The City Council of New Rochelle has passed the GreeNR resolution by a vote of 6-1 with Council Member Lou Trangucci voting against the plan out of concern of the connection between the City of New Rochelle and ICLEI. The City Manager is now directed to began taking steps to implement the plan. During the discussion prior to the vote, the Mayor agreed to remove the section on lateral lines in section 2.13. The Mayor said that anyone concerned about ICLEI also believed in black helicopters in Montana and something about the Queen of England.
Meanwhile, at the New Rochelle High School Library, hundreds of people have turned out for the Board of Education budget review meeting. After being dominated by parents of children who attend private or parochial schools outside of the district upset about the proposed elimination of yellow bus service for their children, the district has called out the troops and packed the room with union members, PTA members and other folks from “Team BoE”.
The City Council voted down a resolution proposed by Council Member Richard St. Paul to place the IDA under City Council control (3-4).
The City Council voted to require taxi drivers to be drug tested when they get their hack license renewed by the City of New Rochelle.
Richard St. Paul raised the issue of proposed redistricting consultant Andrew Beveridge having made a campaign donation to Mayor Noam Bramson, first reported on Talk of the Sound. St. Paul has proposed that either the City should get someone else or hire a Democrat and a Republican to work as a team. There was a heated back and forth where Jared Rice got into it with all three Republicans. By a roll call vote, the Council voted 4-3 to hire Andrew Beveridge.
BTW, I don’t believe in
BTW, I don’t believe in voting along party lines. There are good people on both sides of the aisle. A candidate should be judged on their ideas and principles and not because of what party they belong to.
That said, I tend to agree with things put forth by Trangucci and St Paul but also see a lot of good ideas coming from Al Tarantino. With that in mind, I think Mr Tarantino would be an excellent choice for mayor.
BTW, I don’t believe in
BTW, I don’t believe in voting along party lines. There are good people on both sides of the aisle. A candidate should be judged on their ideas and principles and not because of what party they belong to.
That said, I tend to agree with things put forth by Trangucci and St Paul but also see a lot of good ideas coming from Al Tarantino. With that in mind, I think Mr Tarantino would be an excellent choice for mayor.
“Show me a politician who doesn’t know how to lie, cheat or …
There is no money for unfunded mandates and the taxpayers should not shoulder this burden.
The six politicians who voted for this should have the cost of GreenNR deducted from their salaries. This was a personal project and the public should not have to pay. If they want to attend seminars around the world, the attendees should pay, not the general public.
No where in the private or public sector is a full time salary paid for a part-time position.
The mayor is overpaid and a portion of his salary should be earmarked to pay for all the costs this program will bring.
“Show me a politician that does not know how to lie, cheat and steal and I will show you one who does not know their business” PT Barnam.
Vote all six of them out!!! Every last one of them. The only one that did not sell us out should run for Mayor.
I would love to know where
I would love to know where the city is going to get the money to implement this plan. It calls for new infrastructure, 5000 new housing units near the train station, wind and solar panel sites………
My understanding is that Noam
My understanding is that Noam wants to put a Solar Farm on Davids Island.
Can you imagine that? With all the government owned rooftops in town, he suggests putting a Solar Farm there on land worth millions. And we can’t find a qualified person to run against Bramson. Just goes to show you how out of touch most New Rochellians are with their government.
Hopefully more downtown developement isn’t going to happen anytime soon. The 3 towers that we have already are costing us millions, how can we afford to build any more?
We can easily get someone
We can easily get someone more qualified than Noam. But to get someone who appeals more to the northenders is different story altogether. Politics in NR is controlled mostly by the north.
As far as the solar farm, we can’t afford to pay municipal employees or maintain two bathrooms in the train station. Where will the money come from to grow this solar farm? Can we afford to give away more real estate like the city yard?
Marianne Sussman’s retiring, so maybe there’s hope after all!
According to Patch, Marianne Sussman’s retiring, so maybe there’s hope after all!
I didn’t know that. Without
I didn’t know that. Without her and get rid of Fertel and NR has a chance.
To Truthertz2 re: We can easily get someone
Truthertz2 posted: “We can easily get someone more qualified than Noam. But to get someone who appeals more to the northenders is different story altogether. Politics in NR is controlled mostly by the north.”
I am not responding as to who what defines ‘qualified’ to be NR’s legislative Mayor, as that is subjective, and difficult to distinguish from one’s political or perspective.
But several days ago, I posted here, a a detailed explanation regarding what motivates Northenders to vote Democratic in New Rochelle City Council Elections, and Robert Cox (and probably most readers here) agreed with my analysis.
But I will summarize here what I had posted, and clarify my informed perspective.
