Northern Westchester

Don’t even think about getting too serious about the Purim story—especially if you are heading to the annual show at Bet Torah synagogue in Mount Kisco, which is Saturday (a PG-rated verson)  and Sunday (two G-rated versions for family audiences).

The theatrical rendition tells the story of saving the Jewish people in the Persian empire and the tale has been told through songs and good humor at Bet Torah for 20 years.  Each year the show has a different theme.

The enthusiastic show masters are busy rehearsing for this year’s show “Purim Goes Hollywood, Take Three” which means it is the third adaptaion of the play with a Hollywood theme.  It is written and directed by professional actress and director Alynne Amkraut Krull.  She had help from Wendy Goodman Maller, Daniel Baitch and Meryl Schechtman. (We just bet that Krull has done some quick rewriting to include a reference to Angelina Jolie’s right leg  at this year’s Oscar presentation.)

The show includes live music, skits, silly jokes and bright costumes.  Read this week’s Express publication for a story on putting together this annual production.

The Men’s Club will be hosting a Passover wine tasting with hors d’oeuvres and dessert at 7:30 p.m.  Saturday (suggestion donation $18) and there will be two family shows at 10 and 11:30 a.m. on Sunday. The Purim carnival starts at 11 a.m. Reservations for the Saturday show are suggested, but not required. Contact mensclubpresident@bettorah.org

Bet Torah is at 60 Smith Avenue, Mount Kisco.

Here is the statement from the DOT commissioner on the cancellation of the plan to install seven traffic-monitoring towers as high as 120 feet along the Saw Mill Parkway from Hawthorne to Chappaqua. The plan had generated widespread opposition from residents and officials:

STATEMENT FROM NEW YORK STATE DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION COMMISSIONER JOAN MCDONALD

Since 2005, the New York State Department of Transportation has been planning for an intelligent transportation system communications network to monitor and manage traffic on commuter routes in Westchester County. The project includes a wireless communications system. Part of the communications system could entail communications towers. At this point in time, NYSDOT has decided not to install communications towers along the Saw Mill River Parkway.

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The superintendent of the Chappaqua School District will propose a 2012-13 budget Tuesday night that increases spending 0.68 percent from this year and increases total property taxes collected by 2.11 percent. The budget proposal, which would cut staff by 10 positions, would mark the fourth year of relative austerity in response to the poor economic situation and, starting this year, the state-imposed tax cap.

Tonight’s meeting will be at 8:15 p.m. at Horace Greeley High School, 70 Roaring Brook Road, Chappaqua. The budget presentation is available by clicking here.

The total proposed budget is $112,202,888, up $754,400. But some of the numbers that will go into the final budget are still unknown.

The budget includes the elimination of almost five full-time-equivalant teaching positions (cuts are often made a part of a position at a time) and 4.5 teaching assistants. On the block are 1.4 music teacher positions. The initial projection for the spending increase required to roll over this year’s programs intact was 3.32 percent.

The budget now goes to the Board of Education, which will meet on the budget each Tuesday in March and adopt a budget on April 10.

 

The Concerned Citizens of Armonk is inviting the public to attend the “CVS Public Hearing” at the Zoning Board of Appeals on March 1st at 8 p.m.

The following letter was sent out by Charlene Jacobi, president of the group, and the owner of the Town Center Pharmacy:

Concerned Citizens launched the “Main Street Not Chain Street” campaign to help protect and enhance our downtown. We brought this appeal because the building permit for CVS was issued in violation of the Town’s zoning law and without an opportunity for public review and comment. Had the CVS project been subject to the appropriate reviews, there would have been an opportunity for the public to participate and to request a variety of improvements to the property that would enhance the environment and character of Armonk. A full review would also allow consideration as to whether a big-box national retailer is appropriate for the hamlet.

Make your voice heard at the ZBA meeting and let them know that all businesses must abide by the Town’s laws and be subject to review before such a major new use is established in the town.

 

 

 

A meeting this week billed as “Occupy Main Street” won’t be  a protest, but a rally to generate support for businesses in Mount Kisco, says Sarah O’Grady. She and friend Maria Colaso are hosting the  public discussion Wednesday at the Mount Kisco Public Library.

