Sound Shore

The Rye City Council has approved raising parking pay station fees from 50 cents to 75 cents an hour and increasing commuter meter fees from $3 to $4 a day.

Comptroller Jean Gribbins said the new pay station rates will generate $113,000 in additional revenue for the city next year. The new commuter meter fees will bring in $4,000 more.

The measure passed 6 to 1 at a meeting on Wednesday. Councilwoman Catherine Parker, who owns a travel store downtown, voted against it.

Before the vote, council members said it’s important to find revenue to ease the tax burden, but not hurt downtown businesses.

Peter Jovanovich noted that Rye is in competition with neighboring communities that don’t charge to park in their shopping areas.

“It’s very, very hard to undo the damage of being known as the expensive place to shop,” he said.

A hot dog truck on Mamaroneck Avenue will be serving free hot dogs to veterans on Veterans Day.

“It’s a small gesture to say thank you,” said John Camillone, who helps his wife, Maria, run the roadside business near 470 Mamaroneck Avenue.

“They are fighting for this country,” Maria Camillone said in Spanish with her husband translating.

They will trust customers are telling the truth about being veteran to get a free hot dog, John Camilline said.

The truck is named “Sargent Pepper’s Only Hot Dog Van,” a play on the Beatles album, “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.”  It will be open on Veterans Day from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

(Maria Camillone, who runs a hot dog truck on Mamaroneck Avenue in Harrison, will be offering free hot dogs to veterans next week. Photo credit: Theresa Juva/The Journal News)

Relatives of a town employee and a union leader lambasted Supervisor Joan Walsh at a meeting Wednesday night for allegedly threatening to fire two employees and creating a hostile workplace.

“Ms. Walsh, you are not only a hypocrite, but an insenstitive, tactless, uncaring, thoughtless, inconsiderate, unsympathetic excuse for a leader,” Rocco Turso said in a heated speech at the board meeting.

Read the whole story on LoHud.com.

Citing a $3 million jump in operating costs and a drop in town revenue, Supervisor Joan Walsh is proposing a budget for next year that calls for taxes to rise 6.7 percent.

Here are some highlights of the 2011 tentative budget:

• The town is projecting continued declines in mortgage tax aid ($190,000), building department fees ($200,000), and interest earnings ($88,000).

• Property tax challenges have soared to nearly 900 this year, Town Assessor Mark Heinbockel said. He predicts a $3.3 million drop in the town’s  assessment values from this year’s budget to next year’s.

• The number of town positions has steadily fallen from 318 in 2008 to 266 this year. The town expects to save $600,000 in salaries next year and $225,000 by negotiating lowered health insurance premiums and reducing the use of outside attorneys.

• Resident commuter parking fees will rise from $450 to $550. Some recreation fees will also increase.

• The town’s deficit, which stood at $3.7 million at the beginning of the year, is expected to shrink to $1.7 million in 2011, Town Comptroller Maureen MacKenzie said.

• The town is in the process of selling some of its real estate to help reduce the deficit.

The Town Board must approve a 2011 budget by Dec. 20.

A steady stream of voters went in Harrison Avenue School today to cast their ballots in what many are describing as intense races.

“I think it’s a bit agitated because a lot depends on it,” said Virginia Rowen. “People are trying to make the right decisions.”

While she didn’t want to reveal who she voted for, Rowen said she was “trying to vote for the best person to do the job.”

C.L Davis, 69, said jobs, healthcare reform and “reckless, unlimited spending” were on his mind as he cast his votes.

The 18th Congressional District race includes Democrat and incumbent Nita Lowey of Harrison and Republican challenger Jim Russell of Hawthorne. Russell gained national attention when a controversial essay on race and religion he wrote came to light in September.

“I think Nita Lowey is a puppet of the Democrat leaders, and I hope we get rid of her,” Davis said.

Paul Coppola said he wants “to have Albany work right” and voted for Carl Paladino for governor.

“I think that Cuomo would be more confident, but I like Carl Paladino’s true passion,” he said. That’s what we need.”

