WPCNR KING KOMMENTS. By Councilman William King. October 31, 2003: The only 2 worksessions I have missed in my nearly 4 years in office have been the last 2. Last month, I had a conflict as, related to my work at the MTA, I went to hear a talk given by a former head of the Transit Authority who is now president of Amtrak. The last work session I missed by one day because I went out of town on Thursday morning, getting back on Tuesday night, the only window I have had available in more than a year to take a short vacation (we are short-staffed here at work and I am the director of my office).
I had asked George Gretsas several weeks ago if the work session on Thursday could be moved up by a day which I guess it couldn't. The 2nd work session on Monday the mayor's proposal with NYPH I did not know about and I guess it was quickly arranged for some reason, maybe for the reason you wonder about in your op-ed. It sounds like the information was not at all different from what the mayor presented to us in exec session last August. Last August, the mayor said Pardes still had to go to his board and that still seems to be the case - which is just one of the things that makes me wonder about the proposal which does not excite me.
I have found the work sessions not that informational. Sometimes there will be discussion of a topic for 1-2 hours with little of substance actually discussed. I tend to make up my own mind on how I vote and feel the other council members, certainly the mayor, have their minds pretty made up. At the end of the day, as you have to have noticed, they also tend to think alike.
And the work sessions are often more propaganda sessions pushing one point of view. If I have questions on
any agenda items before a Council meeting, George and city commissioners will tell you I tend to ask a lot of questions and a lot of them have gone unanswered over the years. Often, some fairly big items have appeared on a regular Council agenda that were not even brought up in a work session, whereas less important items were briefed instead.
As you know, I do things differently and try to experience things first hand, like pick up litter out of a lake (I did that 4-5 times, by the way, in Silver Lake, not just the time you joined us, and that was just one of several locations around the city), mow grass in a median, walk through the D'Elia property, ride my bike all around town including through the projects and across fields and up to the top of parking garages, and I recently went up to the top of the Bar Building with the Historical Society and JJ Sedelmaier - I'm told I was one of only 2 councilpeople to take up the Historical Society's offer.
In the past year I took my daughter to a fun play put on at the Slater Center by kids mostly from the projects. I didn't see any other elected official there. I was also the only councilman, along with Bill Ryan, at a downtown historical tour a week and a half ago led by Jack Harrington of the Historical Society.
Lou Cappelli will tell you he and I ran into each other one time on the top floor of the old Macy's garage where I went to look at the foundation work of the City Center project. Lou and I have also run into each other on the street near the City Center where we have talked. I tend to walk a lot. I go by the various construction sites in the city at least twice a week. I stare at and even count traffic.
I contact other levels of gov't on issues including NYPH and St. Agnes. I talk to other members of the press. I don't tend to go to many of the ribbon cuttings during the day because of my job. But I make up for missing the ribbon cuttings by actually going to the stores and restaurants afterwards like a regular citizen.
Tim Sheehan and you are definitely wrong, by the way, about not referring out Plan A on NYPH. There was no give on NYPH's part. Bob Greer says there was potential give but NYPH gave absolutely no indication of that to me - none - and they had ample opportunity. I know because I talked to them directly on several occasions. I have gotten along fine with individuals from NYPH like Connie Hildesley and others and there is mutual respect.
I just can't look at the beauty of NYPH's property and not keep pointing out how beautiful it is and how something that beautiful should be saved, not developed and how I thought the City should be willing to pay for it. I was mentioning to Susan Chang how I was in the San Francisco Bay Area last weekend and the morning of my flight home (Tuesday), the editorial in the San Francisco Chronicle was on their new biotech research park, 43 acres, which will have over 20 buildings and house more than 9,000 grad students and scientists, being built on the site of abandoned rail yards and old wood warehouses, not on land as beautiful as SF's Golden Gate Park.
In White Plains we have had a vacant Saks store, now occupied by Fortunoffs, and now a vacant hospital which could house biotech, a proton beam accelerator as well as senior housing as has been proposed by some candidates (I first heard this suggestion from former council candidate Mike Amodio), both surrounding the green space that could
still be a large central park rather than a 55-acre buffer with ballfields fronting large mostly windowless biotech buildings and their garages.
For this reason, if such buildings are built (and I felt the same way when large big box retail was being proposed by NYPH under Plan A), the City should look instead to convert the Gedney landfill and recycling yard into a central park that is not surrounded by large non-residential scale buildings, with composting and recycling operations moved elsewhere in the city (I first proposed this a few years ago to Bud Nicoletti and George Gretsas). With Gillie Park, Stepinac's field and the D'Elia property and Greenway all right there, the effect of the landfill being a park instead in the middle would be a large central park. It would be better to convert a forlorn and underutilized open space into a nice park than to ruin a beautifully landscaped open space with large big buildings and parking garages. -
