A New Westchester

I found myself disagreeing with some of County Executive Astorino’s last budget, and specifically what he was trying to do with the Department of Emergency Services (DES) and the Department of Public Safety, formerly known as the County Police, and publicly spoke against it. I did, however, try to reach out to people around the County Executive for either a sit-down or at least a phone conference regarding where he was making a mistake, why and how I believed it could be corrected. But, those players never got back to me and I can only assume that they didn’t approach the County Executive on my behalf. Better to say nothing than to stick your neck out. Subsequently, I am being shunned by the Westchester Republican party. Ah, politics in Westchester.


As a former County Legislative candidate for the 8th District, I, along with others, had asked Astorino and others to have the Republican candidates run as a Team, showing the voters that there is a group of qualified, capable and willing Team of Republicans who will attack the spending and taxing problem in Westchester County. I was told that it wouldn’t be practical. Ironically, after Rob won, he couldn’t get much accomplished because the Democrats held the supermajority in the legislature. Maybe I was correct.


This election holds a bit of hope for the Republicans and in particular the County Executive. I'm not sure if he’ll get much completed as the Democrats are still in the majority, although there seems to be more of a chance now that several Republicans have appeared to win their legislative races. I want to see more of a balance in the legislature. More balance will bring a wider variety of ideas, solutions, compromise and level-headed decisions. I’m concerned however because many candidates promised to vote with CE Astorino if elected. We need independent thinkers, as opposed to independence candidates, who will vote the conscience of their constituency, not the partisan line, whether republican, democrat or something else. I believe that is what the voters are hoping for - not blind allegiance to the party.


CE Astorino has proposed this years budget. It appears he is proposing many of the same layoffs he had the last time he proposed the budget. Some of the cuts make more sense than others from this years budget are Departmental cuts: County parks: Down $3 million to $48 million; DSS: Down $16 million to $562 million ($14.5 million reflects a cut in federal stimulus money); Public Safety: Down $1.2 million to $36.4 million; Health: Down $5 million to $160 million. But if DSS is losing grant monies, they are only cutting the county portion by $1.5 million - a proverbial drop in the budget’s bucket.

Other cuts are: $1.9 million to three neighborhood health agencies; $990,000 to Cornell Cooperative Extension; $750,000 to ArtsWestchester; $100,000 to ethnic festivals; $40,000 to "Nutcracker" performance; $30,000 for nighttime movies; $16,000 for Lasdon Park concerts; $10,000 for Battle of the Bands; $7,000 for open gym. These are thousands, not millions and are nice to have but simply a waste. These cuts are symbolic and don't really add up to much.

Specific to the issues of cuts, he has 210 layoffs scheduled for this year. The big question is, “Do we need these people or can we do without them?” If we could live without them, why did we have them in the first place? It was about the same number last year. In fact, the breakdown of layoffs by departments is as follows:

A breakdown of layoffs by department: Human Resources: 1; Budget: 1; Board of Elections: 19; Finance: 1; Information Technology: 7; Law: 2; Planning: 4; Emergency Services: 8; Social Services: 71.


If government should be protecting it’s people, should we be cutting the social services and emergency services as much as we are? Should we be trying to educate the recipients of social services benefits to eventually be self-sufficient? Of course we should. Should we be consolidating two very different departments just because they fall under the moniker of emergency responders? Of course not! As a solution to our over-taxation in Westchester, it’s time for our elected officials to start thinking differently, acting differently and accomplishing more for us.


Most politicos realize it’s easier to just raise taxes, ignore the waste, deception, and phony largess, maybe the politicians should overall what we do run and give away. Reduce duplication where applicable (my only complaint with last years budget), reduce waste and streamline many of the processes that become self-serving and simply, expensive. Let’s hope the County Executive makes some progress this time around and maybe we can have a new Westchester!