because of their recent drop in enrollment of a third to half compared to Spring 2006 (see: “Fate of Croton Daycare Center Hangs in the Balance…”). What message might that be sending to parishioners and neighbors alike?
Meanwhile, Happy Tots Child Care Center had a hearing in the Town of Cortlandt on October 3, 2006, for an approval from the town board to begin renovating the old WHUD building on Station Way in Peekskill as their new home. So, the staff continues to tell parents that the new site will be ready in two months, but it seems like anyone who thinks they know anything about the school’s future plans also knows they may be wrong.
So, it appears that the Church of the Holy Name of Mary continues to not want to have anything to do with Happy Tots and will make it unbearable for them—but so far, not in a way that brings any attention to them. While Happy Tots wants to stay in business, they are fighting with the church to do so, but on the other hand telling parents not to worry. One might wonder who really loses out in this game.
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Transparent Scare Tactics in Croton That Are Truly Scary--for Democracy
August 16, 2006Two weeks ago, Croton’s three Democratic trustees were fingered as the “Cash for Trash Trio.” But last Monday night, the real enemy of “the few” was re-introduced to Croton residents as the “Trash Terrorists” by the “Trash-sniffing Twosome.” And, according to the shared logic of Robert Wintermeier (watch video or search) and confederate Richard Pellicci (watch video or search), these “Trash Terrorists” are part of what the Twosome describes as the “Trash Alliance” with whom the “Cash for Trash Trio” allegedly sympathizes.
Holy Dick Cheney Batman!
That’s right, Robin, Croton Republican Committee affiliate and Maria Cudequest (search) trainbearer Robert Wintermeier used the “T” word in a feeble attempt to scare residents into supporting his idol’s hysteric cause.
And most recently, the only letters relating to the “fight,” that have graced the “letters” section of The Gazette, flagrantly disguised as desperate calls to battle, came from cheerleader Maria Denise Cudequest, her live-in companion, a local recluse named William Rooney whose relationship is so close that he writes in her inimitable letter-writing style, and a self-congratulating community gardener known as “Rich” to Trustee Thomas Brennan but known to those who favor childishly drawn editorial cartoons diguised as letters to the editor as Richard Pellicci.
Then came Thursday and the Batphone started blinking.
And with it, the arrival of the August 10, 2006 edition of The Gazette, which has become a community bulletin board for the Johnny-one-note bellyachers. Hardliners Don Daubney, David Goldman, Marie Yurchuk and Richard Pellicci (of course) all answered their own call by writing to denounce any participation by the Village in discussions about the future of the property at 1A Croton Point Avenue (the hideout for the “Trash Alliance” of “Trash Terrorists”).
Most slumber-inducing of all the letters was the one that marked the return of corpulent GOP Chairman Rob DiFrancesco (remember him? if not, search.). It was Rob who led his Republican candidates to a crushing defeat in the Village election held last March. It was that very trouncing which subsequently left the former Republican majority powerless only after one-year of having their own way. Needless to say, Mr. DiFrancesco comes late to the game. After all, he was in Middle School when former construction and demolition (C&D) transfer site operator Metro Enviro opened in 1996. The letter—like others written in his echo chamber—lacks merit, is toned in aggression and will not likely draw the additional support he seeks for his mayor’s unpopular cause.
After all, Mr. DiFrancesco is really back in the thick of it because under-performing rookies Mayor Dr. Gregory Schmidt (see: “What’s Up Doc?”) and Trustee Thomas Brennan are both up for re-election in six months time and are seen as very vulnerable.
In a scene befitting Police Commissioner James Gordon, but played by Village Manager Rick Herbek, was the revelation of very serious developments in the case of the “Trash Alliance” to residents during the Monday, August 14, 2006 board meeting (agenda).
In the following video, Manager Herbek describes a realistic scene where Buffalo Southern Railroad, now armed with an interim track agreement with rail owner CSX, seeks to take delivery of three train cars full of building sand—held since May 2006—and begin transporting gypsum-board scraps from Buchanan-based drywall manufacturer Lafarge North America Inc., by rail out of Croton.
Soon, there may well be lots of new sand delivered to Croton for both members of the “No Negotiating” contingent of Mayor Dr. Gregory Schmidt and Trustee Thomas Brennan to bury their heads in.
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Putting the Croton Express Back on the Right Track
July 28, 2006In their letters in the July 27, 2006, issue of The Gazette, fellow travelers Richard Pellicci and William Rooney proudly unveiled their latest creation—“cash for trash.”
Brilliant. Take the very complicated issues facing the village over the former C&D (construction and debris) facility at 1A Croton Point Avenue and boil them down to a three-word rhyming jingle. Then repeat. And repeat.
The jarring reality this time around for Maria Cudequest’s coalition of unwilling soreheads, which also includes Don Daubney, Susan Konig, Joanne Minett and Robert Wintermeier, is that the community is tired of their one-note whining and is no longer listening to them.
In Mr. Pellicci’s griping letter (does he write any other kind?), he repeats “Where is the outrage?” three times. Then he asks residents to go to village board meetings and ask the “cash for trash trio” (refering to Trustees Gallelli, Kane and Wiegman) these questions: “What gives you the right to overrule Mayor Schmidt who vowed to keep Croton free of garbage? What gives you the right to put our health and welfare at great risk again?”
What gives them the right to outvote the Mayor (not “overrule”—he’s not King Gregory the First) is nothing more than the good old democtratic process at work. As for the worn-out argument that our health and welfare was put at risk, there never has been a shred of tangible evidence of that.
