Letters to the Editor

Speak Up on Flood Control

Dear Editor,

I just wanted to let you know that I appreciate your coverage of the two recent flood events that all of us are suffering through. I have e-mailed many of my neighbors in hopes that enough voices will make a difference to get our elected officials to try and at least mitigate flooding before the hurricane season starts in late August.

Many ideas have been mentioned over the years and very little has been done. The damage at my home at 86 Mendota Ave., and in my neighborhood, as well as other neighborhoods, cannot be disregarded.

I encourage every Rye resident to speak up and let our government officials know how you, your neighborhood, business or school were affected by the March 2 and April 15 floods and past floods. Send an e-mail, write a letter or make a phone call. Your voice matters. You can HELP KEEP RYE DRY!

— James Dugan

Thanks from MS Chapter to Rye Community

Dear Editor,

On behalf of the National MS Society, Southern New York Chapter, we write to extend our thanks to the town and the residents of Rye for their wonderful generosity and encouragement, which was displayed again this year, during the MS Walk held on Sunday, April 22.  

The MS Walk that begins and ends at Rye Playland, and includes a three-mile and six-mile walk through the streets of Rye, raises money for national research projects seeking to understand the cause and cure for multiple sclerosis and for services to people with MS and their families. The Southern New York Chapter provides programs to over 5,500 clients in Westchester, Rockland, Putnam, Orange and Sullivan Counties. The MS Walk at Rye is our single largest fund-raising event and this year will contribute over $400,000 to our overall goal of $1.8 million throughout the five counties.

The goodwill extended to our 2,500-plus walkers by the Rye community is tremendous. Each year I am personally encouraged when I hear from residents, “How did you do this year?”

Thanks also to the Rye Police who ensure the safety of the walkers and the ambulance crew who are on hand in case of emergency.

On behalf of the thousands of people with MS who we serve and everyone at the National MS Society, Southern NY Chapter, we extend our thanks and our gratitude.

— William O'Reilly, President, and Tobi Rogowsky, Board Chair

Drive We Asked, and You Did

Dear Editor,

Many thanks for letting your readers know that we needed new drivers to fill spaces left by people who moved or retired. Five volunteers called after our SOS appeared on this page and are now delivering meals once a month to our homebound neighbors in Rye, Rye Brook and Port Chester. This was our fastest, most successful recruiting drive ever — proof, yet again, that "everyone" reads The Rye Record.

Gratefully,

– Beth Griffin Matthews,
Meals on Wheels

Flooding Knows No Boundaries

The following letter was sent to Westchester County Executive Andrew Spano and forwarded to us by the author for publication.

Dear Editor,

I am writing to alert your office regarding the development the Village of Rye Brook is about to grant building permits to in the area adjacent to the Bowman Avenue spillway, which, as you know, is the only flood mitigating structure the City of Rye has.

For almost a decade the City of Rye has been able to stop any development on that site, unfortunately the Village of Rye Brook has taken a different approach by allowing Kip Konigsberg, who owns K&M Realty Group Ltd., to develop the site. This development will limit Rye's flood mitigation efforts substantially.

I appreciate your concern about our situation and quote your April 23 speech in Mamaroneck: "I have one message today: Anybody who is high and dry right now could have been as wet or devastated as anyone else. This is everybody's problem." And as you have pointed out, flooding doesn't stop at municipal boundaries.

Please advise me on how best to proceed to create the awareness upstream municipalities must have to stop exacerbating this problem.

The Village of Rye Brook has scheduled a public hearing for May 8 on this matter and my neighbors plan on being there.

— Carolina Johnson

School Budget Debate

Long-Term Benefits of New Gym Outweigh Short-Term Inconvenience

Dear Editor,

In regard to the upcoming Rye School Budget vote, I understand some Rye residents have raised concerns about disruptions to the Milton School neighborhood as one reason to vote down the school budget and thus possibly deny construction of the Milton School gymnasium.

Having lived on Hewlett Avenue directly across the street from the school during its 1 1⁄2 years of expansion construction and as a father of a fourth-grader (who may never benefit from the new gym) and two second-graders (both of whom relocated to Osborn School for first grade during the aforementioned expansion), I would like you to know that I heartily support the construction of the long overdue new gymnasium.

I simply believe in the long-term benefit for this and future generations of Milton children of a facility that almost all other school districts take for granted over any short-term or incidental inconvenience that temporary construction or periodic events at the gym may cause.

