Section: Letters

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Cortlandt Town Supervisor Puglisi Endorses Gallelli, Olver for Trustees

March 12, 2010

To the editor:

I am writing in support of Ann Gallelli and Rick Olver to be re-elected as Village Trustees in the upcoming election on Tuesday, March 16th.

I know first hand how hard both of them work for the residents of Croton and how dedicated they are to solving issues and planning for our community. Both Ann and Rick have worked closely with Mayor Leo Wiegman and other Trustees to keep the Village taxes and costs low. This past year they had a reduction of 1.9%. I applaud them for these efforts. It’s so very important to keep taxes under control for our residents and local businesses.

At the same time, Ann Gallelli and Rick Olver are working closely with the Mayor and me on important energy conservation plans, practices, and initiatives. We are charter members of the Northern Westchester Energy Action Coalition, which was formed in 2009.

Both Ann and Rick deserve another term to work on important projects, plans, and ideas they have for Croton. Most importantly, they listen to you and are always interested in your vision for the lovely community of Croton-on-Hudson.

Thank you so much for your consideration in re-electing Ann Gallelli and Rick Olver as Trustees to serve on the Village Board.

— Linda Puglisi, Supervisor of the Town of Cortlandt

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Dine A Round: A Huge Success!

February 11, 2010

Dear Neighbors,

On behalf of the Croton Harmon Education Foundation (CHEF) we would like to thank all of the people who helped make the Dine A Round a huge success.

Our winter fundraiser began at the beautiful home of Electra and Bruce Martin where over 100 guests gathered for drinks and appetizers. A string quartet made up of students Hannah Moy, Rebecca Rose and Sylvia Lustig with their teacher, Sarah Worden played for the guests. We thank them for the generous gift of their talents.

Everyone then went on to one of 14 homes for a delicious and elegant dinner. Foodies all, we thank these very generous folks for exceeding all expectations. A big thank you to Daria & Devin Archer; Catherine & Michael Arkin; Michele Cortese, Joe DeGenova and Suzanne & Rob Luntz; Tim Dinger, Claire Cronin & David Leveen; Suzanne & Rob Gardos; Kristi & Ed Godek; Jessica & Kevin Kearns; Laurie Lecthaler & Terry Yanni; Tamie & Evan Lobel; Bianca & Paul Mancinelli; Jennifer & Michael Minihan; Donna & John Nikic and Elissa & Jonathan Kuber; Judy and Philippe Rayer and Ann & Jim Tyre. The Dine A Round could not happen without you and your incredible talent! Your generosity is greatly appreciated.

Finally, the guests converged at the final stop: the fantastic home of Hayley and Dan McNatty. There they enjoyed delicious desserts and dancing to the popular Croton band The Real Rough Diamonds. The band, led by Frank “mig” Diamond along with Erik “double-e” Diamond; Ken “lockdown” Diamond; Mark “the mink” Diamond, Mark “hurricane” Diamond and Matt “mattyboy” Diamond rocked the night away. The Diamond donation proves again that diamonds are a not-for-profit foundation’s best friend! Thank you to all.

The party also relied upon very generous donations of wine and beer. Deprez Wines and Old Post Road Liquors donated some of the wine for the event; Captain Lawrence Brewery donated all of the beer. CHEF relies on local businesses heavily and these three have been stalwart supporters for years.

And finally, a big thank you to our guests without whom the whole evening would never happen! Croton’s continued support of CHEF allows us to fulfill our mission to be a catalyst for innovation and experimentation, have an enduring presence through contributions of lasting value, build a partnership with the schools and the community and to work for the whole child and every child. We thank each and every one of you for your support. See you at Under the Stars in May!

Sincerely,
Abbie Voss & Demetra Restuccia
Co-Chairs, Dine-A-Round 2010

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Nothing Gained: A Critique Of The Harmon Zoning Changes

December 19, 2009

The camel is sometimes jocularly described as a horse designed by a committee. Upon close examination, the zoning changes hastened into effect by the village board on December 7 as Local Law No. 4 turn out to be a veritable camel. Compared to the committee’s original recommendations, this addendum to the discredited Gateway Law is a miserable, mangy beast, a mere shadow of its former self. By no stretch of the imagination does this miscarriage of planning deserve the accolades heaped on it in recent congratulatory comments by supporters who obviously have not read it closely.