Frustrated must be this band of self-appointed activists who have been, as Mayor Dr. Gregory Schmidt says, “in this fight” for the last eight years. Disappointed, too, must the Mayor have been that no one showed up at the microphone last Monday night to berate the “cash for trash trio” for their reasoned decision to ask special counsel Michael Gerrard to draft a counter to the offer made by Regus Industries CEO Andreas Gruson at the recent “listening session.” And lonely must have been ringleader Maria Cudequest when no one from her posse of hard-riding vigilantes joined her at Tuesday night’s Planning Board meeting, where Regus’s operating permit application was undergoing a formal review.
Yawn.
Once legal fees surpassed the staggering mark of one million dollars under Mayor Schmidt’s leadership (see: “What’s up Doc?”) and Maria Cudequest’s guidance, it quickly became obvious that the Croton Express was careening down the wrong track completely out of control. Croton’s Democratic majority should be commended for finally taking charge and addressing the crucial issues surrounding 1A Croton Point Avenue (see: “The Devil is in the Details: 1A Croton Point Avenue”). Bravo!
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Village of Croton-on-Hudson Gets Top Bond Rating from Moody's
July 20, 2006Croton-on-Hudson once again has been assigned the top debt rating for a village of its size and demographic characteristics by Moody’s Investor Services. This was pointed out by Village Treasurer Abe Zambrano at the July 10, 2006 regularly scheduled Village Board meeting (see video clip and transcript below) at which Mr. Zambrano called attention to the recent issuance by the village of $2.27 million of Public Improvement Bonds. Additionally, Croton has $12.11 million of outstanding parity debt that has also been reaffirmed with an “A1” rating.
Issuance of these types of debt instruments is a regular practice of the village, and other municipalities, to meet certain recurring financial obligations and to take advantage of the now-ending low interest rate environment that the economy has enjoyed.
Croton has had an Aaa or A1 rating on its general obligation and/or public improvement bonds since 1998—the earliest date from which Moody’s has been tracking the village’s debt. Since 1998, Croton has issued GO bonds every year except for 2001 with maturities ranging from 10 to 20 years. Thanks to the fiscally conservative nature of Croton’s borrowing practices established many years ago, its stable tax base and the ability to meet interest obligations on the outstanding and new debt; it is not surprising that the village has enjoyed this rating for a number of years.
Despite Mayor Dr. Gregory Schmidt’s statement, “…just as a quick, whatever, you [Treasurer Zambrano] did point out that last year we did very well, and that was with a bunch of amateurs who ran the village last year, so I just wanted to point out that the amateurs did okay last year contrary to popular belief…” about the latest “A1” rating by Moody’s, the fiscal conservatism that led to this reaffirmation of the village’s debt rating was not a result of his supervision.
Rather, the favorable Moody’s rating is a product of the village’s long-established practice of managing its financial position through its Village Manager’s Office and the Village Finance Department. With all due respect to Mayor Dr. Gregory Schmidt, it is Manager Herbek, Treasurer Zambrano and the village staff who deserve credit for continuing to manage village finances in a responsible and conservative manner.
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Video transcript:
Continue reading "Village of Croton-on-Hudson Gets Top Bond Rating from Moody's."
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No Need for an Information Blackout After a "Listening Session"
July 9, 2006In her comment to “Please Light a Candle, Mr. Mayor,” ex-trustee Georgianna Grant reminds Crotonblog of the story of the fat lady trying on shoes in a shoe store. She sought a shoe that was small on the outside and large on the inside. Mrs. Grant cannot have it both ways. Her complaint about our call for the Mayor to disclose to the public what was said by Regus CEO Andreas Gruson to village representatives at the recent so-called “listening session” only clouds the issue.
As Croton residents know only too well, Mayor Schmidt has not delivered on his campaign promise of open government. His administration has been as secretive as the Bush administration and just as brashly absolute in its refusal to negotiate on any matter.
Mrs. Grant justifies an information blackout about what was said by Mr. Gruson at the “listening session” by incorrectly comparing it to truly adversarial negotiations between the village and Metro Enviro in which she participated as a trustee. Crotonblog would point out that in announcing the village’s participation at this session, Mayor Gregory Schmidt assured agitated, unhappy citizens that the village would do no more than listen to what Mr. Gruson had to say. Mrs. Grant’s statement that questions of legal strategy or tactics were involved is questionable, since doing so would have contravened the mayor’s assurances.
It escapes Crotonblog how reporting to Croton’s citizens what Mr. Gruson said at this “listening session” could be of any assistance to what Ms. Grant alludes to as “the enemy” since “the enemy” was present at the meeting and doing all the talking, while Croton’s representatives, we were assured, would do nothing but listen. Far from persuading Trustee Thomas Brennan, as Ms. Grant hopes, of the need for secrecy, we expect that this incident will only reinforce his past calls for more openness in government and cause him to reiterate them.
Crotonblog was designed and created to fill a large void in Croton news coverage left by the traditional media. We can only fulfill that mission if village government is timely and totally transparent in its dissemination of information.
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Its Not That Dogs Aren't Cute, BUT...
July 8, 2006So, its a beautiful Saturday morning in the Village of Croton-on-Hudson and your neighbor’s dog won’t stop barking… Yeah, its awkward to go on over and say something. People get offended and such. But the loud barking continues… Hello? Fortunately, there is a village code specifically about DOGS that you could email over to them.
Like a virtual fence, reading it can make for better neighbohood relationships. Because in reality, we should leave the police to tend to the responsibilities that are greater than this—if possible. The complete village code library is available online here.
