Bruce the Blog

Kudos to the Yorktown Board of Education and Superintendent Dr. Ralph Napolitano for making the decision to “rest” one of that district’s grade schools — French Hill.

With Albany-mandated cuts in school budgets rising up the radar of taxpayers and media alike, it raises the specter in Yorktown of the elephant in the classroom that now is past due for discourse: why does Yorktown need two school districts, with all the attendant costs inherent in such redundancy.

Broaching the much more complex matter of assessing the necessity of continuing to maintain two school districts with little or no synergistic cost efficiencies between them presents an Alfonse and Gaston conundrum. Who brings it up first? The Yorktown Board of Education or the Lakeland Board of Education.

We don’t know, so we’re bringing it up.

Another budgetary ramification is fundraising. More than ever, it behooves school districts to embrace, encourage and fully support the efforts of non-school organizations who raise private funding to supplement public monies because the latter is shrinking, not growing.

We look forward to boards of education working more closely and cooperatively with fundraising entities. In the interest of full disclosure, this writer is president of a 501(c)(3) called the Harrison Apar Field of Dreams Foundation that in the past seven years has raised more than $200,000 that is invested in school and town programs, facilities and constitutents. That makes my comments on this topic self-serving to some extent, but I’d be surprised if other 501(c)(3) organizations like us didn’t fully agree with the above sentiments.

For those who find it hard to believe I don’t meddle (much) in our news organization’s content gathering and presentation, I refer you to Exhibit A on page 9 of our freshly pressed Jan. 20 edition.

The Editor’s Note at the bottom of the second Letter to the Editor says the writer is “right” — unqualifedly — for taking us to task on a Dec. 30 edition remark about recreation club finances, and that the paper regrets the “error.” It’s not clear what we’re saying he is “right” about. Reading this act of contrition on our part was news to me, but what do I know. I only work here.

It’s important for any publisher to back up the editorial staff’s right to a considerable measure of autonomy, and I like to think I follow that journalistic ethic. That doesn’t equally mean that the publisher necessarily agrees with every word choice in every article or remark on every page.

Here’s where the Editor’s Note and the publisher differ in this case. The writer, Donald Roberts, Member of United Taxpayers of Yorktown, purports to refute (which means disprove) our paper’s Dec. 30 Salvo that called independent youth sports leagues “self-financed.” His evidence includes a line item in Yorktown’s 2010 budget showing an anticipated disbursement of $78,700 among three recreational leagues, for an average of $26,000 per youth sports club. That’s down about $10,000 from the 2009 line item for just one sports club. Mr. Roberts seemed to miss that point. He also blithely ignores that the $26,000 is a fraction of any of the club’s annual operating expenses. It’s a nominal subsidy from the town. The term “self-financed” means the clubs must run themselves on cash flow generated through fees paid by families whose children are enrolled in sports programs. It’s not as if the town stakes any of these clubs to a baseline operating budget. Mr. Roberts also misses that salient point.  Then again, UTY is not exactly known for its rigorous analysis of numbers or its lucid logic. It’s best known for knee-jerk reactions to the spending of one penny on virtually anything. Money spent on our kids? Bah! Humbug!!

Later in his letter, Mr. Roberts takes NCN to task for writing that “youth sports leagues (are) operated by volunteers with nominal or no local government funding or administration.” He then corroborates that very statement — even if he thinks he’s disputing it — by ending his missive with, “…some youth programs do receive local government funding.” Yes, that’s what nominal means — “some” or “token” or “very little.”

While we’re on the topic, I thought it germane to re-paste-post here a letter that was paste-posted in our NCN Forum’s Croton-on-Hudson section.

