Sound Shore

A construction fence stands in front of the Gedney Farm House in Mamaroneck Monday as preparations get under way to demolish the house, which has stood since the 1790s.

Rye Neck school officials awarded awarded a demolition contract Feb. 15 for the house and its ancillary buildings. The school district owns the vacant building at 734 E. Boston Post Road.

Asbestos abatement is to start this week, while students are on vacation.  The house is expected to be gone within three weeks.

Black History Month celebrations around the region are listed in this Journal News article. Below is a list of community events in Port Chester.

During Thursday’s Black History celebration at Port Chester Middle School, where this video clearly had an impact on the students. John Legend sings U2’s “Pride (In the Name of Love)” in memory of Martin Luther King Jr.:

John Reavis, president of the local NAACP chapter, presented the school board later in the day with a set of books on African-American figures in history.

Here are other scheduled events:

Friday, Feb. 17:  Movie/Discussion for After School Program students, Port Chester Carver Center, 400 Westchester Ave., 4 p.m.

Sunday, Feb. 19: “Moments In Black History’, presented by Martha Bell at St. Frances AMEZ Church, 14 Smith St., Port Chester, 11 a.m. services.

Tuesday, Feb. 21: “Rosa Parks/Civil Rights Movie” and Open Discussion On The Rye Town Black Cemetery led by Dave Thomas and Tom Kissner, Rye Town Hall, 10 Pearl St., 7 p.m.

Wednesday, Feb. 29: Port Chester Carver Center’s Black History Program including  “Moments in Black History” 400 Westchester Ave., 7 p.m.

 

Flags were half-mast today in Port Chester after the death this morning of former Mayor Peter Iasillo. He was the dominant figure in local politics for more than a decade and stayed involved well beyond his 1980-93 mayoral term.

Friends and family were remembering him as a jovial figure – some thinking back to the sight of him in a nightcap and gown for the annual charity “bed races.”

The funeral Mass is set for 9:15 a.m. Saturday at Corpus Christi Church. Visiting hours are 4 to 8 p.m. Friday at Craft Memorial Home. Read more in our story on LoHud.com.

At left, Port Chester-Rye Brook Public Library employee Chris Hernandez, 27, lowers the American flag to half staff today. “My family’s been here since the 50s,” Hernandez said, adding his family’s involvement with the Republican Party led to him meeting Iasillo as a youth. “It’s sad, he’s definitely one of the best mayors we’ve had.” (Photo by Xavier Mascareñas / The Journal News)

Congresswoman Nita Lowey is taking another opportunity today to rally for Social Security with local seniors, this time observing the anniversary of the first checks being issued under the program Jan. 31, 1940. Rep. Lowey marked the program’s 75th birthday in August at the same venue, the Anthony Posillipo Community Center in Rye Brook.

Though the program has been a target for the GOP, Republican presidential candidates have said little about the topic lately, even as they travel Florida in advance of today’s primary. Suffice it to say that Lowey does not agree with former candidate Rick Perry’s line from last year about the program being a “Ponzi scheme.”

At her 11 a.m. appearance, Lowey will “reiterate her commitment to protecting Social Security benefits for older Americans, survivors, and individuals with disabilities,” according to a spokesman.

 

The Committee to Save the Bird Homestead will hold a presentation about the man who owned the homestead – Roland T. Bird – in a presentation at 3 p.m. Saturday at the Meeting House in Rye.

(That’s Bird at left on a dinosaur fossil excavation in Wyoming in the 1930s. Photo courtesty of the Estate of John Erikson.)

The talk by Paleontologist Lowell Dingus of the American Museum of Natural History is titled
“Barnum Brown and R.T. Bird: Two Decades of Amazing Fossil Discoveries.” Barnum Brown, considered the greatest dinosaur collector of all time, discovered Tyrannosaurus rex.

Carl Mehling, collections manager for the AMNH Division of Paleontology, will also answer questions.