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Attention Hudson Valley Drivers
June 30, 2006In case you are planning to hit the roads for the July 4th holiday weekend or trying to sneak out of work early to reach your favorite weekend spot on this beautiful Friday, you may want to check out this website hudsonvalleytraveler.com to find out the latest local traffic conditions. Another one of our loyal bloggers, “KS”, turned us on to the site the other day and we think it is an excellent resource for finding the least congested way around our piece of this crowded planet. We find the site to be user-friendly and informative enough to become a regular part of your pre-travel planning. Everyone hates getting stuck in traffic; especially on get-away day. A couple of clicks around hudsonvalleytraveler.com might save you hours of frustration on the roads - and quite a few bucks on gas too!
Continue reading "Attention Hudson Valley Drivers."
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Is Paranoia Contagious and Spreading in Croton-on-Hudson?
June 25, 2006On the evening of September 23, 1944, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt gave a speech at a dinner of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters in Washington, DC. This now-famous address is still referred to as “The Fala Speech,” and helped FDR to soundly trounce his Republican opponent, Wendell Wilkie. After reciting a litany of the hypocrisies of Republican leaders, he said:
“These Republican leaders have not been content with attacks on me, or my wife, or on my sons. No, not content with that, they now include my little dog, Fala. Well, of course, I don’t resent attacks, and my family doesn’t resent attacks, but Fala does resent them. You know, Fala is Scotch, and being a Scottie, as soon as he learned that the Republican fiction writers in Congress and out had concocted a story that I had left him behind on the Aleutian Islands and had sent a destroyer back to find him—at a cost to the taxpayers of two or three, or eight or twenty million dollars—his Scotch soul was furious. He has not been the same dog since. I am accustomed to hearing malicious falsehoods about myself—such as that old, worm-eaten chestnut that I have represented myself as indispensable. But I think I have a right to resent, to object to libelous statements about my dog.”
Last week Crotonblog reported on the unusual and intemperate behavior of Croton resident Richard Pellicci, a resident of 65 Radnor Avenue in Croton, at the Village Board meeting on June 19 (see: An Out-of-Control Richard Pellicci Rages Over “Listening Session”). We reported what could very easily be seen on the accompanying film clip: Mr. Pellicci imperiously demanded that he not be filmed while speaking at the podium to members of the Board, a demand that has never before been made by any speaker. He also peremptorily demanded answers from three board members. And he threateningly accused Trustee Leo Wiegman of “smirking” at his statements. As is the practice on blogs, following the report Crotonblog added its own editorial comment on Mr. Pellicci’s indecorous behavior at the meeting. When Mr. Pellicci is in his “attack” mode, indecorous behavior by him is not unusual at board meetings.
Crotonblog’s June 21 posting touched off a furious exchange of comments between attackers unfriendly to the blog and supporters who obviously recognize that blogs represent the wave of the future in journalism. As we must now learn to live with terror, we are all going to have to learn to live with blogs, despite their frankness and brashness. Allow me to paraphrase portions of FDR’s speech and respond to those unfriendly bloggers:
“These commenters have not been content with attacks on me, or my wife, or on my family. No, not content with that, they now include our poor defenseless cookbook for colitis sufferers that my wife and I wrote a dozen years ago. Well, of course, I don’t resent attacks, and my family doesn’t resent attacks, but the colitis cookbook does resent them. As soon as it learned that these commenters who rose to Richard Pellicci’s defense had concocted a story that I had hurt sales of Susan Konig’s book by identifying her as—get this—a Republican, its literary soul was furious. It has not been the same cookbook since. I am accustomed to hearing malicious falsehoods about myself—such as that old, worm-eaten chestnut that I am unemployed and sit at home in my underwear doing nothing but demeaning hard-working, self-sacrificing types like Maria Cudequest, Susan Konig and Richard Pellicci. But I think I have a right to resent, to object to insulting statements about our cookbook.”
Professionals have praised our little cookbook, as the sampling that follows indicates. Dr. Stephen Holland, a gastroenterologist on the faculty at the University of Illinois College of Medicine at Peoria, is an assistant professor of medicine and an assistant professor of clinical pharmacology in the department of Biomedical and Therapeutic Sciences at the medical school. His research and clinical interest is in Inflammatory Bowel Disease, that is, Crohn’s disease and Ulcerative Colitis. He is interested in clinical studies in patients with Crohn’s or Ulcerative Colitis. Here’s what Dr. Holland had to say about our colitis cookbook:
“I recently had a chance to review a short cookbook for people with active Ulcerative Colitis. Written by Denise and Ross Weale, it is a pocket size cookbook with 100 recipes of low fiber non-dairy recipes. Simple in design and concept, with a cute cover, it is a nicely done book. The strength of it is that there are a variety of recipes, so that it really looks like someone with digestive disease can survive. It is organized as breakfast, bread, soups and sauces, side dishes, pizza, and main course. In the main course part are Grilled chicken burrito, oriental potstickers, lemon chicken, pot roast, shepherd’s pie, veal and potato stew, and many more. It is obvious that the authors have put in a variety of foods and styles of cooking. The strength of the cookbook is that is low fiber and milk free, which can be a benefit for symptoms during a flare. Also, the sheer variety of recipes may make the diet during a flare more enjoyable than when one is on one’s regular diet between attacks. It is not a book that makes any claims on keeping colitis away. Anyway, the recipes are all doable, so check it out.”
And here’s what Peter Waite, courtesy of the IBD Bookstore, had to say about our colitis cookbook: “This is a collection of 100 low fiber, non-dairy recipes compiled by a ‘chef’ couple that are easy to prepare and fit a low residue regimen for people with ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease. Recipes are divided into useful categories: breakfast, bread, soups and sauces, side dishes, pizza recipes, main courses, and dessert. Instructions are clearly written. This cookbook is sure to provide plenty of tasty meal and dessert ideas for people with IBD, and proves that you can eat delicious food and still stay healthy. Very Good, Worth Reading—4 stars.”
