Politics on the Hudson

It’s hard to know which is in tougher financial shape, New York state or Yonkers. So maybe it’s in the spirit of financial misery seeking company that Yonkers Mayor Phil Amicone and City Council President Chuck Lesnick are headed north for Gov. David Paterson’s State of the State address tomorrow.

One thing’s for sure, Paterson won’t be announcing any plans to come to Yonkers’ financial rescue with megabucks for the city’s school system, something Amicone said last April, was needed or else the city was “headed toward a cliff” financially by July 1, 2009.

Paterson’s grim accounting of conditions in New York just might resonate with Amicone, however. The mayor announced plans in December to lay off 76 full-time workers to eliminate a $16 million budget gap, and then spent much of the last month seeking union givebacks to save as many as 60 of them.

Despite the city’s financial problems, however, Amicone, a Republican, and Lesnick, a Democrat, have no plans to car pool to Albany for Paterson’s 1 p.m. speech. Lesnick is headed to Albany tonight; Amicone leaves tomorrow.

Like a lot of people these days, Yonkers Mayor Phil Amicone has financial problems. Well, to be clear, we’re talking about his city. We can’t speak to his personal finances.

Faced with an estimated $16 million gap in the current Yonkers’ budget and a more than $100 million hole in next year’s spending plan, Amicone meets tomorrow with two Democratic state senators who represent Yonkers. The Republican mayor will be meeting with Sen. Jeffrey Klein, whose district also includes parts of the Bronx and Mount Vernon, and Sen. Andrea Stewart-Cousins, whose district also includes Greenburgh.

Amicone’s agenda is not that much different from the one he’s touted for many years, according to his spokesman David Simpson: The inequity of the state school aid formula, which sends far more money per student to upstate big cities than to Yonkers. Though the mayor had hoped for a massive injection of state education funding before New York’s finances tumbled with the stock market, Amicone is seeking more modest help this time around.

With layoff notices to city workers in the mail in Yonkers, one City Council member says the city should first get rid of some political employees who have long ago exceeded the nine-month limit on provisional employees. Joan Gronowski, D-3rd District is targeting two employees in particular, Lorraine Lopez, a special assistant to the mayor, and Gail Burns, an aide to the mayor.

It’s not the first time that Gronowski has battled with the administration of Mayor Phil Amicone over the provisional employees, but the issue is now critical considering the city’s current financial problems.

Lopez is a former Democratic member of the City Council who was appointed to her current post in 2001 by then-Mayor John Spencer, a Republican. Burns the Westchester County Conservative Party chairwoman who was an aide to former state Sen. Nicholas Spano. Burns was hired in January 2007. Both won multi-year raises earlier this year. Lopez salary rose to 135,000 annually from 133,166, a 1.38 increase. Burns’ pay rose to $92,007 from $85,000, an 8.04 percent.

Administration officials didn’t take the criticism laying down. They oint out that the percentage of city employees who are provisional has fallen from 16.8 percent at the end of 2001 to 2 percent now, a figure that is amongst the lowest among upstate city’s. Gronowski says the city has done a good job bringing down the number of provisional employees, but needs to  do more  when it comes to  provisional workers in the mayor’s office.

With the winter’s first significant snowfall forecast for tomorrow, budget-cutting Yonkers officials want to skip one recent suggestion for trimming the city’s $16 million budget gap. Anthony Manzo, a Teamsters shop steward and city painter, made the proposal after listening to suggestions by the City Council for cutting municipal paychecks in the hope of reducing city worker layoffs.

To the cheers of fellow Teamsters, who operate the city’s snow plows, Manzo told the Council: “I got a good idea. I mean, we can save a lot of money, you know, we just won’t come in on the first couple of snow storms.”

Manzo works as a painter in the city’s Department of Parks and Recreation and took home $156,103 in pay last year, including $64,460 in overtime. That was enough for him to beat out Yonkers Mayor Phil Amicone, whose salary was $156,098.

