Northern Westchester

Knollwood Country Club’s Mike Miller of Brewster hits out of the trap at the 10th hole during the quarterfinal round of the Metropolitan Golf Association’s 108th Met Amateur Championship at Quaker Ridge Golf Club in Scarsdale July 30, 2010. Miller lost to Cameron Wilson of the Shorehaven Golf Club, 1 up in Match Play.

Attorney James E. Johnson, the court-appointed monitor in Westchester’s fair housing/False Claims Act case, will appear in an Editorial Spotlight interview 11 a.m. Wednesday on LoHud.com.

Over the next seven years, Westchester must build 750 units of affordable housing, most of them in overwhelmingly white communities that have long shunned or discouraged such housing. The obligation arises from a consent degree brokered last year by the Spano administration and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and approved by the U.S. District Court. HUD entered the case after the nonprofit Anti-Discrimination Center of New York, a fair housing group, successfully argued in a lawsuit that Westchester had failed to discharge its fair housing obligations, despite accepting millions of dollars in federal funds and pledging that it had.

Under the agreement, the county must affirmatively market the units in Westchester and nearby communities with large non-white populations, though the housing will be available to all income-eligible populations. Johnson recently told the federal court that the county’s most recent plan for implementing terms of the consent decree “falls short of a true plan to comply with either the stipulation’s specific terms or its overarching goal of building a more integrated Westchester.”

Watch the interview at www.lohud.com/editorialspotlight; to submit a question during the interview, engage the CoverItLive feature on the right side of your screen.

Beascakes Bakery  of Armonk wants denizens of northern Westchester to get in the mood to celebrate their neighbor and former first daughter’s wedding tomorrow.

By partaking in the bakery’s offerings of Petit Astor  wedding cakes (the wedding is being held at the Astor Estate in Rhinebeck), you will also be  donating to a good cause.

The  4-inch cakes, available tomorrow through Aug.7, will go for $6.95 a pop and all but $1.50 will go to the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund, said owner  Julie Dickens. So what are you waiting for?  Make a bee-line for Beascakes!

Here’s the bakery’s spiel:

Armonk—On Saturday, July 31st, the display window in the Beascakes Bakery will be elegantly dressed with Petit Astor wedding cakes, commemorating the marriage between Chelsea Clinton and Marc Mezvinsky.  These miniature wedding cakes have been exclusively designed by Beascakes  Bakery as a way for northern Westchester friends and neighbors to share in a “taste” of the joyous occasion.

“The Clintons are our neighbors, and the most celebrated family in northern Westchester,” says Julie Dickens, owner of Beascakes Bakery.  “We see them around town, and are so delighted for the family.  I created the Petit Astor cakes as a way for the local residents to share in the happiness of  the day while giving a gift back to a more global cause that is close to the heart of the Clinton family.”

The Petit Astor cake is a four inch gold cake covered with white fondant accented with pink butter cream flowers and swiss dots.  Each cake is served on a gold plate

The celebration continues in Westchester all week…. the Petit Astor wedding cake will be on available beginning Saturday, July 31 – Saturday, August 7.  Beascakes Bakery will honor the newlyweds as a “slice” of the proceeds from the Petit Astor cakes will be donated the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund.

Beascakes is a “country chic” bakery offering quality products and services.

Beascakes Bakery  (www.beascakes.com)  is located at Armonk Town Center at 575 N. Main Street in Armonk, New York 914.273.3612

The Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission nailed down their cases against former North Salem Supervisor Paul Greenwood Thursday, a day after he pleaded guilty to federal criminal charges of securities fraud.

As part of the settlement, the SEC was granted a permanent injunction prohibiting Greenwood from violating securities laws. Greenwood will have to repay his victims and pay penalties.

The CFTC injunction was entered on Wednesday and permanently bars Greenwood from trading commodity futures and options contracts. The amounts he will have to pay back and penalties will be determined later. A receiver has been liquidating his assets and is working on a distribution plan for the former investors in Greenwood’s businesses.