And here’s what Insights & Answers, from Proctor & Gamble Pharmaceuticals, 12/98 had to say about our colitis cookbook. “The Culinary Couple’s Creative Colitis Cookbook, by Denise and Ross Weale, Front Burner Publishing (1995): A delight for cooking fans! This cookbook includes 100 low-fiber, non-dairy recipes and is created by a couple with ulcerative colitis in their family who are also culinary school graduates.”
To return to the personal attacks leveled against Crotonblog: We are not defaming Mr. Pellicci if we report that at an earlier Village Board meeting in an outburst of self-diagnosis he acknowledged his previous unusual public behavior by describing himself this way: “I’m the paranoid one in the bunch.” “The bunch,” in Mr. Pellicci’s usage, presumably refers to the small band of single-issue chronic complainers who can be counted on to monopolize meetings and to rail about anything and everything pertaining to a piece of industrially zoned property at 1A Croton Point Avenue.
By any definition of paranoia, Mr. Pellicci is correct in diagnosing himself with that condition. A standard definition of paranoia is that it is “an unfounded or exaggerated distrust of others, sometimes reaching delusional proportions. Paranoid individuals constantly suspect the motives of others around them, and believe that certain individuals, or people in general, are ‘out to get them’.” For example, Mr. Pellicci has complained that a person or persons unknown threw eggs at his house—although Croton Police Department records show that such incidents have never been reported. During political campaigns, Mr. Pellicci draws unflattering cartoons ridiculing political candidates he opposes and submits these to a local newspaper, which dutifully publishes them under the rubric of a letter “to the editor.”
He is not above calling attention to his acts of public service as a volunteer gardener “crawling around on my hands and knees.” He does not hesitate to raise the specter that he will “knock on every door in the Village” to obtain signatures on a petition to influence Village Board actions. It is not clear whether this is a threat or a promise. Crotonblog wonders whether Mr. Pellicci is aware that such solicitation require licensing by the Village in the same way that others making solicitations must first register. And he raises his voice and has made a thinly veiled threat to one board member, “Leo, I’m telling you. You smirk one more time…” Then he added, “I’m serious. Stop with the smirking!”
Even more alarming, Mr. Pellicci’s self-acknowledged paranoia curiously seems to be contagious, a medical first not heretofore reported in the mental health literature. Those who comment unfavorably about the blog and favorably about his actions all seem to exhibit similar clinical signs of paranoiac behavior. Crotonblog wonders whether a particularly rabid form of paranoia is being transmitted throughout this village and whether the phenomenon should be reported to the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) in Atlanta. Stay tuned. Crotonblog is certain that this latest comment will touch off still another round of paranoiac behavior.
— Ross Weale Jr., Editor
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Taking 19 Away from Sue Kelly
March 30, 2006As Crotonblog is always VERY happy to help fellow bloggers promote their efforts, today, we tip our hat to Michael Morey of take19 (take19.blogspot.com), who helps lead a group of political activists and community leaders from a five county region who formed a group and launched a blog in attempt to defeat Congresswoman Sue Kelly (R) the upcoming Congressional election set for November.
The bloggers use their forum to educate the public about Rep. Sue Kelly’s right-wing Congressional voting record. Though the group is not affiliated with any of the five candidates vying for Kelly’s seat, Take19 is comprised of volunteers from across the 19th district with extensive experience in local politics, public interest issues and the media. In a recent press release, Michael Morey noted “This is the first time that an independent group has formed in the district with the express purpose of defeating Sue Kelly.”
Continue reading "Taking 19 Away from Sue Kelly."
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Of Reference for Gazette Readers...
February 16, 2006Having reviewed several Letters to the Editor appearing in the February 16-23, 2006 issue of The Gazette—from former Temporary Croton Independence Party Caucus Secretary Maria Cudequest (Crotonblog previously labeled Ms. Cudequest as the Independence Party Secretary, and since has corrected her title—as per Croton GOP Chairman Rob DiFrancesco), Diane Wintermeier and Robert Wintermeier—which reference several published articles on the Crotonblog, I thought it convenient to make them easily available to readers “new and old” in this post.
- Maria Cudequest takes offense to a characterization of the recent communter parking lot flooding (see: “Flood Waters Swamp Cars Again in Croton Harmon Commuter Parking Lot”) as “Schmidt’s Katrina” in “Calm Skies Return To Croton After Damaging Storm”.
- Diane Wintermeier reflects on her husbands assertions in “Robert Wintermeier: Crotonblog On The Take?” and denounces rumours of racism in “Bob Wintermeier Utters the N-Word at Recent Board Meeting”.
- Robert Wintermeier speaks out on both “Robert Wintermeier: Crotonblog On The Take?” and “Bob Wintermeier Utters the N-Word at Recent Board Meeting”.
By the way, Crotonblog subscribes to the Gazette. We thoroughly enjoy reading it and look forward to its arrival each Thursday. Why not subscribe yourself? Send a check for $30.00 ($25.00 for seniors) for one-year to;
The Gazette
P.O. Box 810
Croton-on-Hudson, New York 10520
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Rob DiFrancesco Enlists in the "War on Christmas"
December 19, 2005You know, I really thought that Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity and John Gibson over at Faux News were the only ones in the world that were taking their self-contrived “War on Christmas” (really a war of distraction) seriously. After all, while these guys were pontificating about an attack on Christmas, Faux News sent out inviations that welcomed employees to their “Holiday” party and sold “Holiday” ornaments from their website. Even President Bush sent “Holiday” cards…
Sadly, the “War on Christmas” seems to have made its way up the mighty Hudson and landed on the shores of Croton. Has the Croton GOP appointed itself as our “Minuteman” in its psuedo-defense? After reading about 18-year-old Croton-on-Hudson GOP Chairman Rob DiFrancesco (see: “Political Cartooning”) in the North County News, at first, I was a little surprised to see that “DiFrancesco began his political education by listening to Sean Hannity’s talk radio show and watching the O’Reilly Factor”. But now it makes sense to me… That might be why the newly redesigned Croton GOP website, is adorned with “Merry Christmas”, just like Bill O’Reilly’s…
Continue reading "Rob DiFrancesco Enlists in the "War on Christmas"."
