New Rochelle was rated “Best for Family City Living” by Westchester Magazine and indeed it is quite an honor. The article touts New Rochelle’s racial diversity, the Huguenot Children’s Library (HCL) and recreation. New Rochelle is defined as “family-centric”. While all of the above are true and New Rochelle should be proud; it is a double edged sword which reveals inept development.
The review cites the Premium Point and Bonnie Crest areas which are not the most representative neighborhoods in terms of diversity or affordability. Why didn’t the article examine quality of life on the Union Avenue corridor or living conditions described by tenants at Avalon; http://www.apartmentratings.com/rate/NY-New-Rochelle-Avalon-on-the-Sound.html or Hartley House if they were truly interested in diverse living?
The fact that New Rochelle was rated #1 because of its “appeal to parents with growing families” is the exact opposite of what our development Gurus have targeted for the past 20 years. The Gurus promised two income working professionals with disposable incomes who would have little to no impact on schools. Pre-development studies have underestimated infrastructure and school district impacts by as much as 38% while sales tax projections from new commercial entities fell woefully short creating a major revenue deficit from multiple tax-abated skyscrapers. Police, fire and sanitation personnel face possible layoffs as a direct result of the corporate welfare doled out by our development Gurus, city council and the Industrial Development Agency (IDA).
The Huguenot Children’s Library (HCL) is a great story of volunteerism as a dedicated group renovated a building destroyed by fire to the current children’s library. An outshoot from this group, the Partnership for the Huguenot Children’s Library (PHCL), was formed dedicated to the total financial support of the HCL. The group lost their drive and solicited increasing supplemental support from the city. When city council abandoned the library by removing library funding from the city charter the citizenry of New Rochelle had no choice but to accept a new separate library tax including support for the Huguenot Children’s Library. Recently, the library executive director announced that the library would require a multi-million dollar renovation which means that New Rochelle taxpayers can expect a major bonding proposition on the ballot in the near future. It should be noted that the New Rochelle Public Library Foundation Inc. has net assets in excess of $1.3 million and the Partnership for the Huguenot Children’s Library has about $500,000 in assets according to their latest 990 tax forms filed at Guide Star; http://www2.guidestar.org/Home.aspx.
The reason New Rochelle will face difficult challenges in the immediate future goes well beyond the current state of the economy. It is a direct result of corporate welfare, grossly underestimated impacts of new development on infrastructure and personnel and sales tax expectations which never came to fruition. The City’s development “experts” targeted individuals with disposable income and unknowingly created a “family-centric” atmosphere which spawned “parents with growing families” who require massive infrastructure improvements, additional civil servants (police, fire & sanitation) while overloading our maxed-out sanitary sewer plant and exacerbate our overcrowded school district. Enjoy the #1 ranking while it lasts!
Anthony Galletta
Troll???? (Part 2)
Since you continue to block me on the other thread (New Rochelle North/South Divide)I will respond here.
You said I am the definition of a “troll”. Wrong! I admitted to creating a new account because you blocked me out, unfairly. I am willing to live by “your rules” but not your censorship. I would not of needed to create another account if you didn’t delete my original post then “unauthorize” my ability to post. I’m not “going away” because you don’t like what I write or question. We have had several discussions over the past year, sometimes we agree but most times we didn’t. But I have registered, by your rules, and should not be blocked out because I occasionally hit a nerve and take you to task.
A Definition of a Troll
If you have questions about why your comments were unpublished you could have sent an email asking for an explanation. Instead, you have created at least three accounts (possibly more) and are now posting new comments on unrelated articles on the site. Again, this is standard troll behavior.
Typical of a troll is someone who claims their “free speech” has been violated or they are being “censored” because they are not permitted to publish whatever they want on someone else’s web site. Governments censor. This is a PRIVATELY OWNED web site. Neither you nor anyone else has a “right” to publish on my web site. You are my guest. Act like one.
As is quite clear from the content published on this site I have no problem with someone disagreeing with me or taking a contrarian point of view. That is not what you did in your comment and certainly not what you have done since.
Also typical of a troll is acting like a bar room lawyer. You want to pick a few unrelated policies like my policy of now allowing ALL CAPS comments or using profanity and argue that because you have not violated those policies that you are therefore not a troll. A troll might use ALL CAPS or not but someone who uses ALL CAPS is not necessarily a troll. They are unrelated. Most people who use ALL CAPS are inexperienced Internet users who do not understand that the use of ALL CAPS is considering SHOUTING and therefore rude. That you did not use ALL CAPS does not mean you are not a troll.
Now, as far as what DOES constitute a troll, Wikipedia offers this definition (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_(Internet)):
This accurately describes your behavior.
In this particular case, your response to a 60 page highly detailed report which cites sources for every chart, table and graph is to raise an irrelevant point which has nothing to do with that report. You then seek to use that point to make an ad hominem attack which you, in turn, attempt to claim raises doubts about the 60 page report. It is my view that your purpose in doing this is to change the topic from the finding of the report to making personal insults against me, to make me and my credibility the focus of the discussion rather than the report. I believe you are doing this because you are, for some reason, threatened by the report and want to discourage people from reading the report, taking the report seriously or taking the discussion on the web site away from the report and make the focus you, your opinions about me and now the supposed abrogation of your “right” to post whatever comment you want.
In announcing my decision to turn off anonymous comments I stated that I believed the time had come to move away from the sort of inane, childish comments submitted by people like you and on to a more serious discussion of the posts submitted to the site. As you have now discovered, I meant it.
As this point your comments were unpublished (not deleted) and your accounts were not removed. If you wish to be reinstated you are going to need to email me directly and respectfully request reinstatement. I will give you a second chance. Just do not expect a third chance.
I believe this matter has been more than sufficiently covered here to achieve my purpose — to help readers understand my policy with regard to dealing with people like you. Any further attempts to continue this discussion on this web site will be removed as they appear.
Have a nice day.
1 of 6
New Rochelle was ranked #1 of 6. We beat out Yonkers and Mount Vernon!
What does it tell you that the school district has a budget of $230mm, does not spend a dime on getting professional advice on budget forecasting or economic forecasting, but has its own full-time PR professional.
The result?
A guy from New Rochelle writes an article citing Business Week as the basis for his “ranking”.
“How can you argue with Business Week? The publication named New Rochelle one of the best places in America to raise a family last year. Having raised my own two kids there, I have to agree.”
I do not know where Mr. Donelson lived in New Rochelle but I am just going to take a wild guess his kids did not go to IEYMS.
I would remind readers that the Business Week article did not rank New Rochelle as the best place to raise a family in the United States. The ranking was based on creating all sorts of criteria intended to rule out affluent, white suburbs of major cities which had dominated the rankings previously. BW got a great deal of criticism and the result was to limit the choices to cities below 100,000 that had lower cost housing that had a higher rate of minorities and a few other criteria. In New York State there are only a handful of cities that met the BW criteria. New Rochelle was #1 within this narrow range of choices created by BW to achieve their goal — to pick cities that had more black and hispanic residents.
The problem is that the primary criteria used was the data from standardized tests. As we have demonstrated, the data for New Rochelle is a wrong because the testing at IEYMS is based on fraud committed by school district employees in their attempt to convince the public that there is parity between North End and South End schools.