(Photo credit: Theresa Juva)

The City Council will vote tomorrow on whether to add audio and video recording devices to police department Tasers.

“It’s a protective measure,” Police Commissioner William Connors said. “Should someone make an allegation of the use of the Taser, this will give us documented proof of what happened.”

However, no such complaints have been filed, Connors said.

The audio and video devices cost $300 to $350, and they would be attached to two or three of the department’s four Tasers, Connors said. Police supervisors are currently the only ones allowed to carry Tasers.

The City Council needs to approve a change in the language of the police department’s Taser policy to include the new devices.

The Rye police union was submitted the proposal Oct. 4,  but did not respond, Connors said.

Rye PBA president Franco Compagnone, who has pushed for every officer to carry a Taser, said he never received the proposal.

Connors should be more focused on trying to hire more police officers, “when the Manpower levels are at an all time low,” Compagnone wrote in an email.

(Photo credit: Ricky Flores/The Journal News)

A Rye police officer shot and killed a coyote on North Street Friday night, Police Commissioner William Connors said.

The officer responded to a call of a coyote sighting around 9 p.m. and spotted the animal near the entrance of  The Ives townhouse complex, Connors said.

“It didn’t show the kind of fear we would like to see, so he fired at it,” Connors said.

The animal was shot twice.  The state Department of Environmental Conservation was notified, Connors said. The animal was not tested for diseases because it did not appear mangy or sick, Connors said.

Two little girls in the city were attacked by coyotes in separate attacks just days apart in June.  That prompted Connors to authorize police officers to shoot any coyotes they see, if they could safely take a shot.

Rye hired a professional trapper, who caught a male coyote  in July  that was later killed.

In September, Rye Brook police shot and killed a rabid and mangy coyote that lunged at the officer and bit a trapper. Officials believe that coyote also attacked a 2-year-old girl and her father and threatened a teen boy the day before.

Roy Aletti of Harrison doesn’t have just one giant pumpkin sitting in his yard — he has a gargantuan gourd patch.

“I’m compulsive. I’m a collector,” Aletti said outside his Parsons Street home today.

The “King Pumpkin” — or “Harrison’s champ,”  as he calls it — hits the scale at 1,311 pounds. Two more pumpkins weigh in at 1,109 pounds and 1,116 pounds, dwarfing the 518-pound squash also found in the display.

(more…)

Frank Morgenthaler claims to be head of a new group called the Concerned Republicans of Westchester and is calling for Westchester GOP chairman Doug Colety to resign.

Morgenthaler, who is also the campaign manager for Republican congressional candidate Jim Russell, held a news conference outside GOP headquarters in White Plains today and was the only one who spoke. He did not know how many members belong to his new organization, which formed this month, he said.

Russell is running against incumbent Democrat Nita Lowey in the 18th Congressional District. While he will appear on the Republican line on the ballot Tuesday, Russell lost party support after a controversial essay he wrote on race and religion came to light last month.

Morgenthaler accused Colety of supporting Lowey by directing 14 Republicans, including eight district leaders, to collect petition signatures for the Independence Party line for Lowey. He provided copies of the notarized petitions with the Republican names.

“Mr. Colety is not a true Republican,” Morgenthaler said.  “Mr. Colety needs to leave right now.”

He also criticized Colety for initially supporting Paul Wasserman in the race against Lowey. Wasserman is a former Democrat who recently became a Republican.

Colety was not available for comment at GOP headquarters this afternoon.

(Frank Morgenthaler, head of a new group called Concerned Republicans of Westchester, held a news conference on Oct. 29, 2010 and called  for the Westchester GOP chairman to resign. Photo credit: Theresa Juva)

Just two years after graduating from Rye High School in 1940, Bob Lynch was fighting on the frontlines in World War II. The Army combat rifleman spent 350 in frontline combat, survived being wounded in the leg, and earned a Purple Heart and Bronze Star.

The 87-year-old returned to Rye High School last week to share war stories with history students.

“War is hell,” he told them. “It’s kill or be killed.”