Summer on E Hartsdale Ave has been a musical delight! We've been promoting local musical talent at our farmer's market. A number of outstanding musicians have performed at Desanti Plaza on E Hartsdale Ave on Saturday mornings. Town Clerk Judith Beville has organized the concert series --at no cost to the taxpayers.
We just posted on You Tube (WWW.YOUTUBE/GREENBURGHNY.COM) excerpts of an interesting concert---featuring the band SOLAR PUNCH. SOLAR PUNCH uses solar energy to power its music. Solar technology is used to power small powerful portable amps. The music is great. I hope you'll take a look at the video and enjoy our upcoming concerts.
We have a number of upcoming concerts planned on Saturday mornings in August and September:
August 30th---DAVID SPANO
September 6th--Westchester Harp Ensemble September 13th--Jonathan Flaks, classical rock
September 20--Tara Pavone, Music of the Beatles, Carole King and Broadway
The Blues Mothers
The concert series will continue during the month of October. If your band is interested in highlighting your musical talent, please contact Judith Beville, Town Clerk at 993-1504 or e mail jbeville@greenburghny.com. All the musicians are donating their services to the town.
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36 comments:
Wow!
Is there another community where there are more concerts than Town Board meetings? We should be at least in the top 50.
The work session for Tuesday August 26 has been cancelled. Clearly Greenburgh runs without governance.
Be prepared to see Mr. Sheehan being so proud of posting a new record of probably 144 Resolutions by the time of the regular Town Board meeting in September, the Board's first since July 9.
hal - sheehanigans is like a casino - never closed.
Paul this is verry nice but I am disturbed that you did not post that there was vandalism done in the village over the weekend. Some did damage to the statue and as i understand it to the band platform. May these vandals be caught, prosecuted to the fullest extent to the law, and if it's children or teens that did it and they're caught the parent's should pay for all damage.The families identity should not be protected either.
These Hartsdale concerts are at "no cost to the taxpayers"
How much is it costing us to have the TTDYCC Summer concerts?
Where was this damage? If in a "village" they have their own police.
To anon 8:28 Pm The damage was by the Hartsdale train station by the clock.
The town is moving in the right direction. The free concerts are awesome!
Well so much for open government.
Paul did you ever stop to think that by you cancelling meetings and having a special board meeting on Thursday at two in the afternoon
will help you comes the next election.
You are passing resolutions without the publics input.
How can you do such a dumb thing and then you hate when the residents have nothing nice to say about you.
We know that Sheehan and Juettners time is coming to an end but maybe you had the possibility to continue as a supervisor but in doing what you have been doing will be considered at election time.
Why are you keeping the residents' in the dark??????
We as taxpayers have the right to know how our money is being spent but it seems that you are favoring one area in particular.
I do hope that this area will remember all the good that you have done for them because I'm sure the other areas will remember how we got screwed.
I attended a Town Board meeting on Melissa Drive last night. The Town Board voted to close a street for a block party. Big deal! The meeting lasted one or two seconds. Hey guys, it's the summer. The Town Board should not be holding many summer meetings.
Dear 8:50 and 9:05,
Just because the Town Board is withholding important town business from the public and dealing only with the minutia doesn't mean it doesn't exist -- or will go away.
It just means that there is a lot of bad news coming our way and that the Town Board wants to deal with this at the last minute -- and by stage managing the actual Town Board meetings when they will have to report it.
If you really believe meeting on a street corner to vote on street closings is all that happens over the two summer months, then you're the last one in Greenburgh still enjoying Nat King Cole's "those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer..."
Among the problems that the Town Board doesn't relish discussing with the public IN PUBLIC are:
*the 2009 town budget
*the library construction budget overruns
*the Hartsdale Flood study
Bloggers, feel free to add to this list.
If free concerts is moving in the right direction, Rome (not NY) used to be #1 on the Money magazine list.
Their concert series featuring the group "Fiddling Nero and The Volunteer Firemen" was equally well reviewed.
To Hal Isn't the flood study well over due from it's original date of Feb. 2008? Also was in Yonkers today not only beautiful medians on Central Avenue but Why were two Town Sanitation trucks from Greenburgh heading south towards Nathan's Clearly in Yonkers? This is a waste of fuel and emplyees time and not the first time i have seen this.
Hal,
There is the Fortress Bible litigation, the Bernstein litigation,
What happens to worn out solar panels?
(They do wear out you know - and they are VERY toxic so you can't just leave them for the sanitation guys to get rid of.)
Every solar panel installed should require an escrowed deposit to pay for its disposal when it wears out.
Too expensive? It will save our children and grandchildren a fortune!
Paul doesnt mind pushing costs on grandchildren etc.
This is far from a defense of Paul Feiner, because there is no plausible defense possible.