The logistics:

Saturday, Jan. 28, at 3 pm at the Meeting House, 624 Milton Road.  Suitable for adults and students in 4th grade and up.  Admission is $5 per person.  Seating is limited, and reservations are recommended. To reserve seats, please contact admin@birdhomestead-meetinghouse.org or call 914-967-0383.

Read on for the full press release.

 

 

 

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Journal News columnist Phil Reisman follows up today on the mail carrier who helped an older couple escape their burning home in Rye Brook last week.

Jason Dang spoke humbly about his efforts at the Port Chester post office, where one of the WPA-era murals (pictured) acknowledge the mail carrier as part of the community work force.

Dang encountered 80-year-old Judy Uhry on Rock Ridge Drive as her husband, Gus, who uses a walker, was still inside the smoke-filled house.

Read the rest of the column here.

 

Here is the prepared text of Rye Mayor Douglas French’s 2012 “State of the City” address given during Wednesday night’s council meeting. You can watch the video here (Item 3).

*

Good evening, it is an honor to once again stand before you as Mayor of the City of Rye to present the State of the City on this night and in this year – the year when the City celebrates its 70^th anniversary of becoming a City.

Mayor Platt, Rye’s first Mayor and whose portrait hangs in the Mayor’s Conference room said in his inaugural address, given less than one month after World War ll had been declared, said that the world “…was in troublesome times …had we known such times were coming I sometimes wonder whether we would have undertaken this course … In any event we have a job to do, we will carry on…”

70 years later, while the circumstances are far different, the same spirit now is called for all of us – for now is the time for the City to once again be pioneers and look forward, and not be historians and look back.  Government as we know it needs to continue to change and we need to lead it.

There is a basic pact when each of us moved to Rye – great schools, great services, great value.  That pact was threatened in 2011 as two forces – the prolonged economic recession and Mother Nature – put significant financial and emotional strain on the residents who make up our community.

Residents like the retired couple who have spent their lives in Rye and now on a fixed income can no longer afford the rapid rise of School, City and County property taxes. Residents like the working couple who need two incomes to be able to afford to live here – but one has lost their job and remains unemployed.

Or, residents like the working professional who is under-employed and has experienced a significant drop in their compensation and retirement plan; yet have incurred spikes in their healthcare coverage expenses.

Or residents whose homes have faced drops in property values based on market conditions or flood waters.

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John Gitlitz is being honored Wednesday with a Martin Luther King Jr. award for his efforts in Mamaroneck, helping to address the clash over immigrant laborers and their right to seek work from street corners. He is a familiar face locally on the board of the Hispanic Resource Center, which it established a dedicated hiring site for laborers in the wake of a federal lawsuit. In speaking to him this month I learned about Gitlitz’s primary pursuit over the years—to research and document a complex issue of conflict and justice in rural Peru.

Gitlitz is an associate professor of Latin American studies, immigration and human rights at Purchase College. In northern Peru, he explained, cattle are essentially a family’s bank account, an asset that can be sold for cash in case of emergency. Theft of cattle, therefore, is a serious threat. After a wave of cattle rustling in the ‘70s, peasants, facing inaction by police and an ineffective legal structure, organized their own system of justice—“the Peruvian equivalent of the Guardian Angels.” By 2000 there were 250,000 people involved in the patrols, he said.

Gitlitz is researching this alternative system of justice and the political and legal arguments over it. The issue intersects with human rights, indigenous rights, the exploitation of natural resources, and other areas of tension. He spoke recently at a gathering attended by Peruvian government officials on this issue of “informal justice.”

“It’s a small issue, but for a lot of people, an important one,” he said.

To explore his experiences in Peru – legal issues, profiles, patron saint festivals and the culinary use of guinea pigs – see his blog, Wandering the Andes.