I will vote for this year’s proposed school budget because, among other things, physical education is an important, state-mandated part of our children’s education — a mandate that Milton’s current, aged, overused physical education facilities cannot effectively meet. (For example, despite the recent expansion of the school, physical education classes in the current gymnasium are still cancelled or rescheduled about one-third of the school year in favor of other school events that do not fit anywhere else at the school.)

I urge others to also vote for this year’s school budget, which has very few elective items in it and which has been carefully determined by the Rye Board of Education with taxpayers in mind.

— William M. Dailey

In Support of Kendall Egan

Dear Editor,

The voters of the city of Rye have a fantastic opportunity on May 15. They can cast a ballot for Kendall Egan to fill one of the spots on our Board of Education. Kendall, the mother of four children whose ages range from elementary through eighth grade, will bring a fresh and completely responsible voice to the board. Kendall represents the kind of levelheaded leadership Rye needs to keep its schools the very best they can be.

As a former PTO president, Kendall has learned how budgets work and how to respond to the needs of parents. In that role, she has worked with teachers and administrators alike, and all the while done it with grace and caring. She led Milton School through its construction and renovation, asking the difficult questions and standing up when problems called for her attention. She became a powerful spokeswoman for the parents of Milton.

She can be a powerful spokeswoman for all of the citizens of Rye. She can be the kind of Board of Ed member who keeps one eye on the future, and one eye on the present, all the while keeping her feet very firmly planted on the ground. With an MBA from New York University's Stern School of Business and a BA in Political Science from Boston College, Kendall also has the professional and intellectual experience to not only contribute to this board, but to provide leadership and ideas to the group that governs our school district. Please join us in supporting Kendall Egan for the Board of Education.

— Andrea Hessekiel, Mary Lyons, Jane Fitzpatrick, Linda Bonaventure, Young Kim, Denise Cypher, Lorraine Levinson, Susan Keating and Margot Willoughby

An Essential School Budget

Dear Editor,

I showed the Board, and then our community thanks to your pages, why a 6.95% school budget increase was much too high. Because of accumulated Standard Conservative Accounting (SCAM) margins, formerly called “hidden margins,” ($15 million siphoned off budget over six years for The Osborn lawsuit alone), it could be less than 4%, while providing more money for education. This is what the Essential School Budget, mandated in case of defeat, will do.

I came back from afar to see the Board approve an 8.54% increase to $65,000,000 — as if anything except health services, college tuitions and Pentagon budgets grows that fast. This is due to appropriating $2,136,000 of “found money” for a second Milton Gym:

- $897,000 of bond interest, previously applied to lowering the property tax;

- $540,000 left over from the $22M bond, shrunk from $1,200,000 a year ago through change order mismanagement. Before being squandered by half, it could have taken care of Midland and Osborn boilers and more last summer, avoiding a dangerous explosion, and saving money on the mislabeled $10M “Boiler Bond”, of which the High/Middle School boilers only account for one third;

- $1,000,000 suddenly “saved” within said $10M bond.

To stay under some magical 6% value for a tax increase, the new budget has scavenged money from all education programs except a few sacred cows: Special Ed (mushrooming and inefficient), Technology (deleterious to math and language literacy), and Athletics.

All that for a second Milton gym, which could have cost us at least four times less if bonded as is best practice for new buildings and long-term items. According to at least some parents, it is also unnecessary. It certainly wastes energy and space, as does the Taj-like atrium. What does that say of the Board’s priorities and wasteful use of our money?

As I pointed out earlier, the budget is still full of SCAMs, in revenues as well as in salaries and benefits, despite the hiring (mostly off budget) of over 25 staff in two years, a wanton 1+ full-time position (FTE) for every two additional students, compared to some 1 FTE/6.75 students over the previous eight years when budgets increased up to 9 to 12% a year.

Adding the second gym has the benefit of showing us what we could do without it: Remove this $2,136,000, and the budget increases less than 5%. Take off half of the past average SCAMs, and you come well below 4%, the level of an Essential Budget, which puts priorities on education, health and safety and property integrity, and prohibits waste.

We can keep the money as we need, spend it to help those devastated by our two floods, or protect Rye better from future more “extreme” floods. Or we can bank it for the horror coming on the wings of Government Accounting Standards Board 45, a mandated accrual of health benefits over the lifetime of all current and future retirees. Our auditors’ data point to over $200 million added to our balance sheet, soon requiring funding to a level of some $12,000,000 a year, growing every year.