However, Paul is simply "the leader of the band," and the other four (including the two who lost to Brown and Morgan) usually "play/played off key."
If I continue to bore you with the "library Fiasco," I'm not at all apologetic. After all, a $20 million project has been screwed up from the very beginning and continues unabated.
Right now, the Town has been served with a Notice of Claim from the general contractor for more than a quarter of a million dollars.
After all is said and done, this library will cost more than $21+ million dollars. And, the difference between referendum money, grants and so called freebies will be taxed to the "B"budget.
Meanwhile, the Library Board has miraculosly found approximately $300,000which they will vote to "transfer" into the Capital(building budget) from the Operating budget which they cried about being insufficient to support promised services,i.e. summer hours on Sundays, the Cybermobile and who knows what else.
The library may indeed open and people will look at the shiny new( ugly in my view) structure, new space (maybe too much new space), new furniture (when they can afford it) and so on and so forth.
What they won't get however is the library they voted $19.9 to get. They will get a severely stripped down version at a cost far exceeding the referendum budget.
And who's to blame? In no special order,
The Supervisor,
The four Council members at the time of the referendum,
The town attorney,
The town liaison asigned to the project,
The architect, the architect (he needs to be mentioned twice, because he's the "father of this illegitimate 'child'")
The construction manager, the construction manager-for dereliction of duty allowing all of the screw ups to eat up approximately $4+ million, all the while collecting his monthly "supervision fee."
The library board, (all of its arrogant, free-spending members who've taken no responsibility for raising the funds needed to build this library; no responsibility for beng involved; nevertheless, lie about underfunding, deprive citizens of the Cybermobile; transfer squirrelled away money not to what it was intended for, but for what they choose it for. I know once the Library "dept." gets its budget, State Education Dept. rules say they can spend it as they choose. However, since it's obvious they are not responsble enough to handle 12 months worth of funds all at once, maybe they should be given funds on a monthly or quarterly basis AFTER they show where the money is going, and have to stick to it.
What really troubles me is, if form holds, all will be forgotten and no one will be held to task for the most costly foul-up in the history of this town.
And, if one, like me for example, is critical of the library construction project, he/me will be labelled anti-library/education.
Since it's clear the local newspapers touch lightly (the Journal News not at all) on this systemic abortion, and since this blog has Feiner "right or wrong" supporters, the rest of us need to organize so as to avoid a repeat of the construction crisis in the future, AND the punishment of the culprits of this one.
Hey Ed, when Kolesar told you about the $250,000 notice of claim (and we all know he was the one who told you), did he also tell you what it was for? The last time Kolesar leaked information, it was because he mistakenly thought the state grants the library was receiving could be used to reduce the $19.8 million bond. It turned out the grants could only be awarded if the full $19.8 million was spent, and Kolesar looked pretty damn foolish in those memos he wrote and leaked not knowing that basic fact.
Geez, if he didn't know something as basic as that, and created quite a ruckus to boot, one wonders what else this person in charge of the town's $70 million budget doesn't also know? Sure doesn't give us taxpayers much confidence in the guy.
Here, a notice of claim means a claim for money that the town has thus far not agreed to pay.
It would be helpful if you'd get Kolesar to tell you the rest of the story on this one -- like why the town has refused to pay -- so we can see whether you've really got a point or whether you and he will instead end up with egg on your face for this one too.
Why are you blaming Kolesar. Have you ever heard of FOIL.
Well you can get any type of information in a timely manner for any FOIL question you demand.
What makes you think that there was a leak.
We the public have the right to question anything we like from anyone at town hall in fact anywhere.
So please think again before you accuse someone of leaking information.
I"m sure the grant money was a question that was asked of the people that give out the taxpayers money in the form of a grant and those that asked the question did receive the answer that it could be used toward the library so that the residents would not be paying more taxes for the latest work that cannot be completed because of lack of funds.
Kolesar is doing a great job,not like the two previous comptrollers,who in fact covered up all the illegal things done by a certain department head.
What is wrong with certain people in this town they always want to be right.
Well I think it's time to wake up and smell the flowers that changes will have to be made and by the way are being made to bring some honest government to this town.
Kolesar keep pushing the board will understand from where you are coming from real soon.
.
FOIL? Are you kidding? Krauss has been playing FOIL-footsie with the town all summer long trying to get stuff Kolesar tells him about, but to hear Krauss tell it, the town isn't honoring the requests, which is why Kolesar went over the heads of town officials and leaked the stuff he wanted leaked.
Dear "Foil Footsie",
The notice of claim goes back to an unexplained item on papers from Triton dated March/April 2008 and made public at the Work Sessions at which they appeared.
It was then discussed at Town Board work sessions wrongfully under the Executive Session privilege. However, at those sessions, it had not yet become a notice of claim and thus the Town had no business treating it as confidential.