The third-floor of each new or remodeled building is reserved specifically for residential use, presumably to preclude any opportunistic retail discounter from renting there and advertising, “Walk up two flights and save.” Third-floor units could actually be more desirable, being farther from the odors wafting up from an exotic ethnic restaurant on the ground floor and its incessant music of cymbals, chimes and gongs. Similarly, the area behind ground-floor retail units is limited to residential use. But if living over a store is déclassé, what is living behind a store? One advantage: If you run out of sugar, you can always knock on the back door and borrow a cupful from your neighbor, the ever-smiling and obliging chef with the flashing cleaver. Can’t you see the hordes of young couples that will desert the Upper West Side and move to Croton to live in such desirable quarters? Fat chance.

The second floor may house any combination of retail and residential uses. Professional occupancy was originally an important part of the rental income formula of retail stores sharing space with professional offices and apartments. A felicitous amalgam intended to milk increased tax revenue from “revitalization,” it also conjured up images of lawyers’ clients stumbling over prams and strollers parked in the hallways. But not to worry. Such frictions will never come to pass. Professional offices are nowhere mentioned in the new law, which defines mixed use as “a combination of residential dwelling units and other permitted and/or special permit users.” I kid you not. It will be apartments and retailers plus whatever undefined “others” are able to pass muster with the Planning Board and receive special permits required from the Village Board of Trustees.

As if to emphasize Croton’s aggressive unfriendliness to commerce, the new law repeats the Gateway Law’s categories of banned legitimate businesses that are beyond the pale. In today’s hard times when we should be welcoming business of every stripe, Croton is like a panhandler insisting he will only accept a quarter if it’s a scarce collector’s commemorative coin. The recently enacted zoning changes do not represent intelligent planning; they are planning run amuck.

The earlier laughable Rube Goldberg concept of parking spaces shared between the various categories of tenants and customers has been quietly swept under the rug. In its place is a simple formula based on bedroom counts. Retailers will have to fall back on existing commercial district parking regulations—formulas that are notoriously inadequate, particularly for restaurant parking.

Advocates of the zoning change were loud in their criticism of the “dowdy” look of Harmon’s commercial area. A look I happen to like because of its quaintness and lack of pretension. In Harmon, what you see is what you get. Proponents promised that the zoning changes would alter that look, but don’t hold your breath. The committee’s original recommendations at least gave a nod to appearance in the following virtually unintelligible statement that “the third story must be designed to within the roofline and dormers, gables or other aesthetically pleasing design possibilities.”

The zoning changes say absolutely nothing about aesthetics. What they do say is, “buildings in the area shall be subject to such additional design guidelines as may be adopted by resolution of the Board of Trustees from time to time.” So, after all the fuss and bother, the vaunted zoning changes are revealed to be nothing more than a work in progress! Still to come are the inevitable onerous nit-picking regulations that are the bane of venture capital investment.

I can comfortably make a prediction: Local Law No. 4 of 2009 will bring as much new development capital to Harmon as the 2004 Gateway Law brought to Croton in almost six years—which is to say, zero, zip, zilch, nada, nothing. One year, five years, ten years from now, Harmon will look pretty much the way it does today. And we can all thank our lucky stars for that.

Readers can read the text of the zoning changes adopted on December 7, 2009, as Local Law No. 4 will find it at the following link: http://www.crotononhudson-ny.gov/publicdocuments/crotonhudsonnywebdocs/2009-11-locallaw.pdf

— Robert Scott

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A Response to An "Eileen Henry" from Maria Cudequest

To the editor:

I am responding to a rather curious letter published in last week’s Gazette concerning the 12/8 information meeting for Harmon property owners by an “Eileen Henry”. I attended this meeting along with fellow residents and other officials. For the record:

a) While “25 people” were indeed present at this meeting, this number largely consisted of members of the Economic Development Committee, the Village Board (Mr. Olver was absent), and a few residents. According to village staff, more than three dozen letters were sent to property and business owners in the Harmon area. However, less than a handful attended.

b) Not one, repeat not one, property owner present stated any support of the re-zoning proposal. Although there was an exchange of ideas, the fact is that property owners were at best skeptical of the alleged benefits. (The one property owner that did seem “open” to the idea quickly decided otherwise when someone pointed out that his taxes “would only go up” upon re-assessment.) Indeed, the Harmon proposal was described as “unrealistic”, “fantasy-driven” and a “dream”. Instead, property owners cited the need for tax breaks, that the parking scenario envisioned under the Harmon proposal “would not work”, that “banks are not lending money”, that “three stories would not be profitable”, etc.