Greenwood admitted to taking tens of millions of dollars for himself and lying to investors to try to hide losses. The criminal charges and civil cases were filed in February 2009. His business partner, Stephen Walsh, still faces six charges.

Katonah-Lewisboro Superintendent Robert Roelle is resigning, effective March 1, 2011, the district announced today.

The school board accepted Roelle’s resignation at its July 29 meeting.

Michael Gordon, the school board president, expressed the board’s “deep appreciation for Dr. Roelle’s outstanding service to the district,” according to the news release.

“Given Dr. Roelle’s long and distinguished career, we completely understand his decision to pursue other interests, and we wish him well,” Gordon said in the statement.

Roelle became interim superintendent on July 1, 2007 and then the permanent superintendent a year later.

The district has already started the process of looking for a new superintendent, Gordon said.

Laura Cleare of Yonkers, and her sons Dante 10, left, and Xavier, 7, were among the over 100 people who attended a public hearing tonight on Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino’s decision to cut funding for child care at the Westchester County Center in White Plains. Photo by Seth Harrison

Look for the story at Lohud.com and in tomorrow’s edition of The Journal News. View additional photos from the public hearing on child care cuts.

After more than 10 years and countless test wells, the Croton Falls Water District has switched on two new wells flowing with clean water to supply homes and businesses in Croton Falls.

North Salem Supervisor Warren Lucas said the tests so far show radiologicals at levels a tenth that of Perrier and other fancy bottled water. Radiologicals forced the closure of the water district’s old wells but it took years to find a clean source.

The Westchester County Health Department is expected to inspect the wells in the next few days, Lucas said.

Some drainage work is still to be done around the new well field off Mahopac Avenue.

Instructor Brandon Durham leads a cardio kickbox class at Premier Martial Arts, July 29, 2010 in Bedford Hills. ( Tania Savayan / The Journal News )

Click here to check out more cardio kickbox class photos.

The Chappaqua School Board just put out this statement:

July 29, 2010

School District Concerns Heightened Over Latest Chappaqua Crossing Proposal

On August 10, the New Castle Town Board (“the Town”) and the Chappaqua Central School District (“CCSD”) Board of Education will be meeting in joint session prior to our regularly scheduled Board of Education meeting that evening.  On the agenda will be a discussion of the proposed development of the former Reader’s Digest property by Summit Greenfield (“SG”).

Prior to our meeting with the Town on August 10, we would wish to make two points clear to the community:

One, the CCSD Board of Education speaks for the District.  While we recognize and appreciate that the Town Board is the lead agency on this application for zoning change, the CCSD taxpayers will be bearing potentially significant financial risk if this application is approved as submitted.  The CCSD Board of Education appreciates the community’s concerns with any increase in our budget during these difficult economic times.  We believe we have an obligation to make known the financial risks of this project and the possible effects on the District’s taxpayer as school taxes account for 65-70% of their property taxes. (more…)

When he pleaded guilty to securities fraud and other charges, a total of six counts, on Wednesday, former North Salem Supervisor Paul Greenwood provided some details to the judge on how his investment companies got into trouble and admitted misleading investors.

Accounts from the Associated Press and New York City newspapers describe the scene in Federal District Court in Manhattan.

According to the AP, Greenwood said he told investors he and his business partner, Stephen Walsh, were putting their money in low-risk investments but instead put a big slice of funds into a company that failed.

“We ended up losing a lot of money,” Greenwood said.

He said he initially thought the partners could make back the lost money through other investments but later realized that was not possible “and we continued to do it” for a long time, the AP reported.

“As time went on the hole got bigger and bigger,” Greenwood said.

He also admitted taking millions to support a lavish lifestyle, the Daily News reported. The Post reported he had admitted he knew he was committing a crime, saying it was a “sort of” Ponzi scheme.

Greenwood pleaded guilty to the charges and agreed to cooperate with the government in exchange for a letter from prosecutors to the sentencing judge outlining his cooperation.

More on the story is available here and in Thursday’s Journal News.