As with Yorktown Athletic Club, Shrub Oak Athletic Club, and Yorktown Youth Soccer Club, Croton Little League is an independent youth recreation league that contributes mightily to the families of its community and, arguably, subsidizes the government as a vendor of services for which it does not charge that government. Yet, the government, which already taxes citizens so it can maintain quality of life amenities such as ballfields, double dips by assessing certain of those same families a second tax through their participation in the Croton Little League.  What else is wrong with this picture? Read on …

From: Croton Little League <webadmin@crotonlittleleague.com>
To: Croton Little League <webadmin@crotonlittleleague.com>
Sent: Tue, Dec 22, 2009 9:21 am
Subject: Croton Little League FIELD USAGE FEES - PLEASE READ

Dear Croton Little League Families,

Croton’s Village Board of Trustees has just passed a resolution mandating Croton Little League and all other Croton youth sports organizations to pay an hourly field usage fee for using the fields that our hard-earned tax dollars already go towards supporting. As the local youth sport organization most in need of village field space, this fee could exceed $6,000 annually.

The irony of this proposal is that groups, local and non-local, who do not apply for field permits from the village, may still walk onto these fields and use them free of charge at anytime. Croton Little League (CLL) already spends an average of more than $14 per player annually of your registration fees on field maintenance and maintenance supplies. Additionally, CLL preps and helps maintain the fields we use at no additional cost to the village and uses no village resources to do so. CLL is NOT affiliated with the Village Recreation Department and has never received any monetary support from the village. As a non-profit organization, we rely solely on fees we collect through our program to sustain our operations.

We are committed to keeping your registration fees as low as possible so we can be as inclusive to as many families as possible but this new fee resolution would leave us with no alternative but to significantly increase our registration fees. We are also committed to funding capital improvements to these fields for the benefit of our current and future players as we have done in the past. We fully recognize that the economy is in extremely dire straits not only here in Croton but around the country. Other than the weak economy, the village has given us scant rationale or justification for charging these fees. We will receive no services from the village in exchange for these fees.

We are asking for your support in immediately opposing these fees for not only CLL but for the other youth sports programs as well – the very future of these programs depends on action we take now.

Please take a couple of minutes to email or call our Village Board of Trustees to voice your opposition to this resolution. Their contact info is listed here for your convenience.

Mayor Leo A. W. Wiegman 271-1145 lwiegman@crotononhudson-ny.gov
Trustee Ian Murtaugh 271-3130 imurtaugh@crotononhudson-ny.gov
Trustee Richard Olver 271-5232 rolver@crotononhudson-ny.gov
Trustee Ann Gallelli 271-5301 agallelli@crotononhudson-ny.gov
Trustee Demetra Restuccia 827-9048 drestuccia@crotononhudson-ny.gov

With the enactment of this resolution, we expect to increase our registration fees by at least $20 per child to cover this new tax that CLL is being forced to pay. We appreciate your continued support and ask that you contact your elected officials to voice your opposition to this plan.

Yours in Baseball,
Croton Little League

It would be quite insincere for somebody in the news media (take me, if you can stand it) to claim that the kind of shenanigans animating Yorktown of late are shocking, simply shocking (OK, so my acting ain’t exactly Claude Rains-esque). It’s simply human nature at work, in all its vainglory.

No matter where you turn, there’s indignation and allegation. I ran into Eric DiBartolo at Starbucks on Monday, hanging out with Mike Dubovsky. I always enjoy them both, apart or together. They’re easy to chat with, hang out with, and always full of information. (Besides, not everybody enjoys having a journo hovering around them — really?! — so I’m thankful anywhere that’ll have me.)

Eric and Mike are among the lifelong Yorktowners I’ve gotten to know and appreciate in the past three-plus years I’ve been hunkered down at what I’ve unabashedly taken to calling The First Paper of Yorktown and Yorktown’s Paper of Record. Both taglines are documentable, so why not tell it like it is. (May Howard Cosell rest in peace.)

Eric and Mike shared some nuggets with me that we’re probing, and you may yet read about in our pages one day soon. I immediately noticed something about Eric as soon as I alit from my jalopy. It turns out he, like me, has gotten the religion of get-fit-quick. He’s 30 pounds lighter, via Metafast, and has an unmistakable glow. Keep it up — or off — my friend. I haven’t felt this good in too long a time myself. There’s no business like stay fitness.