I do not know what meeting Ms. Henry attended that was the subject of her letter to the paper. However, it was not the Harmon information meeting that occurred on December 8th.

In the words of Mr. Palladino that night, owner of the Dodge property, the committee is “trying to sell a dream”. That’s not surprising given Trustee Gallelli’s published commentary on May 26, 2008:

“We want to get the public to buy into this for support of the zoning changes.”

http://nycom.groupsite.com/discussion/topic/show/51472

On, December 8th, both Trustee Gallelli and the committee, who strangely chose not to televise this meeting to the public, rang up yet another “No Sale” instead.

Sincerely,

Maria Cudequest

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Croton's Cargo Cult Economics

December 8, 2009

To the editor,

During the Second World War, the island of New Guinea was invaded first by the Japanese and then by Australian and American troops. Large amounts of supplies and war materiel were brought in by air, impressing the natives. Missionaries and colonial authorities normally present had been evacuated, and so the local villagers had no one to explain the significance of these large-scale war activities.

After the occupying troops departed at the conclusion of the war, religious cults sprang up in the belief that the goods brought in were originally intended for the native peoples and had been diverted by the foreigners. Leaders of these so-called “cargo cults” proclaimed that the manufactured goods of the invaders had been created spiritually by the natives’ own deities and ancestors, and were intended for them, but the foreigners had unfairly gained control of these objects by attracting the materials to themselves.

Examples of cargo cult activity included the clearing of mock airstrips in the jungle, construction of “hangars,” “offices” and “mess halls.” Western goods, such as “radios” made of coconuts and straw and “headphones” carved from wood, were used in mock control towers. Believers performed parade ground drills with wooden or salvaged rifles and painted their bodies with military and national insignia to look like soldiers, treating the activities of Western military personnel as rituals to attract the cargo. Having fabricated these items and performed the rituals, the cult members then waited patiently for the cargoes intended for them to arrive.

Croton will begin practicing its own form of what I call cargo cult economics at 7:30 p.m. next Tuesday. Letters have been sent out by the mayor to commercial property and business owners in Harmon inviting them to a meeting at the Kellerhouse Municipal Building. The Village’s website lists this as a meeting of the Economic Development Committee. Its purpose is to explain the opportunities under the recently passed zoning changes. Like suckers roped into attending a free time-share luncheon, attendees can expect to be pitched with an unrelenting spiel intended to encourage them to take advantage of the new law’s myriad of blessings.

Thus, the owner of a property with a retail establishment on the ground floor and an apartment on the floor above can undertake to raze the building and construct a new three-story structure closer to the sidewalk line. The advantage to those in adjoining residential areas behind the existing building is that the new building will be farther away. Left unsaid, undoubtedly, will be the fact that the space created will become an automobile parking lot.

Those who choose to remodel instead of rebuilding will have an equally daunting task. Most of the existing structures are what architects call “stick-built,” a method in which a sturdy skeleton of columns and beams was erected and then sheathed internally and externally. Because of the 35-foot total height limit, to create a third floor for an additional apartment, the heavy joists if the second floor attached to the building’s skeleton must be lowered, a major task, and additional third-floor joists, flooring and ceilings must be added above.

Rebuilt or remodeled, the resulting structures will not be inexpensive, In addition, business owners or apartment renters will have to vacate existing buildings during the process. The yield to the property owner in either case will be high building or remodeling costs, a higher assessment, higher taxes, and a third-floor walk-up apartment of doubtful desirability under the eaves. The added tax revenue for the Village will be negligible. So I say, “Welcome to cargo cult economics.” With outcomes like these, asking property owners to attend such a meeting is like asking a condemned man to bring the rope to his own hanging.

