WVOX Morning Show Host Breaks with Mayor on Reality of New Rochelle Crime

Bob Marrone may not be getting that invitation to Mayor Noam Bramson’s holiday party come December after weighing in on the reality of crime in New Rochelle.

Despite his best efforts to sugarcoat the message, the message is clear. According to Marrone, New Rochelle residents are afraid and have good right to be: “residents are on edge…multiple armed attacks…denial…indicative of a reality we rarely talk about…tough, even dangerous, neighborhoods…do not yet give one the sense of security that we would like…inner city problems…gang activity.”

Marrone posits several reasons why the recent spate of violent robberies in New Rochelle has gotten media attention over the past few weeks while ignoring the most obvious reason: Talk of the Sound.

It was just a few years ago that Mayor Bramson was declaring that the lack of media coverage of New Rochelle was an indication that he was doing a good job running the City. Bramson failed to mention an active effort by city officials to suppress negative media coverage of New Rochelle through threats and intimidation of media outlets. As explained last month in a Talk of the Sound article on the emerging media landscape in New Rochelle there has been a sea change since 2008, led by Talk of the Sound.

Talk of the Sound routinely breaks stories which are often later picked up by local media outlets such as The Journal News, News 12, WVOX, as well as, New York City outlets like WCBS-TV, 1010 WINS Radio and the New York Post. Many stories first reported by Talk of the Sound have received national and even international coverage. That success has created, for the first time ever, real competition to break news in New Rochelle. That competition is bad news for traditional gatekeepers of information but great news for residents.

This media coverage of New Rochelle is the direct result of a decision made at Talk of the Sound to cover New Rochelle the same way a major City like New York or Chicago is coverage by their local media — the fires, the robberies, burglaries, assaults, shootings, stabbings, murders, and political corruption — along with more upbeat stories, press release and human interest stories.

The Mayor has recently put forward the notion that recent concerns over crime in New Rochelle are “perception” (as opposed to reality?). Having spoken to many of the victims of crimes in New Rochelle, Talk of the Sound can say with certainty that the “perception” of these victims is that they had a gun pointed in their face or a knife pressed up against their body. In fact, the reality is that crime is up in New Rochelle according to NRPD statistics.

Marrone goes so far to paint a picture of New Rochelle that Noam Bramson has long sought to deny. He describes New Rochelle as a “a diverse and complex city” rich and tony one one end and dangerous and urban another. All of which sounds like the North-South divide we have been writing about for years and which the Mayor has long sought to deny, going so far as lashing out at the Journal News in a 2008 Op-Ed the paper published at his request:

“I write to express my concern about the journalistic judgment that produced your recent article on supposed north-south disparities in the New Rochelle school system,” wrote Bramson before going on to accuse the Journal news of “stoking resentments” and “playing with fire.”

In the letter Bramson uses his own children as proof that there is no divide because he plans to send his children to the New Rochelle public schools. He fails to mention that his children will attend schools in the North End. The City of New Rochelle offers summer camp programs for New Rochelle residents but the Mayor send his own kids to the Rye YMCA.

It is this same sort of “Do as I say, not as I do” mentality that is the source of much of the resentment against Bramson.

What Bob Marrone misses is that this tale of two cities did not happen by chance and that this is the source of genuine resentment among the victims of the Mayor’s efforts to shift costs and burdens on the South End while shifting resources and benefits to the North End.

Marrone has repeatedly mocked South End residents, picking up on the North End mantra that South End critics of the administration are CAVE people (“Citizens Against Virtually Everything”). Marrone has often characterized critics of the Mayor’s plans as irrational, knee-jerk Noam-haters who selfishly stand in the way of the “progress” being delivered to the Queen City by our article, enlightened, Harvard-educated, Mayor.

Maybe if Marrone were to consider that the Mayor’s plans are always a variation on the same theme — make sure that everything smelly, dirty and noisy in the City of New Rochelle is located as far south of Eastchester Road as possible while shifting the tax burden away from District 5 and 6 — he might notice that far from acting irrationally, the Mayor’s critics are acting with perfect rationality.

It is a basic tenet of microeconomics, taught in every Econ textbook, that “individuals choose the best action according to unchanging and stable preference functions and constraints facing them.” Gary Becker won a Nobel Prize at my old school, the University of Chicago, for his work on Rational Choice Theory which states that “an individual acts as if balancing costs against benefits to arrive at action that maximizes personal advantage”.