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A Penal Process Known as Banishment... Explained
December 7, 2005Several readers have written me this morning asking about the details surrounding our decision to ban IP Address 216.179.103.209 from commenting on Crotonblog (see "STB Denies NIR Application Without Predjudice").
Common questions:
1. "What information does Crotonblog know about me when I post a comment?"
Answer: The ONLY information Crotonblog knows about our commenters is their IP address and "nickname". When you submit a comment, you get a copy of it sent to you by email. We get the same thing, nothing more.
Crotonblog uses a highly-respected 3rd-party comment authentication system, called TypeKey, so we avoid ANY and ALL conflicts of interest with our readers. Plus, we cannot become the keeper of privacy, a responsibility we choose to avoid at all costs.
The best practice for complete anonymity is to not share your email address with us when you login to TypeKey to post a comment. Sometimes, email addresses contain a person's name or company name. The only drawback is that we cannot contact you in reply to a comment you have made. If you do share your email address with Crotonblog while commenting, we do not retain/share it or ever use it for ANY purpose, and we never will.
2. "Can Crotonblog commenters can use multiple "nicknames" to sign their posts?"
ANSWER: YES.
3. "Can I be banned from commenting for using multiple "nicknames?"
ANSWER: NO.
4. "Why did Crotonblog ban this IP Address?"
ANSWER: This IP address was banned because the commenter here clearly intended to purposefully manipulate our readers by posting comments and answering them themself in an effort to discredit others.
This commenter had been warned before about comment spamming and also had a comment deleted for going off-topic. We promised to ban malicious commenters as a policy, so we did. Please play nice, play fair.
Further, it appears that this commenter has gone on record in The Gazette and CCC1@bestweb.net newsletter denouncing Crotonblog while engaging in the very practice the commenter opposes (FLASHBACK: Richard Pellicci in "Entering Bizarre World"). One time, even going so far as to suggest litigation against this publication with regards to this article, "Political Cartooning" about new 18-year-old Croton GOP Chairman Rob DiFrancesco.
Editor's Note:
And, finally, to all readers and commenters of Crotonblog. I personally object to the very notion of having to post your real name on this blog for the very reason illustrated in this post. Here is a commenter who badgered our cherished readers about posting under a "nickname" by urging them to diclose their real names. One can only guess what that commenter would do after knowing who is who...?
With that said, it's no wonder that we consistently get many more comments than The Gazette gets Letters to the Editor... Who wants to disclose their name and risk personal attacks by those with opposing views on issues as contentious as Metro Enviro/Regus...
And by the way, Crotonblog loves, values and is very thankful for our fast-growing readership. In fact, we just celebrated welcoming 2,482 unique visitors, who visited 10,055 times and looked at 82,246 pages (see our stats) to Crotonblog this past November 2005. Wow!!! We can't believe it.
And, also, special thanks to readers for the recent surge in very generous donations, which we ask for in lieu of a subscription or a pesky paygate like the NY Times does...
That's it for now. Please feel free to send other questions regarding this action to me by clicking here.
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Tom and Sue Sitting in a Tree...
September 28, 2005
UPDATED: DeLay Indicted in Texas Campaign Finance Probe
AP: "The grand jury’s finale coincided with a wide swath of political trouble for the GOP. Ethical questions have been raised about stock sales by the Republican leader of the Senate, Bill Frist, R-Tenn. And President Bush, an uneasy ally of DeLay, faces the lowest approval ratings of his presidency."
---
(Originally published on July 14, 2005) Tom Delay is the current House Majority Leader and self-appointed savior for the late Terri Schiavo. He is also under investigation for possible laundering of campaign funds and other alleged misdeeds that might lead to federal indictments in Texas. Sue Kelly represents New York's 19th Congressional District in the United States Congress.
Many New York Republican members of Congress have taken money from Tom DeLay's political action committee including Sue Kelly, in fact she tops the list.
Continue reading "Tom and Sue Sitting in a Tree...."
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Hurricane Cindy
September 25, 2005Cindy Sheehan with New York’s Reverand Jesse Jackson, singer-songwriter Joan Baez and over 100,000 other peace activists in Washington, DC on Saturday, September 23, 2005. Related: Continue reading "Hurricane Cindy."
Tools: In case you missed this in the New York Times Westchester section, here’s the part of the article about us… Westchester Finds It, Too, Can Fall Prey to Blog-orrhea Four of the seven founders of Crotonblog.com, from left: Jeff Thornton, Karen Thornton, Ross Weale Jr. and Denise Weale. Photo: George M. Gutierrez for The New York Times By DAVID SCHARFENBERG EXCERPT: …Somers, Greenburgh and Edgemont are also the subjects of political blogs. In Croton-on-Hudson seven friends, including a pair of married couples, have combined public affairs reporting with slice-of-life columns on crotonblog.com. A recent visit to the site, which went online in February and claims more than 1,600 individual visitors a month, found an homage to the Ossining Farmers’ Market, a debate between a pair of columnists known only as Mr. Red and Mr. Blue over the term “war on terror” and some discussion of the fate of a local garbage transfer center. “It’s almost like a reality show,” said Ross Weale Jr., 40, a co-founder whose day job is as an Internet product manager. David L. Perlmutter, an associate professor of mass communications and senior fellow at Louisiana State University who is writing a book on political blogs, said locally focused sites like crotonblog.com can be even more influential than national ones because they “have a smaller circle to effect.”… Full article from The New York Times.