Northenders vote Democratic in New Rochelle City Council Elections, not because Northenders agree with with the policies of the Democrats running for City Council, but rather to send a message to the Republican Party that Democrats detest the politics of such ignorant barbarians as GW Bush, Cheney, Gingrich, Palin, Bachmann, Beck, etc. For the most part, NR Northenders are ignorant of NR City Hall Politics and of downtown New Rochelle.
Those Republicans in New Rochelle who disagree with what’s going on in City Hall should abandon the national and NY State’s Republican Party’s disgraceful politics, and register in a different party or run campaigns independent of political parties.
But as long as NR Republicans associate with the politics of dangerous morons such as GW Bush, Cheney, Gingrich, Palin, Bachmann, Beck, etc., it will be impossible for NR Republicans to win in the North End.
NR Republicans should either switch to another Party, or create a new Party unaffilated with national and NY State Republican politics, which I suggest should be called ‘The Anything But Republican Party’, and then maybe you could win elections in the North End.
At a minumum, NR Republicans should loudly disassociate themselves from the Teabaggers, and from GW Bush, Cheney, Gingrich, Palin, Bachmann, Beck, etc., all of whom are recognized by most people as ignorant, frightening and dangerous.
Brian, I don’t disagree with
Brian, I don’t disagree with you. You put into words what I feel is the problem in NR. Northenders don’t agree with the hardnose tactics put forth by Republicans and this is most likely doing them in. It is the same reason why I don’t think Ron Tocci could win as mayor of NR.
Ron Tocci is a Democrat Not a Republican
You are assuming that Ron Tocci wouldn’t win if he ran for Mayor, because he would run as a Republican.
But he is a registered Democrat.
I have no idea what would happen if Tocci ran as a Democrat, but all it takes is a petition to do so. If he won the Democratic primary he would be the Democratic candidate, and presumably he would have the support of the NR Democratic Committee by default, just like any other Democratic Candidate running in a General Election.
Tocci would presumably avoid connections to national and NY Republicam barbarians such as GW Bush, Cheney, Gingrich, Palin, Bachmann, Beck, O’Reilly, Hannity and Limbaugh, the many Republican fools running the NYS Senate, and other dangerous fools such as Rep. Peter King and Gov. Scott Walker. No matter which Party runs a candidate, the key to winning in the North End, is to avoid connections with the Teabaggers and with national and state barbarians that are so popular among the Republicans in the Red Neck States.
My understanding is that Ron Tocci is not planning on running for office this year, with any Party. So Tocci is no threat to Bramson.
As usual, I am just trying to put NR Politics into context, and am not advocating for or against anyone or any political position here. I am just trying to explain the political dynamics of New Rochelle; something I have been observing since the early 1960’s.
No, I am not assuming what
No, I am not assuming what affiliation he would declare. I know he is unhappy with the democrats but that is not my point. Tocci would win hands down in the south but I don’t think he would generate enough support in the north to win at large in NR.
Mr. Tocci further lost a lot of support among the firefighters because at one time, he promised them $500,000 in state aid which never materialized. He has further been highly critical of the way things are done in NR. In some cases, he is right. He was dead-on about Avalon, for example. It is one thing to give a developer a tax abatemnent in order to jump start the city. It is another to give them
a 30 year abatement. City officials even admit they never tried to entice Avalon with a lower abatement and, in their own words, don’t know if Avalon would have been built without this abatemnent. Is that to say the city never
ttempted to offer Avalon a 5 or 10 year abatement or none at all? He was also right about New Roc and Capelli.
But there are a lot of external factors that make
it hard for NR to compete with other communities. For one, NR is not easily accessed by major
roadways like WP which makes it harder to attract major retail and increase sales tax revenue. His tax cap, whether good or bad, was seen by many
northendrs as an impediment to progress in the city and ultimately had an impact on his re-election bid for the Assembly. If you recall, he lost the democratic primary to Bramson some years ago. I think his tactics were a little to harsh and his criticism of the city didn’t fair well with northenders. As such, I think he would appeal to northenders and therefore does not have the means
to win a mayorial race.
Part of being a good politician and getting things done involves shaking the right hands and kissing the right backsides. Tocci did his job well in Albany but he neglected to do it for NR as whole.
I do, however, thank him for sticking up for the less fortunate members of NR like Trangucci and St Paul do. Unfortunately, NR has a lot of diversity and to win at large one needs to look out for all segments of the city. As far as the current leadership, let me say this: When he is not kissing babies he is stealing their lollipops.
Too bad Tocci is not running.
I would vote for Mr. Tocci in a heartbeat. We need people to run who will do the
job they were elected to do, which is protecting the interests of the people who are paying their salaries, regardless of party affiliation.
If Mr. Tocci reconsiders running you would be surprised at the number of votes he’d get across the board.
Windmill Farms
Windmill Farms make more sense, as our climate is not ideal for year ’round solar power generation.