Time and time again, South End residents have watched how Democrats on City Council have pre-occupied themselves with government-funded initiatives designed to benefit people who might someday come to New Rochelle at the expense of those people who actually live here now. Whether it is high-rise apartments which have flooded South End schools with children being jammed into increasingly overcrowded classrooms, lucrative tax abatements to politically-connected developers, parking regulations in downtown that are now the most onerous in Westchester County, a refuse fee designed to shift millions in taxes (yes, a fee is a tax!) to South End property owners, or the highest sales tax rate in New York State.

With his new super-majority on Council, South Enders are watching with a jaundice eye as the Mayor moves to develop David’s Island, tear down the New Rochelle Naval Armory to benefit one of his donors and move the DPW City Yard, at a cost of many millions, into an area Marrone writes off as the “relatively impoverished section” of West New Rochelle, a neighborhood of Mexican immigrants and minorities.

So much for the Mayor’s notions of “social justice” and “stakeholder input” he prattled on about while selling his nonsensical GreeNR “Sustainability” Plan to a gullible public unable to see that the Mayor sold out New Rochelleans to curry favor with national environmental groups who he hopes will fund his run for Nita Lowey’s Congressional seat. For those who missed it, while most members of the Mayor’s Advisory Board for GreeNR were not from New Rochelle almost all of them were Democrats from the 18th Congressional District.

Are these so-called CAVE People just “Noam-haters”, as Marrone likes to portray them, or are they rationally opposed to efforts to continually shift economic and social costs from North to South to protect North End property values at the expense of the South End?

Marrone ends with what he perceives to be a conundrum:

If we overstate the problems we run the risk of painting our city with an unfairly negative brush and, worse, creating the impression that it is not safe at all. Property values can fall and businesses might be reluctant to come here. On the other side of the issue, a failure to deal with these issues openly impedes progress, and worse, detracts from the credibility of assessments put forward by city officials.

Since when it is the role of journalists to concern themselves with whether accurately reporting the news will cause public relations problems for government officials, impact real estate values or chase away businesses? And what is the “we” and “our” Marrone keeps talking about. Last time I checked Bob Marrone pops into New Rochelle to do a radio show for 15 hours a week and then heads back to New Jersey where he resides.

Marrone suggests that if he tells the truth on his radio show then “businesses might be reluctant to come here”.

Really? This is his concern? Really?

That fact is that businesses are already reluctant to locate in downtown New Rochelle. Kohl’s and Target bailed on New Rochelle, Barnes & Noble and Best Buy took a pass, Whole Foods and Fairway Market went to Port Chester and Pelham Manor, respectively. Capelli just asked for and received permission to lease the “retail” space at Trump Tower to a commercial tenant because, they told the IDA, retail was not viable.

The businesses that are here have been howling about the anti-business attitude of the City government from parking regulations that are killing the bar and restaurant business in the downtown (Bella Bella, Mo’s Grill/Clubhouse, Coyote Flaco have all recently closed), to restricted operating hours for businesses along major thoroughfares like Main Street and North Avenue (Dunkin’ Donuts, Deli Mart, United Deli), to nit-picking code violations by building inspectors (Retro-Fitness, R Patisserie Cafe).

Are all these people part of some grand conspiracy?

And what does it say that the small business owners of New Rochelle see the New Rochelle Chamber of Commerce and the New Rochelle BID as the enemy not their ally?

The New Rochelle Chamber of Commerce is not interested in siding with New Rochelle’s small business owners against the City for fear of offending the Mayor and City Manager.

New Rochelle’s Business Improvement District is run by a member of a family whose primary interest in New Rochelle seems to be scooping up distressed properties in the downtown area for use as college classrooms, dormitories and athletic facilities. As a buyer, what incentive does Monroe College have in boosting property values in downtown New Rochelle? None.

Now that Bob Marrone has begun to see the light perhaps he will step out of his glass cage long enough to stroll around downtown New Rochelle.

He can stop in at the 99 cent stores and buy a crack pipe, chat with the homeless people sleeping in the Citibank foyer, pray at the many store-front churches that have replaced local retailers, run the gauntlet of panhandlers on North Avenue or dodge the gang-bangers that have claimed Anderson Street as their turf. Of course, if he intends to be a regular, he will need to start stocking up on rolls of quarters to visit the part of New Rochelle where the only visible police presence are the CSO’s giving out parking tickets mere seconds after a meter expires.

While he is there, Marrone might want to inquire of the people who own and operate the small businesses in downtown New Rochelle whether they agree with the Mayor that the problem in downtown is merely their “perception” that there are violent crimes, customers being harassed by vagrants, endless parking hassles, and selective enforcement of the City Code.