Tools: A recent feature on Crotonblog in the New York Times Westchester Section on August 28, 2005, helped to fuel our eighth consecutive month of reader growth with 1,924 unique visitors. If you didn't get to see the article in print, it can be found online here. Thanks to all of our readers! Continue reading "Crotonblog Stats for August."
Tools: Crotonblog is funded by advertisements and reader contributions. Please give thoughtfully to keep this community blog online as a fresh, independent voice for Village news and opinion. You can make contributions online with a credit card through PayPal. If you would prefer to send a check by mail, please send your contribution to: Front Burner Publishing Please make all checks payable to: “Front Burner Publishing”. All contributions are greatly appreciated. Thanks, the Crotonblog Staff.
Tools:
Wow! Seven consecutive months of reader growth... So, we just wanted to check-in and say thanks for your readership. For your interest, following are selected blog stats for July 2005 & the previous six months. Unique visitors Number of visits Pages For fun, you can follow our stats here. As always, thank you. Keep reading & commenting! You can also contact us with your suggestions too... Oh, we also really appreciate your monetary support of Crotonblog by contributing/donating to us.
Tools: I called Congresswoman Sue Kelly's Washington DC office on July 14, 2005, to get her position on Karl Rove leaking CIA Agent Valerie Plame's name to both Matt Cooper from Time Magazine and Judith Miller, currently serving hard time, from the New York Times, but the polite person who answered her telephone was not prepared with a response. As a matter of fact, I called her office in June about her position on the Downing Street Memo. Same thing, no position or comment. Her office told me that they would send it to me in the mail. Guess what? It hasn't arrived yet... Even funnier, (not like ha, ha), her website was just updated with recent news releases from July 13, 2005 about things like Terrorism Insurance... See, I think putting our national security on the line by exposing covert CIA operatives who specialize in WMD, that's weapons of mass destruction, as in the ones we never found in IRAQ, the "slam dunk" that makes it truly necessary to have terrorism insurance in the first place, is the real issue. But, her website had nothing on Rove. So over on GOP.com, Republicans are standing up for Rove, including two of Congresswoman Sue Kelly's collegues from New York; Peter King and Tom Reynolds. They say the following, if you can believe your eyes: Rep. Tom Reynolds (R-NY): “The Extreme Left Is Once Again Attempting To Define The Modern Democrat Party By Rabid Partisan Attacks, Character Assassination And Endless Negativity. And As Has Become Their Custom, The Rest Of The Democrat Party Is Standing By Silently.” (National Republican Congressional Committee, “NRCC Chairman Tom Reynolds Statement On Karl Rove, Democrat Partisan Attacks,” Press Release, 7/13/05) “Democrats Are Bitter About Losing In 2004. And They Will Stop At Nothing To Accomplish Through Character Assassination What They Could Not Accomplish At The Ballot Box.” (National Republican Congressional Committee, “NRCC Chairman Tom Reynolds Statement On Karl Rove, Democrat Partisan Attacks,” Press Release, 7/13/05) Rep. Peter T. King (R-NY): “Republicans Should Stop Holding Back And Go On The Offense: Fire Enough Bullets The Other Way Until The Supreme Court Overtakes.” (Jim VandeHei, “GOP On Offense In Defense Of Rove,” The Washington Post, 7/13/05) Source of qoutes: GOP.com. You too can call Congresswoman Sue Kelly at 202-225-5441 and ask her if she intends to either hold President Bush to his word when he said, and I am paraphrasing here, that "leakers would not work in his administration" or follow Whitehouse Press Secretary Scott McClellan's lead and avoid any comment at all. I'll even boil it down further... National Security or partisan politics? -- Ross Weale
Tools: However, it seems as though Teddy missed President George W. Bush's recent nationally televised address to the nation on June 28, 2005 to address Iraq and the "War on Terror". President Bush said, "I thank those of you who have re-enlisted in an hour when your country needs you. And to those watching tonight who are considering a military career, there is no higher calling than service in our Armed Forces. We live in freedom because every generation has produced patriots willing to serve a cause greater than themselves. Those who serve today are taking their rightful place among the greatest generations that have worn our nation's uniform." I know why, but with all the war rhetoric, why would Teddy with dad's support, seek a 3-year deferment from active duty in the United States Marine Corps so he can attend law school? To me, it seems as though he is truly one of the few, but not one of the proud. Continue reading "Fortunate Son."
Tools: The Honorable George W. Bush Dear Mr. President: We the undersigned write because of our concern regarding recent disclosures of a Downing Street Memo (pdf) in the London Times, comprising the minutes of a meeting of Prime Minister Tony Blair and his top advisers. These minutes indicate that the United States and Great Britain agreed, by the summer of 2002, to attack Iraq, well before the invasion and before you even sought Congressional authority to engage in military action, and that U.S. officials were deliberately manipulating intelligence to justify the war. Among other things, the British government document quotes a high-ranking British official as stating that by July, 2002, Bush had made up his mind to take military action. Yet, a month later, you stated you were still willing to "look at all options" and that there was "no timetable" for war. Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, flatly stated that "[t]he president has made no such determination that we should go to war with Iraq." In addition, the origins of the false contention that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction remain a serious and lingering question about the lead up to the war. There is an ongoing debate about whether this was the result of a "massive intelligence failure," in other words a mistake, or the result of intentional and deliberate manipulation of intelligence to justify the case for war. The memo appears to resolve that debate as well, quoting the head of British intelligence as indicating that in the United States "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." As a result of these concerns, we would ask that you respond to the following questions: 1) Do you or anyone in your administration dispute the accuracy of the leaked document? 2) Were arrangements being made, including the recruitment of allies, before you sought Congressional authorization to go to war? Did you or anyone in your Administration obtain Britain's commitment to invade prior to this time? 3) Was there an effort to create an ultimatum about weapons inspectors in order to help with the justification for the war as the minutes indicate? 4) At what point in time did you and Prime Minister Blair first agree it was necessary to invade Iraq? 5) Was there a coordinated effort with the U.S. intelligence community and/or British officials to "fix" the intelligence and facts around the policy as the leaked document states? These are the same questions 89 Members of Congress, led by United States Representative John Conyers, Jr., submitted to you on May 5, 2005. As citizens and taxpayers, we believe it is imperative that our people be able to trust our government and our commander in chief when you make representations and statements regarding our nation engaging in war. As a result, we would ask that you publicly respond to these questions as promptly as possible. Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter. Sincerely, Sign your name here.