— Robert Scott, Croton-on-Hudson

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The Coming Commercial Real Estate Disaster

November 20, 2009

To the editor:

Thanks to Republican campaign ineptitude and widespread anti-incumbent backlash, Croton’s March election brought a rogue village board and a mayor intent on imposing zoning changes over the objections of many residents. Now we know what living under a one-party Stalinist or Maoist regime is like. Bruising litigation will inevitably follow. In the meantime, what else will happen? Nothing. In the almost six years since passage of the Gateway Law, not a single dollar has been spent in Croton by owners or developers of commercial properties. The same can be expected in Harmon under the zoning changes to that law.

Passage of the changes was a masterpiece of bad timing. Although the collapse of the residential real-estate market has been a disaster, “you ain’t seen nothing yet,” as entertainer Al Jolson used to say. A second bubble, this time in commercial real estate, is about to burst and sweep over the economy like a tidal wave, dooming development everywhere. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke hinted at this when he told a House committee last month, “Commercial real estate remains a serious problem.”

A significant indicator, quarterly returns on commercial property compiled by the National Council of Real Estate Investment Fiduciaries, has been negative for the past five quarters, the longest continuous downturn since 1992. Beset by vacancies, owners of shopping malls, hotels, office space, apartment buildings and industrial sites—and the bankers who financed them—face crucial decisions over the next two years as the mortgages on these properties come due.

“A crisis of unprecedented proportions is approaching,” according to Dr. Randall Zisler, chief executive officer of Zisler Capital Partners LLC. Commercial property prices have fallen by 30 to 50 percent from their 2007 peaks, Zisler estimated in a recent report. This precipitous plunge has wiped out the equity in most real-estate deals based on debt financing since 2005.

Although the commercial real estate market is only about one-third the size of the $22 trillion residential market, its problems are considerably more serious. Home mortgages run for 15 to 30 years, but much of the $1.6 trillion in outstanding commercial real estate loans are for shorter terms of three to seven years. Many of these loans were written by bankers at the height of the boom. Zisler, whose firm specializes in real-estate investment, expects another $500 billion to $750 billion of mortgage debt to be added to that number as a result of “unscheduled maturities”—unanticipated defaults by owners of commercial properties—will bring the dollar amount at risk to well over two trillion.

“Unfortunately, traditional lenders of consequence are practically out of the market and massive amounts of maturing debt will not easily find refinancing,” Zisler pointed out. “Marking-to-market outstanding debt will render many banks, especially regional and community banks, insolvent, especially since much of the debt is likely worth about 50 percent of par, or less,” a consequence of having to reduce the value of their holdings.

According to FDIC data, commercial real estate made up 56 percent of U.S. banks’ loan portfolios in 2006. It was only 40 percent a decade earlier. For about 5,600 smaller banks with assets under $1 billion (about 90 percent of all U.S. banks) the percentage of loans secured by commercial real estate is even higher—74 percent.

In addition to vacancies and lost rents, those who bought commercial real estate at the height of the boom face the same dilemma as homeowners—plunging values. When their loans come due, they will owe more on the mortgage than the property is worth. Bankers call this “being upside down.” Owners have two choices: Sell and take a huge loss, or refinance and come up with a big bundle of cash to make up for the lost value.

Moreover, when decision time comes, many commercial property owners won’t have a sympathetic banker to talk to. Unhappy investors who bought bonds created by investment banks from bundled mortgages (Wall Street calls these “mortgage-backed securities”), or who bought bonds backed by the interest payments on them, hold about a third of all commercial loans.

Heavy losses on commercial real estate will cast a pall over consumer lending, causing banks to make home mortgages, car loans and credit cards even harder to obtain. It also will induce bankers to offset commercial loan losses by accelerating foreclosures and sales of foreclosed homes, thus putting additional downward pressure on home prices.

Traditional voter lassitude during local elections undoubtedly played a role in the voting that gave us the current lopsided administration. The next election is 120 days away. A village board with members more responsive to the will of the people would mark the beginning of the return to more proportional representation.

