WPCNR WHITE PLAINS WEEK NEWS ROUNDUP. March 13, 2005: Last week was highlighted by a quartet of blockbuster stories that will have ongoing ramifications over the next two months as the City grapples with the 2005-2006 budget and watches the mail daily for sales tax receipts. In the news last week –

The Common Council Meeting March 7 brought the sad announcement from Councilman Robert Greer that he was suffering from Lou Gehrig’s disease. Greer said he would serve on the Council as long as he was able.

Also making news in that meeting was Louis Cappelli who said he would build his 42 units of affordable housing anywhere in the city the council selected except in his 221 Main Street hotel-condoplex, citing the financial reality that the units cost him $450 a square foot to build and could only be sold for $250 a square foot. Cappelli’s offer took the pressure off the Ginsburg Development Corporation Pinnacle project and put it on the Common Council which has expressed distaste for the affordable units being built at 240 Main Street adjacent the planned The Pinnacle Tower.

The City also approved a new scoreboard from Pepsi Cola for Ebersole Rink in exchange for Pepsi products being sold exclusively in the snack, opening up the possibilities of more corporate revenue donations.

WPCNR learned over the weekend from informed sources that the City Planning Department has told developers of condominiums on Hale Avenue and DeKalb Avenues alongside Maple Avenue that those developments are not subject to the Common Council’s 6% affordable housing setaside provision. The reason is they are on the other side of the Central Business District border where the provision applies. Meanwhile negotiations on how those projects are going to look are ongoing with the neighborhood. (Hearings were postponed into April).

In the Schools…

The Board of Education Announced it had trimmed the preliminary school budget $1.3 Million and presented the budget at this time as coming in at $154.8. No new programs have been adopted. The School Tax Increase is at 9.91%, adding $576 to the typical home which is assessed at $15,500. 

At the Annual Budget Committee meeting, the ABC Committee was outspoken in challenging the Board of Education to involve them earlier in the school budget construction, instead of always having to tell the Board what to cut. The ABC Committee also called for an explanation of how development was going to help the school district in the long term. Councilwoman Rita Malmud agreed with the Superintendent of Schools, Tim Connors, that a study was needed by an independent source to discover the relationship between sales tax, certrioraris and residence property taxes.

The White Plains Women’s Basketball team staged a proud run for the Class AA State Basketball Championship losing in the last second. The women of WPHS hoopsters completed the best season of any WPHS Women’s basketball team in the school’s history.

The White Plains High School and Middle School orchestras and the WPHS band presented a splendid winter concert impressing the parentes with their virtuosity.

In Health…

On the White Plains Week television program on White Plains Public Access Television Friday evening, ((it can be viewed again Monday at 7 on Channel 76) Jon Schandler, the President and CEO of White Plains Hospital Center announced the hospital was going to double the size of its emergency room by expanding up one floor, in response to its volume created by the closings of St. Agnes Hospital and United Hospital in Port Chester.

Schandler said the hospital was filled most days, and it would be embarking on an expansion plan to increase its capacity to meet current needs and was studying the population growth in downtown White Plains to determine how much to expand.

That plan he said would involve transformation of the existing structures and shifting of departments elsewhere and would not involve taking land surrounding the hospital. He said the hospital had raised $25 Million towards that planned expansion. He cited state cuts in medicare payments as the biggest health threat to health consumers.  He also announced his hospital was solvent and profitable.

In Police and Fire News…

The White Plains Department of Public Safety activated its own website at www.cityofwhiteplains.com. Access it by clicking on “City Services” and then clicking on “Public Safety”

In Government News…

WPCNR has learned from Norma Drummond, Deputy Commissioner of Planning for Westchester County that 55 U.S. Senators oppose shifting administration of Community Development Block Grants to the U.S. Department of Congress from HUD. Drummond told WPCNR that it looked as if that shift was not going to happen. How the program will be funded is another question. White Plains organizations receiving community development grants were told two weeks ago there was a strong possibility they would lose all block grant funding.