Is there enough wind year ’round on the Long Island Sound? Sure seems to power a lot of sailboats.
If we put windmills on Division Street and near the corner of Huguenot and North Ave, could we generate a lot of electicity? The answer is blowin’ in the wind.
You have obviously never seen a wind turbine up close
Brian,
Have you ever stood next to a wind turbine? I have. In Cleveland, next to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Having stood at the base and looked up, I can tell right away that you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about when it comes to wind power.
I might take seriously some of the proponents of GreeNR if I thought they knew what they are talking about. You want to put a wind turbine (wind mills are to grind grain not generate electricity and I assume you are not proposing to turn downtown New Rochelle into some sort of wheat distribution center).
An industrial-scale wind turbine is massive. Let’s review, shall we…
The GE 1.5-megawatt model is a popular model. It has blades that are 116 feet long attached to a tower 212 feet tall for a total height of 328 feet. The airspace taken up by the blade sweep is about an acre.
Another commonly used wind turbine is the 1.8-megawatt Vestas V90. The blades are 148 feet on tower 262 feet tall for a total height of 410 feet with a sweep of 1.5 acres.
The Gamesa G87 has 143-ft blades on a 256-ft tower, totaling 399 feet with a sweep of 1.5 acres.
GE took a wind turbine blade on a tour so people could see a blade up close. This is one blade and the tower is much bigger than the blade.
http://www.earthtechling.com/2010/04/ge-takes-131-foot-wind-turbine-blade-on-nationwide-touch-me-tour/
The accompanying photo should make clear the sheer scale of these wind turbines.
The idea that a wind turbine is going to be installed ANYWHERE in New Rochelle is ludicrous. That you propose putting one in downtown New Rochelle more so. You can hardly get a cell phone tower installed these days so imagine the biggest cell phone tower you ever saw and then attach a bunch more cell towers to it and start spinning them around the top of the first tower. Hello! This is not even close to realistic.
As the proposed Wind Turbine farm up in Cape Code has demonstrated, people do not take kindly to having these Wind Turbines installed even many miles from shore so the idea of doing this anywhere on Long Island Sound is simply out of the question. Every wealthy person, every wealthy community would lawyer up for decades to block it.
On another note, Noam himself admitted that solar is not viable in the Northeast United States due to weather conditions. Arizona maybe, along the East Coast near New York City, is not happening. While it might be cute to install solar panels on city hall it would be a stunt and not a serious effort for New Rochelle to generate its own electricity.
You want to talk green? Take a stroll through reality-land first.
You could probably disguise
You could probably disguise the windmills and make them look like trees just like the cell tower on the Hutch. I don’t know about you, but that cell tower blends right in with the other trees. I have a hard time telling which is the tower and which are the real trees.
If we disguise the wind mills like politicians they will blend right in.
My Response to R Cox’s Reply to My Reference to Windmills
I write here about Windmills for two reasons.
I only referred to downtown New Rochelle as a good site for windmills as a joke.
The unfortunate placement the two Avalons has created a serious wind problem year ’round. Likewise, the placement of Trump next to the KKK building is also an ill thought location. Of course the only appropriate local location for such skyscrapers is within NYC or perhaps Newark. Of course we’re now stuck we these buildings.
I was more serious, however about putting some windmills on Davids Island. There are several reasons why this is a practical location.
First of all we’ve owned Davids Island for about 45 years and still haven’t done much with it other than destroy its precious historic buildings and setting (visit Ft Totten in Bayside, Queens to see something similar but not quite as beautiful as what we lost). But unlike the Avalons and Trump, we must still determine what to do with the property on Davids Island.
I propose the following:
Davids Island is an untapped asset of New Rochelle that should be developed to benefit the public, and whose development costs and maintenance should be at self-financed by whatever is developed there, and hopefully will also contribute to the tax base of all of New Rochelle
The Big Question is what can be done consistent with that proposal?
Windmills’ sound and movements would be offshore at a distance from New Rochelle’s population.
Windmills would provide energy to be used to power anything else on Davids Island.
Windmills’ generated electricity can be sold to Con Ed, thereby adding to New Rochelle’s tax base. Davids Island already is on the grid, because Davids Island has a Con Ed station associated with the power cable that runs through Davenport Park, to Davids Island, to Long Island where it hooks up with LILCO.
BTW – I’ve seen large Windmills within Atlantic City, and inside one of Connecticut’s large cities, (either Bridgeport or New Haven viewable from I-95). I certainly would prefer its kind of pollution to generating electricity with nuclear, oil or coal.
I was more serious, however about putting some windmills on Davids Island. There are several reasons why this is a practical location.
Thank goodness
I am glad to hear you were joking but Davids Island may as well be on the mainland.
