RyeCity REVIEW THE
February 3, 2017 | Vol. 5, Number 5 | www.ryecityreview.com
City OKs seawall repair, rejects town proposal By JAMES PERO Staff Writer
Crown Castle code revamp to focus on 3 key areas By JAMES PERO Staff Writer In an effort to minimize the impact of a controversial proposal by the telecom contractor Crown Castle, which aims to install wireless equipment outside of many city residences, the Rye City Council has announced a slew of code amendments. According to City Attorney Kristen Wilson, who introduced the new set of amendments to the city code at a council meeting held on Jan. 25, the new provisions will definitely have an impact on the application put
forth by Crown Castle. “The idea is to draft a law that Crown Castle would be able to comply with, but also for any future facilities that would come into the city,” Wilson said. Specifically, the amendments would cover three different sections of the city code having to do with noise, streets and sidewalks, and wireless telecommunications facilities; the latter of which would see the broadest revamp, according to Wilson. A decision on the proposal—which looks to add 64 additional pieces of equipment to telephone poles and other in-
frastructure citywide—has been postponed several times since the application’s introduction this past summer. Currently, a decision on the proposal—which will encompass an overall rule on its compliance with the State Environmental Quality Review Act, SEQR, as well as a final vote on the overall application—is slated to take place at the March 15 council meeting. According to Mayor Joe Sack, a Republican, the twomonth long public hearing process for the code revisions, set to begin on Feb. 3, will mark an ex-
ceptionally long public process relative to other topics. Concerns over Crown Castle’s proposal, which is being proposed at the behest of Verizon Wireless, have spread amongst residents who fear that the installation of additional wireless equipment may adversely impact property values in the city, given the proposed sites’ proximity to homes. While Crown Castle has stated that it feels the project does not warrant a full environmental impact statement, EIS, Wilson REVAMP continued on page 8
A portion of a damaged seawall owned jointly by both the city and town of Rye will undergo patchwork repairs while members of the Rye Town Park Commission debate the best way to address the remainder of the 100-year-old structure. To help mitigate the city’s immediate situation, members of the Rye City Council voted to transfer $40,000 from its contingent account in order to repair a particularly damaged section of the wall during a Jan. 25 meeting, shifting a longtime plan to replace the wall as a part of a larger project by the park commission, which sets policy at Rye Town Park. While the city plans to move forward with its end of the repairs in the coming weeks, a more holistic approach to fixing the rest of the wall—which sustained damage from Hurricane Sandy in 2012—awaits a directive from the park commission. For four years, members of the commission and city officials—who became involved after the city of Rye took lead agency over the project in 2013—have been working to remedy the damage. However, authorization of federal funding and turnover of city staff overseeing the project—including former Rye City Manager Scott Pickup, who resigned in 2014—has continued
to stall the project indefinitely. Now, differing opinions on just what the project should look like may delay a fix even further. Though an original plan, recently approved by FEMA and the state Department of Environmental Conservation, DEC, would have replaced the wall inkind—a method that would involve removing the structure and replacing it with a similar stone wall—new and differing philosophies from both town of Rye officials and the city of Rye’s engineers have created points of contention. While Rye Town Supervisor Gary Zuckerman, a Democrat and president of the park commission, and Rye Brook Mayor Paul Rosenberg, a Democrat and member of the commission, favor a replacement project that would involve the tear down of the wall in favor of a new concrete wall, city officials—who have been advised by their own engineers—say that a patchwork repair may suffice. Among the reservations over members of the commission’s plan to replace the wall with reinforced concrete, according to City Manager Marcus Serrano, is the additional DEC approval, and potential re-approval from FEMA, and more importantly, the time that those authorizations may take to secure. Serrano said the wall is currently jeopardized by multiple SEAWALL continued on page 11
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