The average citizen could be forgiven for not reading up on the “Study of Governance and Service Options” under way in the Town of Rye. The topic seems as dry as can be, except it’s also kind of interesting—particularly considering that some people don’t realize they live in the Town of Rye and pay taxes to it (about $32 a year on average).

The study, being carried out by the nonprofit Center for Governmental Research, is the latest to look at whether it would save money to eliminate this vestigial layer of local government altogether or rejigger municipal services in some other way. A forum Jan. 12 (click for PDF) will examine the current setup of taxes and services. (The meeting starts at 7 p.m. in the Mamaroneck Village courtroom, 169 Mount Pleasant Ave., Mamaroneck.)

So with the aim of sparking some interest, I present this list of some of the most unusual things about Rye Town.

1. The town of Rye consists of two pieces, which sit on either side of the City of Rye and don’t connect.

One chunk consists of the villages of Rye Brook and Port Chester. The other piece is a slice of Mamaroneck called Rye Neck. The total 7.4 square miles are what’s left after the incorporation of various communities over the years. Rye Town in the 1660s covered a large swath extending from White Plains to Greenwich. Most town residents, 63 percent, live in Port Chester.

2. Rye Town Park, despite the name, is not located in the town. It’s in the City of Rye. It’s governed by representatives from the town, city and three villages.

3. Rye Town’s main responsibility is to assess and collect taxes within its territory. It also runs a court  and oversees the care of two parks and three cemeteries.

4. The town supervisor, a global hedge fund manager, is serving for free, until he brings property taxes to zero as promised. Rye Town relies on property tax for just 10 percent of its budget, and  Supervisor Joseph Carvin’s administration is trying to bring tax bills to zero by relying on other revenue. In Port Chester, your village tax bill on a $500,000 house is about $3,560 and your town taxes are about $30.

5. Rye Neck, the smallest chunk at 1.4 square miles, seems to be the clincher whenever questions come about about eliminating the town.

Says CGR’s baseline study:

As recently as 2007, the Village of Mamaroneck commissioned a Pace University study which considered potential options to address Rye Neck’s uncommon situation. The aim of the project was to look at annexation and consolidation alternatives. Results pointed to a potential 44.7 percent increase (from $85 to $123) in town taxes for Rye Neck residents if their locality were to be taken over entirely by the Town of Mamaroneck.

Intrigued? CGR’s “Baseline Report” is available here in PDF form. The document lists in detail all your local services, who performs them and at what cost.

The Committee to Save the Bird Homestead will explore the work of Bird himself—Roland T. Bird—with a presentation Saturday, Jan. 28, by two experts from the American Museum of Natural History. Bird had that role with the museum in the 1930s.

The photo at right (courtesy of the Estate of John Erikson) shows Roland T. Bird on a major dinosaur fossil excavation in Wyoming in the 1930s.

Here are the details of the event:

The Committee to Save the Bird Homestead is proud to present “Barnum Brown and R.T. Bird: Two Decades of Amazing Fossil Discoveries,” a PowerPoint presentation by Paleontologist Lowell Dingus, PhD, of theAmerican Museum of Natural History (AMNH). Barnum Brown is considered the greatest dinosaur collector of all time. He is the man who discovered Tyrannosaurus rex!

You can also meet the man who runs the Museum’s Big Bone Room, Carl Mehling, Collections Manager for the AMNH Division of Paleontology, who will be on hand to answer questions about the Museum’s extraordinary holdings of dinosaur fossils and other extinct species.  The scientists will bring a few fossil specimens collected by pioneering paleontologist Roland T. Bird of Rye’s Bird Homestead, who worked closely with Brown and made his own major discoveries.

Saturday, Jan. 28, at 3 pm at the Meeting House, 624 Milton Road.  Suitable for adults and students in 4th grade and up.  Admission is $5 per person.  Seating is limited, and reservations are recommended. To reserve seats, please contact admin@birdhomestead-meetinghouse.org or call 914-967-0383.

Read on for the full press release.

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