The Cape Wind project is the prototype of this is idea of an offshore windfarm. Wikipedia has a good summary: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Wind
They are planning to spend $2.5 billion, the approvals process has gone for 10 years, there are ongoing lawsuits and likely more to come. The farm would take up 24 square miles. The turbines would be sited between 4–11 miles offshore depending on the shoreline; 15.8 miles from Nantucket. They will have 130 horizontal-axis wind turbines, each having a hub height of 285 feet. The blade diameter is 364 feet with the lowest blade tip height at 75 feet and the top blade tip height at 440 feet. The project is expected to produce an average of 170 megawatts of electricity or enough for a 150,000 homes.
1 square mile = 640 acres so this 24 square mile project takes up about 15,630 acres.
Davids’ Island is a 78-acre island. Cape Wind takes up 15,630 acres. I trust this fact alone might give you pause. David’s Island is waaaaaaay to small to consider anything like a windfarm
78/15,630=.00499
If you map the Cape Wind grid onto David’s Island you have room for 1 wind turbine (mathematically, less).
The turbine will generate about 1.3 megawatts, enough to provide power for about 880 homes.
Everyone and their uncle has filed lawsuits that for most area residents is 20 miles from shore and not even visible to them. You want a wind turbine on an island about 2,000 feet offshore from New Rochelle. It is about 2 miles from Sands Point or City Island.
Now let’s consider that the tallest building in New Rochelle is the Trump Tower which, at 39 stories, is 390 feet tall. From the top blade, the Cape Wind turbines are 50 feet taller than Trump Tower — 440 feet.
So basically you want to put a structure taller than the Trump Tower on David’s Island that is 13% taller.
I can continue but I would hope it is becoming clear that wind turbines on David’s Island would be just a little more involved than plugging in a windmill to an old Con Ed substation and counting the cash. And you would do all this to generate as much electricity as Indian Point generates in about 1 millisecond.
It is nice to SAY “let’s put a wind farm on David’s Island” but it is readily apparent that this idea while appealing in sort of a daydream sort of way is not worth spending even the brief time I spent writing this comment.
Time to move on.
Wind Turbines
I could not agree more with your analysis Bob. I would also add that the “cut in” spreed for wind turbines is roughly 10 mph. The “cut in” speed is the minimum amount of wind necessary to produce usable electricity. The “rated speed” (the amount of wind needed for the turbine to produce its designed maximum electricity output) is 25 to 35 mph. Wind turbines work best under consistent wind conditions. Gusty wind conditions (typical of New Rochelle wind patterns) tend to be problematic. Median annual wind speeds in New Rochelle are 11 mph. The winds speeds are highest in the winter months, between 12 and 13 mph, and the lowest during the summer months, between 8 and 9 mph, when electricity demand is the greatest. I realize that Davids Island is on the L.I. Sound where wind speeds tend to be greater. However, unless wind speeds on Davids Island maintain consistent speeds of 15 to 30 mph for a large portion of the year it would be impractical to consider this type of endeavor.
Brian Sussman’s attitude is typical of the “we know whats best for everyone crowd”. It seems like a good idea so lets do it. Well there are lots of good ideas. However what really matters is how these ideas are executed. Effective execution is extremely difficult. The percentage of people who effectively execute is quite small and these people generally reside in the private sector. Noam Bramson has no private sector experience. As evidenced by his development blunders he clearly has issues on the execution side. I am pretty confident that “the idealistic 30 year old who wants to make the world a better place” working for ICLEI has limited private sector experience and I am greatly concerned about his/her execution ability. The New Rochelle IDA is another group that focuses on the idea rather then the execution of the idea. The mere fact that they approved projects and granted tax abatements without requiring independent cost benefit analysis is clear evidence that execution is a secondary concern. Not a good situation if you are a tax payer!
Joining ICLEI
The mayor stated that joining ICLEI, New Rochelle can participate in seminars, etc. Here are the locations for ICLEI talks,summits and conferences:RIO 2012,Croatia, Republic of Korea, Finland, South Korea, South Africa, Peoples Republic of China Thailand, Switzerland, German, Australia, Canada. I wonder who will be going to which location and who will paid for this. Citizens beware.
Jarred Rice
Mr. Rice thanks for lieing to the citzen’s of New Rochelle at a meeting at 95 lin ave before your election. You said you wanted city council to have the last say when it comes to ida well your vote last night just shows to me that your a Noam boy and you are at his beg and call.Be a man and start to do the right thing stop being a puppet to Noam and crew.
all’s well in New Ro
here we go again another plan that this city has no money for yeah yeah i know it cost us nothing. Noam said that the paper and effort this took was 600,000 at least. So how is all the paper they used for this project GREEN.give me a break why don’t they the 6 members that voted for this junk do something good for us residents like don’t run in 2011. vote them all out in 2011