As our auditors said just last week, everybody is in for that shock. Let’s prepare as best we can, and first, by voting NO on anything over the 4% mandated for an Essential School Budget. For real needs, we can draw SCAMs, not to mention The Osborn reserve.

— Bertrand de Frondeville

In Support of the 2007/8 School Budget

Dear Rye Record,

My family has lived in Rye for four years and we have lost everything in two of the last three floods. The most recent flood would've been above our ceiling in minutes while my children were sleeping, had we not already been forced from our home by the March 2nd flood.

Although we are presently essentially homeless and living in temporary housing provided to us by the Midland School caring committee, we are looking to find a new home in Rye.

From reading the papers it’s obvious we could find a more affordable home in Port Chester or Mamaroneck, but we moved here from Astoria for our children’s education, and my husband and I are not going to let a flood, or two or three even, distract us from our goals for our sons.

I support the proposed school budget and I’m glad the Board Members want so much for our kids. I certainly didn’t have that growing up in the City, nor did my husband as a child in Bosnia. We will gladly pay our school taxes because the schools here are wonderful and that’s why we moved here and that’s why we're staying.

– Enisa Sabovic

Encourage School Board to Reassess Priorities

Dear Editor,

I am moved to once again address you about a most poignant issue. The City of Rye and its residents have in the past few weeks experienced tremendous damage, loss and hardship due to the vagaries of weather. So too did the School District. I think it is time for the administration and the Board to very quickly rethink their budgets and expenditures and reassess what the priorities are for the residents of Rye.

In view of all the citizen’s private losses, is it appropriate to continue with another 8-9% budget increase to accommodate items that were even heretofore debatable? Must we start Spanish this year? Do we absolutely need all the staff additions this year? Is a full-time Milton gym (from which I will benefit) more important than repairing the city’s bridges?

Two years ago, I campaigned to save the unexpended $2 million from the $22 million bond and to put it into a Gore-style “lock box.” Too bad three quarters has already been variously eaten away.

As a Rye City citizen, I challenge, goad, implore and request the School Board to reevaluate the 07-08 budget. They should look to ameliorating the already heavy tax burden by reducing the budgeted increase in expenditures to a very respectable and NY State Board of Regents supported 4%. It’s time for the School Board to look over the whole field and try a “reverse.”

– Bob Schubert

Keep the School Budget Debate Civil

Dear Editor,

One of the attributes of this “city” we live in is the courteous way in which most residents of Rye treat each other — from the friendly wave as you drive past an acquaintance, to the shopkeeper who takes the time to get to know your name, to the crossing guard who smiles at our children each morning. In part, it’s these little courtesies that make Rye such a pleasant place to live and raise our families.

So, it’s jarring when we find a corner of our town where good manners get forgotten. 

There are seven volunteers in this town whom we elected, who devote many, many hours of their personal time to looking out for our interests, who do a job that most of the rest of us would never want to touch and yet we let a small group of our neighbors insult them and call them “criminals”.

Now, I’m all in favor of vigorous debate and it’s healthy for us to hear all perspectives on the issues, particularly where our tax dollars are at stake. But we should be able to have rational, respectful discussions. 

Our current Board of Education has done a phenomenal job of reaching out to the community, running meetings that offer residents the chance to be heard yet still keeping the Board on track to make the decisions they need to make.  Anyone approaching the Board is treated with respect and given time to make their point. Whether you agree with each decision they’ve taken or not, the Board has listened and considered all views.

So as we get to that silly season yet again, where we vote on our School Budget, let’s engage in a courteous, civilized debate. No name calling please. And as residents of this great town, let’s show our respect for the process and take the time to understand what the debate is about and vote on May 15th.

It’s a thankless job sitting on the Board, but someone has to do it.  We elected these volunteers, they make thoughtful decisions; let’s respect the work they put into it.

— Margot Willoughby

Let Them Learn Spanish!

Dear Editor,

As a longtime proponent of bringing foreign language to the elementary schools, I applaud Steve Cohen and the Board of Education for moving forward with the FLES program, and I fully support the proposed school budget that helps bring this crucial instruction into the schools. However, I was dismayed by the opposition voiced by Gerry Seitz in the April 20 Reader’s Forum.

Gerry Seitz states, that “America’s trade with Spanish-speaking countries is miniscule compared to our trade with Asia and Europe.” He’s making a very presumptuous assumption here that all the children of Rye are going on to careers in finance, trade or banking. What about the kids who want to be doctors, teachers or even lawyers in a country where our Spanish-speaking population is huge? What about the kids who want to travel, explore and perhaps even work in our neighboring Central and Latin American countries, where they actually speak Spanish. 

