RyeCity REVIEW THE
May 20, 2016 | Vol. 4, Number 21 | www.ryecityreview.com
Port Chester to continue United Hospital dialogue By aNGEla JoRDaN Staff Writer
SQUARE
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The Rye City Council went back to an old meeting place, the Square House, for its special annual gathering of current and former city staff and elected officials. For more, see page 6. File photo
School budget, emergency bond easily make the grade By ChRistiaN FalCoNE Editor-in-Chief Tuesday, May 17 was a big night for the Rye City School District, as its 2016-2017 budget and an emergency $1.8 million bond referendum both passed the test. As of press time, unofficial results show that the school budget scored an overwhelming victory, with 1,165 votes cast in support and only 365 voters shooting the plan down. The 2016-2017 budget, which came in below the state-mandated tax cap, was finalized last month as
a $85 million document accompanied by a tax levy increase of 1 percent and a budget-to-budget increase of 2.63 percent. Board of Education President Katy Keohane Glassberg, who was re-elected to her third term on Tuesday with 1,206 votes in an uncontested race, said she was not necessarily surprised by the strong support from the community, but was, nonetheless, very pleased. “We were concerned about voter turnout because it wasn’t a controversial budget at all,” she said. “And we know the impact to individual taxpayers could be
very low.” As far as the budget, Keohane Glassberg, 48, said the budget really just maintains the programs as they are for the district with very minor personnel additions to address continued enrollment growth, an issue which the district has been battling for several years now. Voters of the school district also had a second decision to make on Tuesday, as the district put forward a $1.8 million bond referendum to replace a now defunct 1956 furnace in the Osborn Elementary School. The district will move forward on that front,
as the vote approving the bond passed with 1,224 in favor and 300 voting against, granting the district the authority to seek up to $1.8 million in funds. The referendum was considered an emergency as the furnace must be replaced this summer in order for the school to reopen in September. According to New York State Education Department rules, all school buildings are required to have working heat. Keohane Glassberg said once a bid is awarded to a contractor, BUDGEt continued on page 9
There will be another public hearing on Tuesday, May 24 about the adoption of the final environmental impact statement, FEIS, for the proposed development plan at the United Hospital site in the village of Port Chester. The 15-acre site, located at 99 High St. just off of Boston Post Road, was bought by a Greenwich, Connecticut-based investment firm called Starwood Capital Group for $28 million in 2006, one year after United Hospital closed its doors. Starwood has proposed a mixed-use development that would include 730 residential units, 230 of which would be affordable housing units, 307,000 square feet of office and retail space, and a 138-room hotel in place of the now abandoned hospital. In addition to the preliminary FEIS, Starwood also submitted a proposal in late April for an amendment to Port Chester’s zoning code that would allow for a development almost twice the size of what is currently allotted—changing the density from just over 500,000 square feet to one that is over 900,000 square feet. The village Board of Trustees has not rendered a decision yet about the zoning amendment, either. Focusing at the moment on the FEIS, Port Chester Mayor Dennis Pilla, a Democrat, said
Starwood has included information in its impact statement that elaborates on aspects of the project that the public has questioned, and provides suggested mitigations for traffic, which was a concern of both Port Chester and city of Rye residents. In order to address their own concerns about the project, Rye hired a traffic consultant, Philip Grealy from Maser Consulting P.A., to review the documents provided by Starwood and determine what the impact would be on the roadways shared by both communities. “We’re looking through [the FEIS] now and we’re meeting with the Department of Transportation on [May 20] to go over what’s been submitted,” Grealy said. “We think there’s some shortcomings in what’s proposed.” He said that the city of Rye’s primary concern is the Exit 11 ramp from Interstate 287, which leads onto Boston Post Road, citing issues like the traffic volume at that intersection and the ability of trucks to turn off the ramp. Another area of concern Grealy mentioned is the exit ramp from Interstate 95 south to Boston Post Road, where he said the majority of local traffic passes through. “If there’s an issue at those intersections, drivers will divert to other local routes which is a problem too,” Grealy added. In regard to his own concerns about traffic mitigation, hospital continued on page 8
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