WPCNR COMMON COUNCIL CHRONICLE-EXAMINER. From WPCNR Correspondents. September 10, 2007, UPDATED September 11, 2006 12:40 PM: The monthly Common Council meeting Monday evening, otherwise known as "Common Council Theatre,"  scheduled to be telecast live on Channel 75, WPGA-TV., was not available in cable-connected homes due to an unidentified problem within the Cablevision system according to Gary Stukes, speaking for the White Plains Public Access Television.

Stukes said the cablecast studio was not receiving the signal from City Hall and the problem was somewhere in the Cablevision system. Stukes said at 8:45 P.M. Monday evening  the that meeting was video taped and will be cablecast  at 7 PM Tuesday evening on Channel 75. A slide announcing the outage WPCNR was told was put up by about 9 P.M.

White Plains CitizeNetReporters at the meeting said viewers not in attendance missed a lively pre-Democratic Primary  Council session which saw the 1133 Westchester Avenue Hotel proposal proposed by developer Robert Weisz kept open until October, The BID Hearing on new BID expansion of boundaries was held over, and the Sales Tax proposal tabled. Streets on the Greenway were demapped, but not without controversy over what the demapping actually meant.

They saw the Mayor's one half per cent sales tax proposal tabled because it was not clear whether Assemblyman Adam Bradley would carry the bill to the legislature. During this session on the sales tax proposal, the discussion wandered to the affordable housing proposal of the Common Council to increase the affordable unit set aside to 10%.

Time for City to Open the Books and Give Some Numbers Bradley Demands

Meanwhile in another part of town, WPCNR encountered Assemblyman Adam Bradley at a benefit event, who volunteered to WPCNR that he would not carry the sales tax/hotel tax bill until the city gave him specific projections over the years ahead of what expected defined deficits it needed the increased sales tax receipts to cover.  Bradley has been stating this for the last four months, having first stated it on White Plains Week, the city newsroundup show this spring.

The Mayor has estimated the 1/2% increase in the sales tax would bring the city $10 Million. The 3%Occupancy Tax the Mayor also proposes (applicable to hotels in the city), part of the same resolution would raise from $500,000 to $635,000 .  The Council had no trouble with the Occupancy Tax, passing it unanimously.

Bradley repeated to WPCNR tonight "I can't get the legislature to approve a sales tax increase unless I can justify the need for it." WPCNR  calculates that the $10 Million (in perpetuity)  would fund a very nice labor settlement with city workers in 2008-2009 going into the Mayoral election of 2009, and neatly replace the $6 Million and approximately $2 Million in one time only land sales used to plug the 2006-2007 budget, if the legislature would enact the measure this  budget year (07-08).

Our correspondents indicated that the common council persons for the most part said the sales tax increased depended upon Mr. Bradley's cooperation. WPCNR wants to review the tape to see, if indeed the Democratic council was hanging the sales tax increase albatross around Mr. Bradley's neck.

Affordable Housing Advocates Call for Raising Income Eligibility Ceiling

Former Councilman Bill Brown (an affordable housing developer,  who announced he is completing his 42-unit senior affordable housing building on Kensico Terrace, after five years of the building process Tuesday), and The Reverend Jacob Stukes advocated for increasing the income levels of "workforce families" who would be eligible for the buildings over the $100,000 level. people from battle hill dud not hillair circle  An example was given, several correspondents said, pointing out that if a police officer and a teacher couple with a combined income for example would exceed the $90,000 ceiling currently proposed by the Common Council proposal.

Battle Hill Wants South End to Take on  Affordable Housing Projects

Patti Cantu of the Battle Hill Association announced that her neighborhood was against the 10% set aside increase in the Council proposal, saying that affordable housing was going to be targeted for her community. She called for affordable housing apartment units to be promoted in the Hillair Circle, Highlands and Soundview Avenue areas, White Plains prestigious South End of town. A representative of the Working Families Party, called for the percentage increase of units to increase to 10% to 16%, make sure of a living wage increase and affordable housing.

Another CitizeNetReporter checking in added more detail to Cantu's remarks describing Ms Cantu's comments as mostly concerned with the increase in the number of affordable housing units in new construction of 25 units.  The observer states that Cantu said the request to increase the percentage on small projects may not make the building of such units profitable for the smaller developers.  She continued to state that some areas (including hers-- Battle Hill) already had a large number of the medium income developments and was hoping to have such areas now include more of the moderate income units

Demapping Dilemmas.

The council passed the resolution demapping parts of the southern end of the Greenway, but it was not made clear whether the land was demapped as "designated" parkland or "dedicated" parkland, and the White Plains Corporation Counsel Edward Dunphy said the two meant the same thing. Councilman Glen Hockley, head of the Mayor's Open Space Committee,  was booed according to WPCNR's observers when he said the passionate argument about designated vs. dedicated was "much ado about nothing."

BID Barbs

The Hearing on expanding the boundaries of the Downtown Business Improvement District was held with  our taxes are supposed to keep our sidewalks, our streets clean, why am I paying something else for the BID when their services are redundant.  Others came up demanding to know the salary of the Executive Director of the BID, which was not announced by any city officials. Our correspondent reports this as held open to next month (past the Primary Date of September 18.)

Damon Amadio, Acting Commissioner of Building, (who took over for Mike Gismondi when Mr. Gismondi resigned in the fall of 2006 in the wake of the discovered extra floor on the Ritz-Carlton hotel complex), was approved as Commissioner of Building.