Gov. David Paterson tops the list of honorees at tomorrow’s Yonkers Human Rights Commission awards ceremony. The event is called “A Celebration of Disability in the Workplace,” and Paterson, who is legally blind is to be honored with the organization’s 2008 Humanitarian Award. State Human Rights Commissioner Galen Kirkland is expected to accept the award for the governor. Others receiving awards include Richard F. Sweeney, the Community Service Award; Kathleen Joyce, the Community Service Award, and Barbara J. Shealy, the Chairperson’s Service Award. The event is scheduled to be held at the Yonkers Riverfront Library at Larkin Plaza from 5 to 7p.m.

Rethinking Westchester Government, the organization formed by Greenburgh Supervisor Paul Feiner and Yonkers Councilmember Joan Gronowski, launches its website tomorrow. The group hopes the site will serve as an educational tool showing how Westchester County can live without Westchester County government.

RethinkingWestchesterGov.com will detail the experiences of Connecticut and Rhode Island, which abolished county government, and Masschussets, which adopted legislation that’s resulted in more than a dozen counties disbanding there. The committee maintains that the absence of county government conrtibutes to lower overall taxes in those states.

Also on the website will be “Wastechester,” which Feiner said will be a regular feature presenting examples of county government waste. The committee plans to unveil the website at a 7:30 p.m. meeting tomorrow at the Women’s Club on 305 Ridgeway Avenue, White Plains. The meeting is the group’s second major meeting for the public, Gronowski said.

Though Feiner and Gronowski are Democrats, Rethinking Westchester Government describes itself as nonpartisan. County Executive Andrew Spano is a Democrat and Democrats dominate the county Baord of Legislators.

The aim of the organization and the website, Feiner said, “is not to be funny or angry, but to offer careful analysis” all with the goal of answering the question “can we do better.”

Yes, the wine and cheese will be there, but Chuck Lesnick’s campaign fundraiser set for Friday looks to be a political science class – with a definite Democratic perspective.

The Yonkers City Council President has lined up Andrew J. Zambelli, a chief of staff for Gov. Mario Cuomo and a market research consultant specializing in polling; Shelley Meyer, senior council to the state Senate Minority, soon to be Senate Majority, and a past Democratic candidate for the 93rd Assembly District; and David Pollack, the New York State director for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign.

The event is set for 5 to 7 p.m. in the common room of 1 Alexanders St., on the Yonkers waterfront. Donations can be made out to Chuck Lesnick for City Council President. Additional information is available from Kim DiTomasso at 917-991-8276 or kditto31@yahoo.com.

Charlotte Chieffa stopped outside the polling place in Yonkers’ Homefield neighborhood to talk about her vote for McCain. “We’re Republicans and he’s a good man. He’s experienced,” she said. “And we don’t like socialism. I fled communism in China when I was a 10-years-old. The average American doesn’t know the meaning of socialism. It opens the door for communism.”Melanio Aquino had a completely different take on where Barack Obama falls on the political spectrum. Aquino had just left the polling place having voted for Obama. “It’s not true. He’s not a socialist, Aquino said. “They are trying to distract people from other issues.”

Taylor Walls accompanied her father Julius inside a voting booth in Yonkers and was still excited about having watched him participate in the democratic process. The first thing Taylor, who just turned 12, noticed was the rows of levers next to each name. The next thing she noticed: ”There are so many parties. When I was young, I thought there were only two parties, Democratic and Republican parties, because that’s all I heard about on TV.”Aside from the big race at the top of the ballot, her father, Julius Walls, had a personal reason to think Election Day was cool. Walls chairs the Yonkers Charter Revision Commission and he got to see the work of the Commission – two propositions – on the ballot.     

Some 50 voters were waiting when poll watchers opened the Runyon Heights Community House at 6 a.m., election inspector Felicia Ash said.  “When I opened the doors I could not believe how many people were standing there,” Ash said.

About a mile north, at the Homefield House polling place, the story was similar, even if lines were a little shorter. Election inspector Wanda Taylor said about 20 poeple had lined by the time the polls opened at 6 a.m.

About 90 minutes later 188 people had voted in the Runyon Heights election district that Ash was supervising, which is one of several housed at the community house. By 11:45 a.m. the figure at that one distruct had climbed to 330, more than the district sometimes sees by the end of Election Day other years, Ash said.