Tools: There are many errors and misconceptions in the most recent ccc1 newsletter (word doc), available from ccc1@bestweb.net, that must be challenged. It's my pleasure to be in a position, now that I'm no longer a sitting board member, to speak more freely about the actual facts. I'm no longer in a position to jeopardize the village's position in litigation. It's in the hands of the courts now and can no longer be influenced by careless remarks. Continue reading "Up Is Down."
Tools: Funny thing about the timing of finding the following quote by George McGovern, on dailykos.com was that since hearing "Fire" on WFUV 90.7 while driving to work, I've been listening to Hendrix all morning... It seems like a recurring soundtrack of the times to me. Different though as it seems to be parents who are really concerned about Iraq too. But we have an administration in power now that led us to a war that is internationally illegal; it's a war that we are fighting with a country that has no threat to us that has nothing to do with the 9-11 attacks. McGovern said Nixon was undoubtedly "tricky," but said of Bush: "This man claims to be Christian, following the will of God, and then he misleads the whole nation on a totally fraudulent enterprise in Iraq that we should have never been attached to." George McGovern, in "New 'Deep Throat' needed for Iraq, says Nixon rival".
Tools: Scott, blame the FBI. No, wait, the source is not credible. Oh, yeah, the DoD is investigating. Anyway, read the article for yourself. From Rueters, "An FBI agent wrote in a 2002 document made public on Wednesday that a detainee held at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had accused American jailers there of flushing the Koran down a toilet." Earlier in the week... Blaming the Messenger, by Anne Applebaum, The Washington Post, Wednesday, May 18, 2005; A17 "It's appalling that this story got out there," said the secretary of state. "Shaky from the very get-go," thundered the White House spokesman. "We've not found any wrongdoing on the part of U.S. servicemembers," declared the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Continue reading "Flush McClellan."
Tools: "I don't think a photo inspires murders. I think they (insurgents) are inspired by an ideology that is so barbaric and backwards that it's hard for many in the western world to comprehend how they think." - President George W. Bush, Friday, May 20, 2005. Really? Maybe this, this, this, Further... Prewar Findings Worried Analysts. Continue reading "Don't Believe Your Own Eyes."
Tools: For years I have been looking forward to writing an endorsement for Lynda, so I am delighted to ask the readers of CrotonBlog to come out and vote for Lynda Jones for Croton-Harmon schools trustee. The voting will take place today, Tuesday, May 17, at the PVC middle school. Continue reading "Lynda Jones for School Board."
Tools: BREAKING STORY IN US MAINSTREAM MEDIA (Don't worry about the "news filter", the BBC was covering this very story 11 days ago on May 1, 2005). MAY 12, 2005 WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Eighty-nine Democratic members of the U.S. Congress last week sent President George W. Bush a letter asking for explanation of a secret British memo that said "intelligence and facts were being fixed" to support the Iraq war in mid-2002... Read the rest here. Continue reading "Bush asked to explain UK war memo."
Tools: The Concerned Citizens of Croton (CCC1) circulate an email newsletter to 600 folks. To become a subscriber, contact Maria Cudequest by sending a message to CCC1@bestweb.net. According to "hopeful" you'll get documents, files, esoteric reports on women's health issues, toxic waste effects, attempts to re-unite lost pets with their owners, find homes for orphan kittens, locate apartments for single moms and review posts of job resumes. Sounds nice. Recently, "hopeful" left a comment on "Steinberg to Fill Vacant Trustee Spot" and referred to the CCC1 newsletter and asserts this about Crotonblog: "As if this blog doesn't have a slant of its own! Oh I forgot...that's different! LOL!!!! That's the American way. There's room for everyone at the inn, a core principle of democracy. But apparently not at this Blog! Perhaps it is time to set up an alternative Croton blog where even Democrats, Independents and "evil" Republicans are welcome. Adieu!" Wow. This happens to all liberal blogs. It happens to Atrios, Kos, & MM. After all, Crotonblog got popular quickly. In March 2005 alone, our second month on the air, Crotonblog readership grew to 1,141 UNIQUE visitors who visited 3,359 times and looked at 27,500 pages. Thank you readers (check our traffic stats potential advertisers please). So, here at Crotonblog this is how it works... You have to register with TypeKey to comment, also where you manage your identity. Anyone can make a comment on an article or follow up on other's comments to express your point of view. When you comment, only your nickname appears to other readers, so you are publicly anonymous. Read our terms of use. To those 600 CCC1 newsletter subscribers who are checking us out, you are always invited to write as you wish. I can tell you factually that both Democrats and Republicans have a shared experience here. No, none, not yet, have any of the 140+ comments left here been withheld or rejected. They are ALL published! That's great news because so far all commenters are treating each other with R.E.A.C.H. Well done. Shout out to "hopeful" who has become a daily visitor and commenter with 10+ uncensored and free thoughts. Word. -- Ross Weale
Tools: We as a village will vote on the school budget on Tuesday, May 17, at Pierre Van Cortlandt Middle School (PVC). A separate proposed resolution up for vote is whether to decrease the distance from one-and-a-half miles to 0.9 miles that a child needs to live from school in order to receive a bus to the middle school, PVC, and the high school. Part of the reason for the proposal is that the 5th grade is moving into middle school this year. Currently fifth graders fall under the transportation policy that affects grades K through 5 (5th grade is this year at CET Elementary School). Continue reading "School Bus: Safety Should Preclude Mileage."