— Robert Scott, Croton-on-Hudson

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The Natives Are Restless Tonight

November 13, 2009

To the editor:

It has always been a travesty on the word “planning” for Croton to pursue a special zoning change to rescue an ailing Harmon from itself, while ignoring its other commercial areas also in need of support. Monday night’s public review only underscored this judgment. To propose piecemeal changes in Harmon while not having the faintest idea of the state of Croton’s commercial (i.e., retail) economy borders on the criminal.

Proponents blithely continue to close their eyes to the realities of geography, the isolating Expressway, Croton’s small customer base and especially its five noncontiguous shopping areas that make the development of a central shopping area an impossibility. Encouragement of tourism to aid local businesses is never considered. Yet it would cost almost nothing and require no enabling legislation.

The plan’s basic objective is to get the Harmon shopping area to pull up its socks, so to speak, all the while ignoring Croton’s other troubled shopping areas. Proponents claim that Harmon is unattractive, but could be transformed into a veritable Fifth Avenue of strolling families and shopping activity through the simple medium of a zoning change. Whenever someone starts by saying, “Friends who come to visit immediately remark on how awful the Harmon shopping area looks,” you know the baloney is going to be sliced very thick. Why aren’t proponents equally concerned about the Upper Village that has at its heart a shuttered, highly visible and starkly empty Wondrous Things storefront?

No matter what we do to zoning in Harmon, as a nascent Fifth Avenue it is always going to be “blighted” (their word, not mine) by three gasoline service stations and an automobile body repair and repainting shop in close proximity along one side of South Riverside Avenue. I am not for a moment suggesting that these businesses should go. They are necessary, profitable and very much a part of Harmon, plus they offer local employment opportunities. But how their continuing presence is going to make the “revitalized” Harmon shopping area look like a cross between the Champs Élysées and the Las Vegas strip is never explained.

The standing-room-only crowd at the meeting was unified and vociferously loud in its opposition. Only after the anti-zoning-change speakers had drifted away did a few timorous advocates, largely from areas other than Harmon, show themselves. Offering little in the way of concrete support, the best they could muster was “Why not give it a try?” as though the ill-considered zoning change were nothing more than a faddish TV 30-day dieting plan.

Croton can be thankful it has more lawyers in residence than nail salons and pizzerias. Early on, the opposition unlimbered some big legal guns to advance their cause, and these were hard acts to follow. Legal objections to the Environmental Assessment Form, in fact to the entire process itself, flew thick and fast. Village attorney James Staudt, who is not a resident and who had given a perfunctory blessing to the plan at the start of the meeting, could hardly have felt comfortable under the barrage of citations. Then again, litigation always brings humongous hourly billings, a factor proponents should keep in mind. Memories of the legal cost of ousting Metro-Enviro still rankle.

The rezoning plan has been shown to be fraught with faults and legal hazards. For the mayor and village board to move this plan forward without addressing these would be the height of irresponsibility. At the very least, they should be required to prove that each defect has been considered and corrected. Last March’s election was by no means a landslide. The two incumbents up for re-election would be wise to recognize that reality. Next March is only four months away.

— Robert Scott, Croton-on-Hudson

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Garden Road School Hosting Holistic Flu Workshop

November 1, 2009

To the editor:

Don’t let the media hype get you nervous. Be pro-active rather than reactive this flu season.

Come to this timely and informative workshop, hosted by The Garden Road School on November 9, 2009 at 7:00pm to learn how to protect the whole family with herbal immune system supports. Learn about preventative and treatment methods for the flu and how you can put together a flu prevention package for you and your family.

Andrea Candee, MH, MSC, is a master herbalist with a practice in South Salem, NY. She lectures about taking charge of your health naturally and is an instructor of Botanical Medicine at The New York Botanical Garden. Her book, Gentle Healing for Baby and Child (Simon & Schuster), was awarded The National Parenting Center’s Seal of Approval.

The Garden Road School is an independent school for grades Pre-K (ages 2+) through Fourth Grade. Its mission is to educate children for a purposeful future through a vibrant curriculum that merges academic excellence, creativity and core human values. The Garden Road School is located at 99 Baron de Hirsch Road, Crompond.

