Sound Shore

Port Chester’s November amnesty on overdue parking tickets failed to bring in the shot of cash that  proponents hoped for. Revenue increased that month, but the amnesty didn’t bring anything like the $200,000 net gain that officials banked on for the 2011-12 budget.

That budget line was one of the items hotly debated in May, when the village board made a slew of last-minute changes to reduce the property-tax levy by 5 percent. How far did the estimate fall short? Here are the receipts from the last several months from contractor Complus, according to the village treasurer:

June: 4,111 tickets paid, $144,970 collected.

July: 3,240 tickets paid, $104,995 collected.

August: 3,951 tickets paid, $125,535 collected.

September: 3,358 tickets paid, $87,343 collected.

October: 3,403 tickets paid, $93,155 collected.

November: 5,882 tickets paid, $152,285 collected.

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Rye city officials will gather New Year’s Day to swear in three council members and mark 70 years since Rye became a city.

The swearing-in ceremony begins at 4 p.m. in City Hall, followed by a reception across the green at the Square House Museum (left), an 18th century inn and onetime municipal hall. (Read more about the building at the Rye Historical Society’s website.)

Laura Brett will join the council in 2012, and incumbents Joe Sack and Catherine Parker will begin new terms.

Expect the GOP field for president to shrink by the time New York Republicans make their selection April 24; local Republicans can only hope their candidate survives the winnowing certain to follow the early voting, which commences Tuesday in Iowa. If the Republican Primary were held today who would get your vote?

Share your choice in our Editorial Board poll:

New Rochelle’s Joe Clarke, center, is guarded by Kingston’s DJ Mapes, left, and Deion Monroe during their Slam Dunk tournament game at the Westchester County Center. Kingston won 57-55.

See more photos of New Rochelle vs. Kingston in the Slam Dunk basketball tournament

The Picture House in Pelham will launch its Family Flicks series on Jan. 6, 2012. Every Friday through Sunday, plus whenever school is closed, the theater will show family-friendly films ranging from classics to cult favorites.

The series opens with “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,” which will run Jan. 6 through Jan. 8. After that, “A Town Called Panic.” Later in the month, the Picture House will show Jim Henson’s “The Dark Crystal.”

For more information and a full schedule, go online to thepicturehouse.org.

Iona College has named Paul J. Sutera its new Senior Vice President for Advancement and External Affairs. The New Rochelle college had conducted an international search for an experienced hand at raising money. Sutera, who lives in Wallingford, Conn., was a vice president for development at Quinnipiac University and oversaw the school’s fundraising efforts. Before that, he spent nearly 10 years at Houston’s Rice University.

The appointment is the first major hire by first-year President Joseph Nyre, who said Sutera would “play a pivotal role in leading advancement, alumni relations, communications and external affairs. He will also lead the strategy, development and execution of Iona’s next major campaign in support of the college’s forthcoming strategic plan.”

The holiday gift-giving spirit seems to operate year-round at The Sharing Shelf, an innovative clothing-donation program that has just relocated from New Rochelle to Port Chester.

A program of Family Services of Westchester, the program relies on a network of social workers to identify children in need of clothing and shoes. Volunteers sort through mountains of donated clothes and provide a week’s worth of matching outfits to order. Here are some photos from the new location and Director Deborah Blatt. To donate money, clothing or volunteer help, email thesharingshelf@fsw.org.

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The national StoryCorps project, which you may know from the moving audio segments that air on NPR, visited Port Chester last week to record interviews for its National Teachers Initiative.

Kristin Pascuzzi and Judy Diaz, below, were among those who took part.

Only a few stories actually make it on NPR, but each 40-minute conversation will become a part of history at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. Read below for my story in The Journal News’ Sound Shore Express section.

And listen to the NPR segments at the StoryCorps site.

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If you’re following the news on the Capitol Theatre in Port Chester – its planned comeback as a concert venue – you might want to see some photos of the famously ornate interior. Here a few photos from The Journal News archive.

Behold the dome … and disco ball.

WFUV’s Dennis Elsas, who lives in Westchester, is one of the people I spoke with yesterday about the theater’s brief but memorable period as a rock venue during the early ‘70s. He and others are welcoming the prospect of more live music offerings in Westchester.

The great appeal if you lived in the area was that you were seeing this great band and you weren’t that far from your house. And I’m sure that Westchester residents, and folks in the nearby area, are very excited that there will be this diversity of artists coming back to play this side of the county.

Entrepreneur Peter Shapiro said he got to know Capitol owner Marvin Ravikoff over the course of a year as the plan took shape. Ravikoff’s son Howie said they made a careful choice:

There are lots of different types of venue operators and concert promoters, but we singled out Peter Shapiro to be the right combination of experience, familiarity with the locale, and expertise in the music industry. So hopefully we have the triple play with Peter Shapiro.

Leave a comment if you have some memories to share or thoughts about the plan. We’ll be following up on various angles in The Journal News.

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The Rye City Council adopted a 2012 budget Wednesday night that raises the property tax rate about 3 percent and adds a quarter per hour to the fee at parking machines beginning this the spring.

The budget stays within the new statewide cap on the levy, or total dollar-amount raised by property tax, with about $83,000 to spare. City administrators asked the council to endorse an override of the cap anyway, to give flexibility if the state disputes any of the projected budget numbers. That idea — a tall order, politically — had some support but failed, as council members pointed to the confusion it would cause. Suzanna Keith was the only council member to vote against the budget. She proposed unspecified reductions across the board to keep the tax rate flat.