An intriguing analogy occurred to me re the back-and-forth between Eric and new Yorktown Supervisor Susan Siegel, who somehow seems like she’s been on the job three months instead of three weeks. Never a dull moment in Get Yer Ya-Yas Out Yorktown.

In Super Susan’s deliberative style, she’s been compared — not at all coincidentally — to Linda Cooper, the 12-year supervisor who elected not to run for re-election and since fall 2007 has been village manager in Ossining. But, according to well-placed if biased sources, she left her heart in Town Hall and reportedly, the scuttlebutt has it, is finely tuned in to back channels. Does that make her Susan Siegel’s alleged Karl Rove? Functionally, perhaps. Politically, please.

But one might also compare the current supervisor’s focused, disciplined, policy-wonkish ways to a certain current U.S. President. Everything must be by the book for the bookish, and when it seems not to be by the book, but by hook or crook, there’s a reasonable-sounding reason why. Transparency drives the rhetoric, though it may not also drive the process. (Secret meetings to hire a new water department head, anybody? Aah, that’s all water under the bridge.)

By contrast, one might compare the current highway superintendent’s take-n0-prisoners, get-the-job-done-at-all-costs work ethic to a certain immediate past U.S. President, who didn’t much care what his critics said or how they carped about his style. In the end, a la Sinatra, he did it his way, no apologies. You want results, I give you results.

So there you have it. What, I’m not sure. But there it is nonetheless. Other day I was asked if I thought Eric would run/could win as Yorktown supervisor. My reply was that nobody has higher name recognition in Yorktown than Eric DiBartolo.

[In fact, I recall when our family moved to Yorktown in 1993, his was probably the first town official’s name with which we were familiar, and it had a very positive connotation, associated with the consistently efficient and quick job his crews did clearing snow during storms. That’s no spin. That’s just him.]

The real answer to the question, then, is less about Eric than about who his opponent would be in a supervisor race. Different elections turn on different dynamics. Linda Cooper won re-election five times on a record of diligence and competence. A proficient ice hockey athlete who started her own competitive rec league team, Cooper also exhibited good timing in knowing when enough is enough. Don Peters won election on sky-high name recognition and likability. Susan Siegel won on backlash and voter frustration.

Until the last election, nobody was running to run against Eric for highway superintendent. Then Steve Gardner and Greg Bernard picked up the gauntlet — that Eric had not thrown down — but though they both had the chops, Eric had the well-oiled machinery humming his tune: all party lines were lined up at attention and saluting dutifully. No matter what his detractors may say, I’ve never seen anybody better at political infighting than this gent. You better come at him with all you’ve got, and even when you do, prepare to meet thy doom.

The $64,000 Question now is whether there ever will be another election in Yorktown for highway superintendent. Not if Super Susan gets her way and converts the position to an appointment. For Eric, it would be an appointment with destiny. What nobody else could do at the polls The Super Siegelvisor might yet do with the wave of her legislative wand: vanquish the elected position altogether.

Augie’s vs. Viagra

Last Friday, Elyse and I were part of a party of eight hosted by Carla Chase and Frank Rich at Augie’s Prime Cut in Mohegan Lake. That’s the place I’ve been blogging and Facebooking about (or is that about Facebooking?) lately because of its Augie’s Idol singamathingathon. (As for me, I couldn’t carry a tune if it was inside an ultralightweight roll-on travelbag.)

Elyse was swooning, but it wasn’t over me. It was over her grouper swimming in pistachio sauce. After watching her heavenly reaction to that piece of dead fish, I might as well forsake the Viagra, and find out if grouper qualifies for copay.

I was swooning too, but in addition to it being over Elyse, it was over my Oscar filet mignon, crowned with crabmeat and gorgonzola cheese. Yum-yum in the tum-tum.

We never had supped at Augie’s ere this, and were duly impressed, though we already heard tell from others the food was nothing to writhe home about, but was instead something to swoon over. Or maybe they said spoon over, but this is a family restaurant, after all; still, that didn’t stop Augie’s from expecting us, as with every patron, to fork over the dough after we got the check. What the heck, I say: knife work if you can get it!