The gathering is intended to bring together shoppers, residents,  business owners, landlords and village leaders.

“It’s a grassroots effort to get people and businesses to occupy our towns,” said O’Grady, a copywriter and marketing consultant in Mount Kisco.

She  said Mount Kisco has a 10 percent retail vacancy rate—  and the goal is to encourage people to shop locally, merchants to open shops in Mount Kisco with the support of landlords and village leaders.

The meeting won’t be about politics, O’ Grady said,  but about how to create awareness and action about invigorating Mount Kisco’s business district.

It’s at 7 p.m. at the library at 100 E. Main Street.  For more information, go to the group’s facebook page.

 

UPDATE: TODAY’S EDITORIAL SPOTLIGHT with ASSEMBLYWOMAN AMY PAULIN, etc., HAS BEEN CANCELED; Assemblywoman Paulin requested a postponement to attend to business in Albany . We will UPDATE when it is RESCHEDULED..

The Editorial Board has plans a couple interviews this week, and you can join the discussions via CoverItLive. Just look for the live chat to the right of your screen when you watch the Editorial Spotlight interviews at lohud.com/editorialspotlight. Here’s what’s coming up:

TUESDAY:  State Assemblywoman Paulin, D-Scarsdale, discusses New York’s need to update its regulations for animal shelters and the care and handling of stray, lost and homeless animals in a LIVE Editorial Spotlight interview at 1:30 p.m. on LoHud.com. Paulin has suffered recent criticism for proposed legislation (A. 5449A) that she says aims to protect lost, stray or homeless animals by partnering with animal rescue organizations, but some animal activists say gives shelters license to kill. Also joining the discussion: Nancy Perry of the ASPCA and Jane Hoffman of the Mayor’s Alliance for NYC’s Animals.

WEDNESDAY: Representatives of the Independent Oil and Gas Association of New York share their views on proposed new regulations for high-volume hydraulic fracturing — a controversial method for extracting natural gas from deep within the earth — in a LIVE Editorial Spotlight interview at 11 a.m. on LoHud.com. Participating are: Nancy Schmitt, president and co-founder of Taum Sauk Capital Management, who has more than 30 years’ experience in the energy business; and John A Conrad, president and senior hydrogeologist, Conrad Geoscience, which provides environmental services for the public and private sectors, including the energy industry.

To watch the interviews, go to www.lohud.com/editorialspotlight; to comment or ask a question during the interviews, engage the “CoverItLive” feature on the computer screen.

AND A REMINDER! The first of two public hearings on the Tappan Zee Bridge Hudson River Crossing Project takes place from 4 to 9 p.m. Tuesday at the Palisades Center mall in West Nyack, in the fourth-floor Adler Room. A second hearing is scheduled for 4 to 9 p.m. Thursday at the Westchester Marriott Hotel, Grand Ballroom, 670 White Plains Road, Greenburgh. The project, scaled back from a decade-long plan to overhaul the entire Interstate 287 corridor, now just focuses on a four-mile stretch that includes the 56-year-old overtaxed Tappan Zee Bridge. This week’s hearings address the environmental impacts of the project. Still to be solved: the funding puzzle for a project expected to cost $5.2 billion, and when and how mass transit will come to the corridor. Visit thenewtzb.com to find out more.

The administration at Northern Westchester Hospital is backing the two nurses involved in the mess with Douglas Kennedy and his newborn son.

The hospital, in a statement issued today,  says patient safety is their priority and they are backing the two nurses—Anna Margaret Lane and Cari Maleman Luciano – who say that Kennedy kicked and grabbed them as they tried to prevent him from leaving the hospital with his two-day old child for some fresh air.

“We completely support the actions of our nursing staff in this case as they were clearly acting out of concern for the safety of the newborn baby,” Mark Vincent, a spokesman for the hospital, said in a statement.

The hospital’s support comes after Fox News chief, Roger Ailes, backed Kennedy and characterized him as an honest man and a great father.

“In my view, the real moral of this story should be don’t try to grab a baby from the arms of a loving father,” Ailes said.