Tools: As part of the agenda for the Regular Meeting of the Board of Trustees on Monday, March 7, 2005, the Recreation Advisory Board and it's Trustee-liason Gregory Schmidt will recommend that the skatepark facility be permanently closed. Following is the letter to be read tonight to the Village Board. Date: February 18, 2005 Attached (download full document) you will find Skatepark Revenue and Attendance reports for the years 2003 and 2004 prepared for the Recreation Advisory Committee by Recreation Superintendent, Susan Menz (smenz@crotononhudson-ny.gov). As you can see there has been a dramatic decrease in both attendance and revenue from 2003 to 2004. Continue reading "Recreation Advisory Board Urges Closure of the Skatepark."
Tools: After getting the Febraury 24 - March 2, 2005 issue of The Gazette from Sav-Mor yesterday, I was not surprised to see that there were four letters that presented very different opinions with regards to Metro Enviro. I was driving south on Rt. 9 today and noticed many freight cars with Metro Enviro on the sides. I realized that I had never seen or knew exactly where the transfer station is. So, I shot the following series of pictures to show where and what the Metro Enviro transfer station is all about.
Tools: It’s expected that the Village of Croton-on-Hudson's Recreation Advisory Committee will soon recommend that our two-year-old skateboard park be closed. What a waste! Mayoral Candidate and Trustee Gregory Schmidt, who is the board of Trustees’ liaison to the Village’s Recreation Advisory Committee, has indicated that the body he oversees will urge the Board of Trustees to cease operating the skate park, which cost $150,000 to set up, according to an article that appeared in the February 19, 2005 edition of The Gazette. Continue reading "Build It and They Don’t Always Keep Coming...."
Tools: The board of ed meeting Monday night to reopen the issue of whether to continue allowing middleschoolers at PVC to go out for lunch elicited strong feelings on both sides. While I understand some parents’ opinion that going out for lunch is a privilege that they can use as a reward or take away as a punishment, I was very disturbed by something that came up at the meeting. One of the arguments for an open campus has always been that it is the parents’ choice, via a written note, as to whether their child can or cannot go out for lunch. But both Superintendent Castro and Principal Hendrickson stated that there was no way that they could adequately police students as to whether or not they had a note for permission to go out on a given day. In other words, it is NOT in the parents’ hands as to whether or not their children be allowed off-campus, because the kids could go out with or without permission. Continue reading "An Open Campus Can't Be Monitored."
Tools: Continue reading "Open or Closed Campus: That is the Question."
Tools: 
Print
NYT Westchester Features Crotonblog
September 19, 2005
Published: August 28, 2005 Print
Crotonblog Stats for August
September 6, 2005
Print
pls giv 2 crtnblog thx
August 5, 2005
103 Hastings Avenue
Croton-on-Hudson, NY 10520
Print
Crotonblog Stats for July
August 1, 2005
July - 1,614
June - 1,469
May - 1,269
Apr - 1,275
Mar - 1,144
Feb - 741
Jan - 302
July - 5,096
June - 4,827
May - 3,956
Apr - 3,349
Mar - 3,359
Feb - 2,042
Jan - 803
July - 46,110
June - 40,882
May - 30,615
Apr - 30,277
Mar - 27,500
Feb - 21,401
Jan - 13,557 Print
On Rove: No Comment From Rep. Sue Kelly
July 14, 2005
Print
Fortunate Son
July 6, 2005
Teddy Pataki, son of New York Govenor George Pataki, just graduated from his father's alma mater, Yale, as newly commissioned 2nd lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps. Print
Downing Street What?
June 16, 2005
President of the United States of America
1600 Pennsylvania Ave, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20005 Print
Up Is Down
June 3, 2005
Print
Too Liberal Then
"This war in Iraq, in my opinion is worse than anything Nixon did. I think Nixon deserved to be expelled from office in view of the cover-up that he carried on and the laws that he violated.
Print
Flush McClellan
May 26, 2005
Print
Don't Believe Your Own Eyes
May 22, 2005
, this, this or this (graphic) does then. Print
Lynda Jones for School Board
May 17, 2005
Print
Bush asked to explain UK war memo
May 12, 2005
Print
Slanted
April 8, 2005
Print
School Bus: Safety Should Preclude Mileage
April 7, 2005
Print
Recreation Advisory Board Urges Closure of the Skatepark
March 7, 2005
Subject: Skatepark
Reference: Skatepark Revenue and Attendance Print
Metro Enviro: A Photo Tour
March 2, 2005
Print
Build It and They Don’t Always Keep Coming...
February 23, 2005
Print
An Open Campus Can't Be Monitored
January 25, 2005
Print
Open or Closed Campus: That is the Question
January 24, 2005
The hot debate over whether or not to keep the middle school campus of PVC open for the new fifth and sixth graders entering in September will begin at the school board meeting to be held on January 24 at 7:30 p.m. at the Croton High School auditorium. The whole community is encouraged to attend and voice their opinions. Print
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