I spent Friday morning, at the invitation of a major regional advertiser, sitting on its review committee to evaluate ad agencies that were presenting a final pitch, in their hopes of “winning the account,” as they say on Mad Ave.

(Needless to say, helping an advertiser select an ad agency is a publisher’s dream job  — apart from our day job — but it really is about the peerless respect and reach our parent company, Chase Media Group, has in the marketplace. It’s a great place to be, for sure.)

It was a fascinating several hours of listening to and looking at marketing plans, creative strategies, and assessments of social media’s role in creating brand awareness and attracting customers.

However, the Grammar Geek in me couldn’t help but notice a common tendency among agencies to be spelling-challenged. Curiously, none knew the difference between the words “complement” (ie, to balance) and “compliment” (ie, to praise), and invariably used the latter to mean the former. That’s known as a homophone, as in two words that sound the same but have totally dissimilar definitions and are not interchangeable.

One referred to cellphones as “mobil” technology, instead of “mobile,” but I can guess where they probably pump gas.

There also was the all-too-common use of metallurgy to mean the past tense of “to lead,” which leads to “lead” instead of “led.” Ouch!

By far, the most bizarre lapse into what I unaffectionately call The English Languish was a homophone that mis-spelled the title of the agency’s owner. He was listed repeatedly as the company’s “principle.”

It all served to remind Grammar Geek that, especially in the world of advertising, we live in a visually-dominated culture, unfortunately at the expense of the written word.

Video is the lingua franca of the 21st Century. It’s the coin of the realm. If you doubt that truism, I have two words for you: YouTube. Okay, really one word.

Visual content is no less valuable a form of self-expression than the written word. That’s not to say visual creative expression is a replacement for verbal communication. In fact, without verbal skills, visual communications can be its own form of illiteracy. Exhibit A: Quentin Tarantino movies (I’m not a fan). QT proved he is literacy-challenged when an excerpt from his script for Inglourious Basterds showed his spelling of “referred” as “refured.” That is pretty bad. Like they say, can’t make this stuff up.

Where verbal has it all over visual is in its being a totally open access technology. Paper and pencil. That’s all you need to create a letter, word, sentence, paragraph, page, book. Video, on the other hand, requires a baseline investment in high tech.

That’s why the Harrison Apar Field of Dreams Foundation found it extremely worthwhile to make a $2000 donation to the resurgent Yorktown Teen Center for the purpose of acquiring visual tools of expression — camcorder, laptop, editing software and some other items.

As a result, Yorktown Teen Center, led by president Helena Rodriguez and vice president Marcia Williams, has announced formation of the Harrison Apar Video Club. The first meeting of the club, on Jan. 28, is posted at the YTC’s Facebook page, along with lots of photos of its Jan. 8 First Fridays Cafe Open Mic Night, where the presentation was made. When the Club starts producing videos, they will be shown on a new online channel branded Yorkteen TV.

Open Mic Night is the creation of another community charity, the Justin Veatch Fund, under the inventive and loving guidance of Justin’s dad Jeff Veatch. Last Friday was the second monthly gathering, in the Nutrition Room of the Yorktown Cultural & Community Center on Commerce Street.

Not surprisingly, the turnout was double the size of the debut event, swelling to 100 from about 50 the first time around in December. Jeff Veatch attributes the success to his Fund’s Facebook page. The “show,” which “stars” a high-energy lineup of local young people brimming with talent and strong stage presence, lasts more than three hours (starting at 6:30p.m.) and packs in about 15 acts.

The next Open Mic Night is set for same time, same place on Friday, Feb. 5. In expanding its horizons, and appealing to sports-minded teens as well as musical ones, YTC on Feb. 12 is holding its first Hoops Night at the YCCC Gym.

One of our readers asked us if the Dan Shapiro who wrote the letter we posted on yesterday’s blog trashing Assemblyman Greg Ball, Lyndon LaRouche and yours truly is in fact the same person as one Dr. Daniel Shapiro.