He then goes on to make the unbelievably ethnocentric comment that “English is the lingua franca of the world.”  And that “wherever we go, we will be able to communicate as long as we speak English.” No, Gerry, we won’t. Have you been to Port Chester recently?

Overall, he deems elementary school foreign language instruction as “an objectively worthless expenditure of time and money…” I could not disagree more.  I am not belittling the need to put resources behind math and science, I am just advocating that we also need to broaden our children’s world view — sooner, rather than later — by exposing them to a language that’s accessible, fun and something they have the opportunity to hear everyday! Then they can go on to learn Mandarin or Hindi or Swahili or whatever language best suits their interests and desires. Plus, research shows that the earlier a child is exposed to a new language, the easier it is to acquire that language … and others. But more importantly, they’ll have been exposed to another language and another culture, and start to see that the world is a whole lot bigger than Rye, New York.

— Naomi Norman

We Need to Embrace the World

Dear Editor,

I am writing in response to City Councilmember Howard G. Seitz, and his “Reader’s Forum” column on school spending in your April 20 issue. Mr. Seitz suggests that members of the School Board read The Gathering Storm report by the National Academies before they “go forward with the Foreign Language in Elementary School program proposal.” I am familiar with this important document, but at almost 600 pages, I doubt I'll be reading it anytime soon.

Mr. Seitz was kind enough to also suggest the Board read an article in the Princeton Alumni Weekly, written by Norman R. Augustine, an author of the above report, which summarizes and supports the National Academies report. This article is about 589 pages shorter and, therefore, more manageable. Since I don't read the Princeton Alumni Weekly, I would have been grateful to Mr. Seitz for calling the Board’s attention to an important issue, global competitiveness, had he stopped there.

Instead, he made the leap to criticizing Dr. Steven Cohen for proposing our students learn Spanish in elementary school, presumably in light of our failure to devote sufficient resources to math and science education.

Many schools begin music instruction by teaching the recorder, not because orchestras need more recorder players, but because instruction in this instrument, which is relatively simple to master, makes instruction in more difficult instruments easier as the child grows older. Even if a child never studies another instrument, she has been exposed to the world of music and her horizons have been broadened. The same could be said for the study of Spanish. It leads to future acquisition of more difficult languages for some students, and for others, mastery of another language is an achievement in itself. This is not to say that the same child does not need high caliber instruction in math and science. This school district is capable of educating the whole child, and it does quite well.

Mr. Seitz’s subsequent suggestions, that the Board hire an outside curriculum consultant due to Dr. Cohen’s enthusiasm for “an objectively worthless” expenditure and that an independent group study extending the Archdiocesan model to Rye are both flawed for reasons beyond his obvious bias against public education.

The first suggests the Board erred in hiring Dr. Cohen as Assistant Superintendent for curriculum and needs to remedy their mistake with a costly consultant (who believes speaking Spanish is worthless I imagine). The second, well, even Seitz grudgingly admits, that “there may be some difference due to different models” between Catholic schools and public schools. I say, Vive la difference!

I will compare the education children receive in Rye schools with any Catholic school in Westchester, particularly in the areas of math and science.

There are four Spanish speakers in my basement right now cleaning out the debris from our most recent flood. I need them, more than I need the entire editorial staff of The Princeton Weekly. It’s a big world, Mr. Seitz. Let’s embrace it.

— Charmian Neary

Rye’s Surreal Permit Fees

Dear Editor,

My husband and I are thinking about filling in our 50-year-old concrete pool for a number of reasons, including the astronomical costs of repair and renovation. Imagine my surprise, after contacting the Rye Building Department, that a permit for this job costs $1,500. That is almost 20% of the actual cost of the job.

When I asked if there could be any flexibility with the cost, seeing as though we're not talking about knocking down a house here, I was told, via e-mail, that the demo fee is $1,500 for all demolition.  So, regardless of whether you're knocking down a 4,000 square- foot house, or a 100 square-foot tool shed, the cost is the same.

One of the companies I contacted regarding the pool removal nearly groaned when I told the representative where I lived. He proceeded to tell me that pool removal permits in many other towns were about $50, and far easier to obtain. 

This little tale of woe of mine demonstrates, once again, how permit and other fees in Rye are not only high, but bordering on the surreal, and will no doubt continue to be so, as long as Rye citizens keep on forking over their hard-earned money.

–Darby Charvat