OP ED
There are many nagging issues in the upcoming local election largely revolving around the quality of leadership this village has been getting from an overbearing, inconsiderate administration. For years, arrogant local politicians and planners have closed their eyes to the fact that Croton is unlike other Hudson River villages.
In 1924, Westchester County purchased Croton Point. In 1970, a federal court ordered the tottering Penn-Central Railroad into bankruptcy. Both events were severe blows to tax revenues, removing large chunks of property from the tax rolls.
Ever since 1967, when the limited-access Croton Expressway opened, Croton has been a virtual backwater. Not unexpectedly, most Croton residents are happy without thousands of automobiles funneling through its narrow main north-south thoroughfare, Riverside Avenue. Village planners still refuse to acknowledge these realities.
Conjectural “gateways’ will not bring customers to Croton so long as it lacks so-called magnet businesses to attract them. Croton also still does not have a detailed inventory of its commercial properties, unoccupied or occupied. Nor has it formed a committee to encourage new businesses to come to Croton or to assist existing businesses in trouble. It did create a mysterious substance called “Green Tape” to expedite applications—yet the Zoning Board still meets only once a month.
Croton has five commercial areas, thanks in part to the 1933 marriage of Croton and Harmon. Instead of integrated planning for all commercial areas, Croton’s politicians recently violated basic planning theory and attempted to Balkanize the Village by concentrating on one commercial area, Harmon--until stopped in their tracks by legal action. The high-handed self-confidence of Croton’s amateur planners makes it the laughing stock of knowledgeable planning professionals.
The current administration also has had a penchant for hiring consultants to tell the Village what it already knows. Recently, it allotted a cool $97,000 for a compilation of information, much of which the village had at its fingertips. Moreover, such reports are rendered moot by the turmoil in the Middle East and the soaring cost of oil and gasoline, making it impossible to predict parking usage patterns. And it turns out that the projected huge multistory parking garage is far beyond the financial reach of the Village. Embarrassingly, someone neglected to tell the contractor about Croton’s most sacred cow, “the view.”
But the most recent overbearing and ill-considered action has been the administration’s tactless and clumsy attempt to fob off on its citizens a foolishly cruel local solution to a countywide problem--overpopulation by white-tailed deer--and to do it by allowing bowhunting in Croton’s nature preserves. Deer are hardly Croton’s most pressing problem.
Deer have become a nuisance--but a nuisance and a hazard of our own creation. In 1930, the white-tailed deer population of the U.S. was about 300,000. Today, it is estimated at 300 million. Such explosive growth is the result of the disappearance of predators, conservation efforts, demands by hunters, and the growth of suburbia.
Not until an uproar erupted, largely fueled by members of their own party, did the bloodthirsty members of this administration grudgingly (and unconvincingly) backpedal on bowhunting. These are people who will rush their pets to a vet at the first cough or sneeze, but who think nothing of consigning sentient wild animals to cruel, inhumane slow deaths while risking life and limb of users of these same nature preserves..
Having been a registered FDR Democrat for 72 years, I say to the bumbling local management: It’s my party and my Village, too. Heavy-handed treatment of party members and the Village itself represent unforgivable failures of leadership. The time has come for an overbearing and inconsiderate administration to seek other employment. And please take your annoying electronic timer with you when you leave.