Another citizen recently FOILED for the notice of claim and it became public just last week when the Town Attorney acknowledged its existence. It is a delay claim from the firm that did the demolition work alleging that the Town (Al Regula) and the Architect (Beatty, Harvey) did not supply required information to do their job in a timely manner.
Whether the claim has merits or not is at this stage still undetermined.
However, the only part that the Town Comptroller, Mike Kolesar, had to play in this matter is that he did what good accountants do -- he insisted that the full amount of the claim be set aside and not spent until the matter becomes settled. What if the Town spends the $256,000 and then found that it had to pay this claim?
It is always interesting to me how anonymous bloggers want to blame every release of embarrassing information to the Town Board upon Kolesar. Whom do you suppose would be so concerned?
Thanks Samis for setting the record straight.
Some people are always ready to blame others for their small brains.
They should attend meetings to see what goes on instead of putting the blame on Kolesar for leaking out confidential matters.
I heard what Kolesar had said that day at the work session where he stated that a claim was in place and money should be set aside just in case.
This idiot should attend the meetings and then see who is trying to set the records and town on a straight path.
Thanks Kolesar, Krauss and Samis also deserve plenty of kudos for not letting the matter go byebye.
Dear anonymous at 4:27,
It is rare when I thank anonymous.
However I think that this is a fitting occasion to do so because, frankly, the anonymous blogger from the dark side reads like none other than Town Councilman Francis Sheehan continuing in the vein of what others have described as "sheehanigans".
Any anyone else reaching a similar conclusion can't be all bad.
Unlike Hal Samis, I don't know WHO 8/24 11PM and 8/25 10:34 AM are, but I do know WHAT they are: POSTERIOR CAVITIES of the first order. And everyone knows G-d gave each of us a posterior cavity, so they are superfluous.
No, Mike Kolesar did not inform me about the Notice of Claim. No it wasn't "leaked" to me. No my complaint about the Town's handling of my FOIL request was justified since they-read Town Clerk- either created her own set of rules or was pressured by members of the board to do so. By the way, the end result of my Foil, proved that each and every member of the board andthe enabling Town (BOARD) Attorney, lied about not knowing about the reasons why Mike Kolesar thought the Budget committee's conclusion that taxes would go up 17% was light.
You, one or both, must be the blogger who chided me on how to FOIL and/or whether the information I requested was FOILABLE. You were wrong then and you're "wronger" now.
The Father of E=Mc², said, "the WISE man even when he holds his tongue. says more than the FOOL when he speaks."
If you don't know what the #!@* you're talking about, shut the #!@* up.
And it will be a sad day in Greenburgh when we lose as gifted a comptroller as Mike Kolesar.
I know it's only a handful of agenda-driven miscreatns who are trying their darndest to get him fired, make him uncomfortable enough to quit, or defend himself like I know he can.
The bottom line, however, is we're going to be sued and we're not even smart enough to counter-sue the real cuprits, Architect Harvey, and Construction Manager
Triton. When one reads the Claim, the guilty party jumps right off the page.
Everybody knows the library project was murdered(in cold blood), it doesn't take a Stuyvesant-educated 157 IQ t know who done it.
So Mr./Ms.8/24 11PM we'll see who eats crow.
CLUE #1, it won't be me.
And, I hope the crow doesn't agree with you to the extent EMS has to be called to extract the feathers from your smart-ass mouth...and the veil of secrecy will reveal a very small man in need of he Wizard of Oz.
Ed, so what exactly were the reasons that Kolesar thought the 17% tax hike forecast for next year was, as you put it, "light"?
Wasn't that the point of your FOIL requests? To find that out? Yet somehow with all your anger you can't seem to figure out how to tell us.
That tells us plenty about you and about Kolesar too. No shortage of blowhards in this town, that's for sure.
8/25 8:30 PM. I took the time and effort, as well as cost to find something out.
I DID!
If you want that information, FOIL youself.
If you don't know how, ask the Clerk.
I am not your researcher. And what is your prediliction with me and Mike?
Get a new target, or be a F--Ken man-if at all possible- and come out from behind the anonymity curtain.
But, "midgets" like you bite, scratch and stab in the back...never a "face the enemy" approach.
The only "blowhard" in this scenario is you, you powder puff.
That Krauss is one odd duck. He spends money (!) to find out why his good friend Kolesar thinks the 17% tax hike is too "light," spends lots of time on this blog telling us how angry he us (but curiously not about that), but never once tells us what he learned about that issue for all his time and effort. That, he says, is for him to know and the rest of us to find out. Tell us Krauss, if it's all a secret, why did you bother to find out in the first place? Is it because if you disclosed what you learned, you might embarrass your friend Kolesar even more? Gotta admit, it sure looks like that.
