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EDGEMONT, N.Y. – Greenburgh was on the hot seat Thursday night in Edgemont as concerned civic leaders quizzed town officials on a variety of hot button issues.
Edgemont Community Council president Geoff Loftus spent nearly two hours drilling an 11-member town panel, led by Supervisor Paul Feiner, with questions on everything from the leaf pickup to Greenburgh’s pending legal disputes.
Loftus said afterwards the question-and-answer session inside Edgemont High School yielded plenty of promises and vague responses but little in the way of specific solutions.
“I didn’t learn a single new thing tonight, but I didn’t expect to learn a single new thing,” he said.
More than two dozen community members watched as Loftus and Edgemont civic leaders Bob Bernstein and Marc Ackerman led a sometimes spirited open forum that began with lengthy questions on the controversial Dromore Road zoning maps.
Later, topics shifted to NextG’s wireless application and the likelihood of a property revaluation in the near future.
Feiner, who spent much of the session as the target of Loftus’ questions, said he hoped these types of meetings would help bring the community together.
“In order to have the best possible community, we need to work together,” he said. “We can’t be at each other’s throats.”
In response to the inquiries, the supervisor pledged Greenburgh would fill recently deceased Edgemont resident Steven Belasco’s seat on the Zoning Board of Appeals with another Edgemont resident.
Feiner also said the town continues to take steps toward a revaluation and is considering joining forces with Yonkers to cut down on costs. Town representatives said too they soon would have a plan for improvements to the water district.
After the session, Feiner said while he will never win over some critics, he hoped the average person left the meeting with a better understanding of what the town board was doing.
As the supervisor packed up his things to head home, a resident who had been watching the meeting from the back of the room walked down the stairs to where Feiner was standing.
“I don’t agree with everything you do, but I think your heart is in the right place,” he told the supervisor.
“See,” Feiner said, “that was my goal tonight. I’m hoping some people who were unsure about what the town is doing walk away and say ‘the town is really trying.’ ”
Comments (4)
How is Paul going to expect the community to "work together" when he openly and very publicly gave away town money (WestHelp proceeds) to the Mayfair-Knollwood Civic Association, the Fairview Fire District and the Valhalla School District? Among the indefensible arguments that he used to supposrt the decision was that this is what Edward "Ned" McCormack and the civic association wanted. As I asked him then and now, since when does a non-elected person decide how town money gets spent? Where was the togehterness in that decision? If he really wanted to work together, he would have found a town-wide purpose for that money, like our cash-strapped library.
And, to this day he still defends his decision on WestHelp, despite rulings from the State Comptroller and NYS courts that concluded that it was wrong to do what he did.
Now the town is spending more money to recover the $1.8 million that Valhalla has to repay. If Paul Feiner wants to foster togetherness, he should first admit that he was wrong regarding the WestHelp decision and apologize to the people of Greenburgh. The other town board members who voted to give this money away have admitted they were wrong. It's time for you to do the same Mr. Feiner.
-Terry Williams
feiner may not be at edgemont's throats but he certainly is picking their wallet
2.5 million dollars reserved for the fortress bible case! where is that $ coming from ? feiner and juettner who were behind this outrage should pay it themselves.
the water department disaster - again, the supervisor was busy with the tappan zee bridge and not governing greenburgh
hundreds of thousands lost because feiner walked away from westhelp lease renewal
the theodore young community center - thats a county facility and should not be paid for by unincorporated greenburgh and esp edgemont who covers 23% of the town's tax bill
leaf pickup, dromore, failure to digitalize property records so a townwide reassessment cannot be done - all more evidence of feiner's 20 year reign of error.
feinerist government is the poster child for edgemont incorporation.
meant to say - digitize
Crane Pond crosswalk/speed bump update?