Attendance is $15 per person. For more information please visit: www.thegardenroad.org, email info@thegardenroad.org, or call call 914-526-4033.

— Kathryn Corena

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Mixed (Up) Use Coming to Croton

October 28, 2009

To the editor,

Croton today is on the brink of making a major decision. The subject at issue is mixed use. And what is mixed use? In Colonial America it was the way of life in towns and villages. It featured a tightly clustered mix of stores, houses, churches, local government buildings, and civic uses within walking distance of one another.

During the 19th century industrialization brought factories and commercial uses that were sources of objectionable noise and odors, and often were hazardous to public health. To protect residential property values, early zoning focused on separating uses and buffering them from each other to minimize nuisances. The movement to return to mixed use in urban areas was sparked by Jane Jacobs in her seminal 1961 work titled The Death and Life of Great American Cities.

Paradoxically, Croton’s existing zoning permits mixed use in the form of housing on a single floor above retail stores. Proposed legislation would more than double the amount of residential space available in commercially zoned areas as apartments above retail establishments and in ground-floor space behind them. I have been a vocal opponent of this legislation on many grounds:

(1) The total lack of research into the current retail picture in Croton. It may very well be that Croton needs less retail space rather than more.

(2) The failure of proponents to explore the impact of the legislation on the projected school population.

(3) The inadequacy of parking and the lack of outdoor space for children and pets. Because of higher densities in mixed-use developments and the commercial/office component, parking space requirements always exceed those of residential development.

(4) The total lack of adequate controls to protect the village. This mirrors the 2004 Gateway Law that bans fast-food restaurants without defining what constitutes a fast-food restaurant.

(5) The total lack of architectural standards. The only architectural requirement in the Harmon report was that the third floor within the roofline be designed as “dormers, or gables, or other architecturally pleasing design possibilities.” Even this vague and unsatisfactory requirement is missing from the proposed legislation.

(6) Technically naïve, the proposed legislation also provides for ground floor residential space behind retail space. Yet any first-year architectural student knows that retail and residential ceiling heights vary greatly and mixing them on one floor will impose additional design and construction costs. The large, high-ceilinged ground floor space without supporting columns needed for commercial uses may not be architecturally compatible with the smaller scale of walled residential space above it or behind it.

(7) Construction costs for mixed-use development currently exceed those for single-use buildings of similar size. Unanticipated architectural challenges include fire separations, sound attenuation, ventilation and egress.

(8) Mixed use developments are seen as too risky by many developers and lending institutions because economic success requires that the several different uses all remain in full occupancy. Short-term discounted cash flow has become the standard method of measuring the success of income-producing properties, making single-use properties more attractive for investment.

(9) There has been a total lack of cost analysis and feasibility studies, yet the legislation is touted as an economic panacea for Croton.

With so many issues still unaddressed, I urge all residents of Croton to turn out at the village board meeting on November 2 and demand an answer to the simple question, “Why the hurry and the mindless disregard of citizens’ legitimate concerns?”

— Robert Scott, Croton-on-Hudson

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Robert Scott on Bob Elliott

October 15, 2009

Thank you Mr. Scott for a rational presentation of what our region can offer the rest of the country in terms of both beauty and education.

As noted, Mayor Elliott’s comments were made in 2005. How sad that the Schmidt gang opted for a parochial approach in the four years following, refusing both to market what our village has to offer and to work with neighboring communities to form what could be one of the top attractions in the U.S.

Former Mayor Schmidt not only stated publicly that he didn’t want Croton turning into “another Ossining” but managed to schedule the opening of Croton Landing for a day when the Westchester County Executive was not available to attend, insuring an appearance in the press that his administration alone was responsible for its creation.

Fortunately, Croton’s present elected officials are working to connect with municipalities up and down the Hudson to insure a cohesive presentation of all of our towns have to offer. A variety of sporting opportunities, nature encounters and eyefuls of beauty—it all comes back to a river…and Croton has 2!

As far as our village is concerned, shouldn’t we be able to offer visitors from the states and abroad a place to spend their money on something other than a mani/pedi or a pepperoni slice?

— Lisa Cohen

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