Here is the email we received from said reader: 

“SO I just read your blog and I am wondering if the Mr. Shapiro is the same Dr. Shapiro who is an opthamologist at MKMG who donated to Nan Hayworth??? ANd works for her husband? Just a question…”

By way of explanation and context, Ms. Hayworth is a declared candidate for the Republican nomination for the U.S. Congress seat in the 19th congressional district currently occupied by Representative John Hall. Until recently, Mr. Ball was a declared candidate for that same seat, pitting him and Ms. Hayworth as opponents.

Assemblyman Ball has since dropped his bid for the congressional seat in favor of setting his 2010 sites on the New York State Senate seat currently held by Senator Vincent Leibell. 

To answer the reader’s email, we have no clue whether the Dan Shapiro who wrote us is the Dr. Shapiro described in the inquiry, since he did not identify himself as a physician, but we have emailed Dan Shapiro to ask if there’s a doctor in his house. We’ll let you know what he tells us.

It may seem counter-intuitive, or even insincere, to say that I like it when readers write us caustic Letters to the Editor. How so?

Periodicals like ours don’t hear from people who don’t care. No matter what a correspondent says in a letter — even it it may seem hateful without ever having met the target of their attack — it says to me they are engaged by what we do. 

Granted, sometimes, as in the case of Mr. Shapiro’s missive below, he vows to no longer let us engage him, as he says he is canceling his subscription. Of course, when we hear that, there’s no way of knowing how much of the protest is for show, making an emphatic point to get our attention (which is perfectly fine and understandable), and whether or not the canceling subscriber in fact will continue to read the paper without subscribing to it.  We of course hope that’s the case, but it also goes without saying, to paraphrase Honest Abe, you can’t please all the people all the time.

The letter from Mr. Shapiro appears below verbatim, exactly as he submitted it. However, it requires certain clarifications for both his sake and mine:

1. North County News never has changed  hands in the 44 years since its first issue was published, in October 1966. I am an employee of Chase Media Group, not the owner.

2. The news operation and editorial staff are under the direct supevision of Managing Editor Kathleen Fitzpatrick Maffetone, who reports to me. Ms. Maffetone runs the day-to-day operation while I tend to business management. I am neither available nor inclined to determine which stories are published in the paper.  

2A. The appearance, size and placement of news stories in the paper are in no way a reflection one way or another of my personal political preferences.

3. I was not registered with any political party, by personal choice, long before I arrived at Chase Media Group in August 2006 and remain “independent” of any political party. 

4. Mr. Shapiro is free to think anything he wants. It doesn’t change the above facts.

Signed,
Bruce Apar

To the Editor,Years ago, the North County News was just what a local paper should be—full of town news and happenings. If the paper had a political slant, it was impossible to tell. But ever since Bruce Apar purchased the paper, it has slowly but very surely transformed itself into a reactionary, knee-jerk Republican, far right rag.

2010 Day 1 Hour 09.51

From where we sit, north of 287, south of 287 is a different world in many respects, starting with what is an almost studied disrespect, or mere absence of recognition, for where we sit, north of 287.

When County Executive-elect Robert Astorino is sworn into office at Noon Sunday, Jan. 3, 2010 at the Performing Arts Center of SUNY Purchase, he will be succeeding a resident of Yorktown whom Yorktowners rarely if ever see at town events, save when election time draws near. He will be succeeding a resident of Yorktown whom rarely if ever reached out to or engaged the 44-year-old community weekly that is both The Paper of Record and The First Paper of the town.

Those examples are but microcosms of what is virtually a firewall in the form of Route 287, which traverses the county around its midsection, from the Tappan Zee Bridge to Route 95.

You see it in the way mainstream media trains its lenses squarely on The South of 287, with peripheral attention to us Northerners. But mostly it’s evident in the way the county seat in White Plains barely acknowledges what to them is literally the nether reaches of the county, or so it seems in the way they pay the region no nether mind.