Gee Ed, you accuse the town board of lying about not knowing the reasons why Kolesar thinks the projected 17% tax hike for next year is too low, but when asked the reasons, you say they're none of our business, we should FOIL them ourselves. Maybe you should put the information up on Ebay, and see if you get any takers. In the meantime, it's difficult to see how anyone can take you seriously about anything.
Kolesar has said right along that there was something wrong with the book keeping. Have you not been attending or listening to the work sessions.
He is laying the problem on the line as to not surprise us for next years tax hike.
This present tax hike was presented before he came to town hall . There is no way in hell that he could remedy all the wrong doings of the town board and some department heads.
So far nothing is adding up.
Why blame Kolesar when we had two town comptrollers who had to try to solve problems counting with there fingers.
If you check back the money problems of the town you have to go back to one comptroller named Nora and then the famous one Stellato.
Now we have one person who cares and you are trying to put the blame on his shoulders for where the town has been going for years and that was down hill.
We have to fall down before we can get up.
We have fallen and we need help to get up and that helper whether you approve or disapprove is Kolesar.
Mark Stellato was a former town planning commissioner. Feiner fired him for doing his job. His replacement, Tom Madden, is in way over his head. Nora McAvoy, a former town comptroller, left her job in Greenburgh in 2003, nearly five years ago. Difficult to blame her for Greenburgh's problems in 2008, but that's what Feiner tells his people to do. Blame his critics. Ms.McAvoy's successor, Ann Marie Berg, was quoted in the New York Times that she couldn't work with Feiner because of his poor management style. Berg is no slouch. She's president of the state council of municipal comptrollers.
Sorry our troubles started not yesterday but many years ago.
Check the latest work session and maybe you will be enlightened as to what people are writing.
Coverups after coverups.
We need maybe two or three Kolesars to help with the situation.
The books speak for themselves.
No one wants to know the mistakes that they made but boy can they blame everyone else.
Attend the work sessions or listen to them on cable and see what Kolesar is up against.
The courts are in trouble. Two judges want to do the right thing one doesn't. There is no harmony in this town for everyone to work together to straighten things out.
So who has to be the miracle man Kolesar.
Look at the whole picture before you pass judgement on this man.
He is trying to do his job but there are many obstacles getting in his way.
Yes the obsticles ar Sheehan and Juettner for starters.
They just don't want anyone to see all the errors that were made to spend so much of tax money foolishly.
All the plans that were passed none of which served the public without costing a good penny.
Did we need all these extra expenses NO.
Whatever was wanted by some department heads was granted without the publics full input.
The center ,housing authority,Lois Bronz center,the parks and rec. and the Dpw.
Where did all the money that was given to these people go.
What does the town have to balance what was taken in,what was granted and above all what was spent.
Nothing seems to add up.
Can one say that there is a good coverup and that the records do not balance out.
Mismanagement and misjudgement have contributed to a total mess that needs not one or two comptrollers to try to find a solution to many of the questions being asked by the public.
How can the town consolidate the absence of meetings for the month of August when they resume in September.
Don't you think that more time should be alloted to the speakers to express their views concerning the happenings and nonhappenings in this town.
After a months' absence the meeting should be allowed to be extended to after eleven oclock.
Paul you have covered many posts on the blog that need to be brought forth at the fist meeting in September.
More time will be needed .
amen. juettner and sheehan are wrong for greenburgh.
the two of them are holdovers from the tax and spend era that we thought was washed away years ago.
sheehan is no public servant. when the sewer district problem was brought to his attention, he arrogantly told him if he was wrong he would have to pay for the audit. This showed sheehanigan arrogance - a wise and judidious response would have said lets audit a few parcels and see what it tells us. Clueless Juettner of course did nothing.
The sewer district guy then went to the State Comptroller who found the Town had screwed up every which way.
2009 cannot come soon enough to get rid of these two drags.
The problem with Sheehan isn't tax and spend. It is that he is the king of cover-up. He never admits anything, instead he makes speeches to divert attention, and he blames others. He won't let anything out either. He must go if we are ever to learn anything about the town's problems.
Dear 8/26 11:41 AM,
Me thinks you have it wrong when you write "Two judges want to do the right thing one doesn't."
One Judge wants to do the right thing and two want to cover it up.
Sorry two judges are for the audit by the towns auditors while the third is against.
Check the last work session.
2009 - time to end sheehanigans.
With all due respect, the Town's problems aren't solely the province of Sheehan and Juettner. The only full-time member of the Town Board is the Supervisor. For many years (read 1992 to 2003) the Town Board relied on the Supervisor for everything. Votes were consistently 5-0 and there was little, if any, dissent.
The whirlwind we are reaping now had its seeds sown in that era.
Feiner must accept responsiblity and join Juettner and Sheehan as former Town Board members.
The time has come for honest, unbiased professional management. To reach that goal ALL of the current cast of incompetents must go.
A clean slate in 2009!
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