The president of Fox News is defending Douglas Kennedy in the aftermath of the baby scandal at a Westchester hospital.

Roger Ailes, the head of Fox News, said Kennedy, a reporter for Fox, is a “great father” who tells the truth. Ailes said he’s known Douglas and his wife Molly for 15 years.

“He tells the truth and his calm and gentle demeanor always impressed me,” Ailes said in a statement. ”He is the definition of a great father and it is a role he cherishes over all others. I support Douglas as do the independent  eyewitness accounts of the event. It is unfortunate that what appears to be a father’s defensive maneuver to protect his newborn baby has been twisted because of his famous name. In my view, the real moral of this story should be don’t try to grab a baby from the arms of a loving father.”

Kennedy, son of Robert F. Kennedy, is accused of kicking a maternity ward nurse and grabbing another one at Northern Westchester Hospital in Mount Kisco while trying to take his 2-day-old son, Bo, out for “fresh air.”

The 44-year-old Chappaqua resident is facing a misdemeanor charge of endangering the welfare of a child and two counts of physical harassment, violations, after he was told that he couldn’t take his newborn out of the hospital’s maternity unit, but tried to anyway.

Kennedy and his wife called the allegations “sickening” and hoped Westchester County District Attorney Janet DiFiore would understand that she made “a grave error in making a crime out of a father protecting his baby.”

Read the full story here.

A harassment case involving two school Briarcliff school trustees has been moved from the village of Briarcliff Manor and re-assigned to the town of Lewisboro court, clerks have confirmed on Friday.

Lewisboro Judge Susan Simon is set to hear the case at 7 p.m. March 19.

The judges in Briarcliff Manor recused themselves and the district’s administrative judge handled moving the case. The Briarcliff court was asked to forward its paperwork Feb. 16.

School Trustee Rosella Ranno has said Trustee Sal Maglietta pushed and frightened her in the parking lot last May on school Election Day. Maglietta is facing a second-degree harassment charge, a violation. The two were elected trustees in 2010 and their terms run until 2013.

The Journal News has written several articles on public radio station, WDFH 90.3 FM, in recent  years that have covered its unique programming and its struggle to stay on the dial.

Once again, WDFH may be in peril of shutting down if it does not get the necessary funding, says its founder Marc Sophos. Read below for more information from Sophos on the situation, in addition to the various programs it offers.

1” src=”http://yorktown.lohudblogs.com/files/2012/02/tjndc5-5wakoz716syafdqdfsb_layout1.jpg” alt=”” width=”267” height=”400” />The lower Hudson valley’s only public radio station, WDFH 90.3 FM and online at WDFH.org, is facing shutdown, and its irreplaceable FM broadcast license will be lost unless the community steps up with greatly increased financial support.

“It’s heartbreaking to have brought the station this far and still be teetering on the edge,” said Marc Sophos, the station’s executive director, who founded the station in an effort that began in 1973. Because no FM frequencies were available so close to New York City, that effort took 20 years.

WDFH went on the air in 1995, but it wasn’t until late 2010 that it simultaneously had both a studio for live program production and a signal that could reach a significant number of potential listeners. “We’ve put the pieces into place,” he said. “The stage is set for us to start building a significant following.”

But the station’s signal expansion project, which increased WDFH’s potential audience to 400,000 lower Hudson valley residents, dragged on for over seven years and had consumed most of the nonprofit station’s cash reserve by the time it was completed in 2009. Mr. Sophos said that before the expansion took place, the station could reach only 10,000 residents, and that without the expansion, WDFH would never have become viable.

And so the station has been living hand to mouth. But tax-deductible donations from listeners and other sources have lagged far behind expenses, and what’s left of the cash reserve is quickly running out. Moreover, WDFH belongs to a category of public radio called community radio, typified by volunteer staffing and modest budgets. Many community radio stations, including WDFH, don’t have access to the established funding structures available to mainstream, NPR-type public radio stations.

Taking WDFH’s existing donations into account—including a major donation from an anonymous resident who made it possible for WDFH to lease its current studio space—the cost of running the station is currently $120,000 per year, a tiny fraction of the budget of other public radio stations. The small budget figure is attributable largely to community radio’s volunteer staffing model.