So we will be watching with, more than curiosity, a vested interest just how the Astorino administration views and treats North of 287. The youthful, energetic media executive made a good show of his interest in The Other Side during his campaign, bounding into his opponent’s hometown on many an occasion to press the flesh and express his earnestness about representing its residents’ interests every bit as much as those of other county municipalities. Now that he’s sitting in the catbird’s seat in the county seat, we shall see what we shall see.

If it doesn’t pan out that North of 287 is given its due, there’s been talk before, and there surely would be talk again, of Northern Westchester deserving — indeed, needing — its own county seat. We can say “surely” because if that became a consideration, based on what happens in White Plains, nobody will be out in front of this news organization in positing such a radical notion.

There’re lots of reasons I like this time of year. Invoking the lingo of my ute, harking back several decades to just past mid-century, “like, it’s the livin’ end, man.” The end, that is, of the calendar before we turn over a new leaf and begin again.

January is so called because of the Roman god Janus, a two-faced sonuvagun if ever there was one. This guy a god may have been, but poor Janus didn’t seem to know if he was comin’ or goin’. You know, that whole bit about ring out the old, ring in the new. Ring dem bells.

And so it is that in the ultimo canto of the annum (and I didn’t even take one semester of Latin, eh?) North County News announces its Newsmaker of the Year and offers our readers a retrospective of the year past.

This year, Managing Editor Kathleen Fitzpatrick has smartly decided to not only turn over a new leaf but to freshen the old one by at long last modernizing the paper’s long-in-the-tooth approach to rehashing what we all just lived through.

Thus, you’ll find in the December 30 NCN a more dynamic graphic representation of what Kathleen and staff have selected as the year’s most significant stories, based on how they affect the citizenry.

The Newsmaker of the Year is, we think, a somewhat obvious choice, and here’s a broad hint: in the various Election Day races in North County, incumbents prevailed for the most part. You can deduce it from there.

We also have it on good authority that come Wednesday, County Executive Rob Astorino will announce no less than four major commissioner-level appointments in his administration, and that the new year will bring with it (per my Dec. 28 blog below) some weighty news closer to home. Blood may be thicker than water, but in politics, people who control the water supply are pretty powerful themselves. Remember the Jack Nicholson-Roman Polanski classic “Chinatown”?

That’s enough cryptic commentary for one day. See you tomorrow, same space, same blogarithm.

If you are anywhere in the vicinity of Yorktown this Friday night with no particular place to go (regards to Chuck Berry!), head on down to the Yorktown Cultural & Community Center anytime between 6:30 p.m. - 9:00 p.m. 

Go to the Nutrition Room, which is a large space where you’ll be pleasantly surprised by the range of young talent lined up for the first Open Mike Night at the newly re-opened Teen Center, courtesy of the Justin Veatch Foundation – http://thejustinveatchfund.wordpress.com/. There also is a Facebook page you can visit.

Yorktown High student Justin was a very talented young musician himself who passed away September 8, 2008 and left behind a treasure trove of highly original music and inventive lyrics that his dad Jeff — a veteran producer at ABC Television — has lovingly assembled and released on the first of what he plans to be two CDs. The debut disc will be available for purchase at the open mike night.

I spoke to Jeff Wednesday (Dec. 2), at which point he said he anticipates at least 50 will be in the audience, and possibly more. Up to 10 performers are expected, playing rock, indie, acoustic and even a ukelele (shades of Arthur Godfrey and Don Ho!). They may perform two numbers each for a set that lasts about 15 minutes.

Others who haven’t signed up are encouraged to show up and do their thing, even if it’s comedy or other non-music performance.

“We want to create venues for young people to perform,” Jeff Veatch told me in explalining the purpose and goal of The Justin Veatch Fund Open Mike Night, scheduled to light up the Teen Center the first Friday of each month.

He has lots of other excellent ideas, such as creating a workshop for young performers with experienced performers — of any age — acting as mentors. “We want to keep in touch with people who perform throughout this year ,” he said, noting the support can include helping young musicians converge to form combo groups with others like them so they get valuable performing experience.

I know I’ll be at Open Mike Night this Friday. Hope to see you there!