RyeCity REVIEW THE
July 28, 2017 | Vol. 5, Number 30 | www.ryecityreview.com
Possible Crown Castle settlement reaches impasse By JAMES PERO Staff Writer
Making a difference
Charlotte Ference plays the ukulele with a boy in Fandani, the village in South Africa where she taught English for two years as a Peace Corps volunteer. For story, see page 6. Photo courtesy Jack Parker
Human Rights Commission planning strategy for future By FRANCO FINO Staff Writer Armed with a full roster, Rye’s local Human Rights Commission is now aiming to get started on several initiatives by the end of summer. On July 12, Mayor Joe Sack, a Republican, appointed six residents to the committee after officially resurrecting it back in January. Emily Dorin, Kelly Grayer, Judith Secon, Robert Marrow, Alison Relyea and Adrienne Mecca, who is the wife of Councilman Richard Mecca, a Republican, will join Democratic Councilwoman Danielle Tagger-Epstein, the committee chairwoman, and Marion Anderson, who has been a commissioner since the committee was re-established. “I’m very excited about having
people to work with in an official capacity,” Tagger-Epstein said. “It’s going to take some time to get started since we’re starting from scratch, but we’ll see what the next few months brings.” The first initiative the commission will move forward on involves establishing a committee website, which Tagger-Epstein said is crucial in such a technologically driven era. “The idea is to answer the call for those who are in need and for those who would like to report a [discrimination] complaint either anonymously or on the record,” she said. In addition to that, the councilwoman said the Human Rights Commission will also seek to collaborate with city Public Safety Commissioner Michael Corcoran for education initiatives throughout the city. Most recently, the two com-
mission members and the public safety commissioner collaborated on a proposal to establish a policy on immigration enforcement for the city Police Department. The policy was approved unanimously by the Rye City Council on July 12. Relyea told the Review the commission will also be discussing an event for Unity Day, a signature event of National Bullying Prevention Month that has been recognized in the U.S. since 2011. “This is a really good time to be focusing on human rights, especially at the local level,” she said. “The commission will serve to protect and foster the diversity we have in our community.” The committee was established earlier this year after a 13-year hiatus, in which Rye relied solely on the much broader
county-centric commission. Over the last two decades, a number of municipalities in Westchester County have eliminated their local human rights commissions to support the county’s committee. However, that changed in Rye after a perceived uptick in racially motivated vandalism throughout the county, including instances of anti-Semitism involving graffiti and swastikas being drawn in public places. Before reviving the local city commission, its last meeting took place in 2004. According to minutes of that meeting, commissioners spoke about diversity, affordable housing and racism in television programming. Sack and Corcoran could not be reached for comment, as of press time. CONTACT: franco@hometwn.com
Settlement talks between the city of Rye and Crown Castle— the telecom contractor behind a controversial proposal to install wireless infrastructure citywide—stalled after a conference between the two parties ended in a stalemate. “After several hours conferencing with the judge, it was determined a second conference would not be fruitful,” Rye City Attorney Kristen Wilson told the Review. As a result, the city will now wait for a federal judge to render a decision on Rye’s motion to dismiss a lawsuit filed by Crown Castle in May, as well as a preliminary injunction filed by Crown Castle that seeks to prevent the city from terminating an agreement with the company. Wilson said a decision on those two motions will likely happen with the next two months. According to Wilson, pending amendments to state law and Federal Communications Commission, FCC, rule changes being pushed by telecommunications companies across the country, however, continue to cast a shadow of uncertainty over the pair of upcoming decisions. A petition by Mobilite, the largest privately owned telecom company in the U.S., will prompt the FCC—the primary agency governing the country’s telecommunications laws—to mull a rollback of regulations that increase barriers to wireless deployments in localities nationwide. According to Wilson, that decision could drastically im-
pact the city’s standing when it comes to its ongoing dispute with Crown Castle, whose senior vice president, Ken Simon, currently serves as chairman of the FCC’s Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee, the committee mulling the rollback. Meanwhile, before the New York state Legislature are amendments to the State Environmental Quality Review Act, SEQR, that include exemptions for applicants looking to install wireless infrastructure, according to Wilson. Rye is currently reviewing Crown Castle’s application— which would install more than 70 additional wireless locations across the city—after giving the proposal a positive determination under SEQR and forcing the plan to undergo an environmental review. Deliberations over Crown Castle’s proposal have dragged on for more than a year after vehement public backlash and scrutiny from city officials derailed the project. Crown Castle, which has been contracted by Verizon Wireless, claims the infrastructure installations—in the form of wireless nodes—is meant to bolster the city’s wireless capacity. Many of the proposed nodes in Crown Castle’s plan are slated to be installed on telephone poles adjacent to residences. In the interim, the city will continue a revamp of its local telecommunications code in an effort to help tighten restrictions on Crown Castle’s proposal and those like it in the future, despite the impact of potential SEQR amendments that may ultimately affect the code revisions. CONTACT: james@hometwn.com