The station’s programming is belied by the modesty of its budget. WDFH regularly invites lower Hudson valley musicians to its performance studio for performances and long-form interviews. Programs like In Focus and Eyes on Westchester provide in-depth coverage of local news. Recovery Talk is the station’s pioneering program that covers recovery from addiction, trauma, illness, domestic violence, combat violence, and more. If WDFH can raise the funding to survive, it plans to launch a new program, For the Greater Good, that will spotlight a different local nonprofit group in a half hour conversation every week.

And last October, WDFH launched a new program, OutCasting, which gives voice to the issues faced by LGBTQ youth, created and hosted by LGBTQ youth and their straight allies. Thought to be the first radio show of its kind in public radio in the United States, OutCasting has attracted some national attention and was covered in a major front page article in The Journal News.

In addition to these local public affairs programs—all of which are available as podcasts through both WDFH.org and iTunes—the station broadcasts a unique mix of rock, folk, blues, and jazz, along with daily news programs from Pacifica (Democracy Now in the morning and Free Speech Radio News in the evening) and carefully selected other public affairs programs from Pacifica and independent producers.

Melinda Battle, a WDFH volunteer and resident of Bedford Corners who hosts Eyes on Westchester, said, “We are all actively chasing ideas to keep the station alive. It’s such a unique gem. I really feel folks just need to realize what an incredible resource it is.”

In WDFH, our region already has what communities across the country struggle to get. Mr. Sophos noted that the FCC is flooded with applications on the rare occasions when it opens a filing window for new broadcast licenses. There is intense competition for virtually every available frequency across the country, and relatively few applications are actually granted.

“We’ve been through that already, and we have the irreplaceable broadcast license. It’s ours to lose, and we hope that the community will step forward to make sure that we don’t lose it.” He added that it is unlikely that another frequency will become available in our area in the future, so if WDFH’s license is lost, there will probably not be another chance for local public radio in the lower Hudson valley.

“I think that Westchester and Rockland have to decide what kind of community they want to be and what kinds of resources will help build that community,” he said. “A lot of people think of our area as just a bedroom for New York City, but actually there’s a lot going on here. A local public radio station can be an amazing and powerful resource that can bridge the gap between the local arts and nonprofit culture and the majority of residents who aren’t in touch with that culture.”

If WDFH is unable to reach its funding goals, the broadcast license will be turned over to another entity, probably a public or religious broadcaster from another state that would eliminate all possibility of local programming.

Vinny Cohan, a resident of Croton-on-Hudson and another longtime WDFH volunteer, said that there are many large-scale philanthropists in the lower Hudson valley and that he hopes that the station will gain their attention. At the same time, he noted, “A thousand people contributing $10 per month would enable us to reach our budget goal for this year.”

If the station can establish funding of $100,000 or more, it can apply for annual grants from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. It could also become eligible for more corporate and foundation grants.

Right now, though, the station isn’t close to that income level, and Mr. Cohan noted that with funds running out, some cutbacks have already been made. “The situation is urgent at this point,” he said. “We have a precious resource in WDFH and it would be a terrible thing to lose it. We hope that the community will step up to the plate.”

Anyone interested in assisting should contact Mr. Sophos at savewdfh@wdfh.org or (914) 674-0900 ext. 58 or visit WDFH.org for other ways to help.

About WDFH

WDFH, Westchester Public Radio, is the lower Hudson Valley’s only local public radio station—a community station run mainly by volunteers. The station is owned by Hudson Valley Community Radio, Inc., a 501©(3) nonprofit organization.

WDFH is an affiliate of the Pacifica Radio Network. It can be heard on the air at 90.3 FM in central and northern Westchester, eastern Rockland, and parts of southern Putnam and far western Connecticut. It can also be heard anywhere online at WDFH.org. Archives of shows are available on the station’s web site and on iTunes (search for “wdfh”). Over the years, WDFH has been covered by The New York Times, WNBC-TV, The Journal News, The Gazette, The Examiner, The Enterprise, Westchester Magazine, the Westchester County Business Journal, and many other news outlets.

Photo of Marc Sophos in the studio taken by TJN.