The voters of Peekskill have just received a threat in the mail. It came in the form of a glossy letter from Martin Ginsburg, the head of the eponymous Ginsburg Development Companies (GDC), who has carpeted the little city with expensive housing developments and seeks to add another one—a 136-unit waterfront community called The Abbey.

In the “open letter,” Ginsburg advises the local electorate that they better not vote for Mary Foster, a Democratic candidate for mayor, because she is a critic of his luxury projects and favors affordable housing. Instead, Ginsburg writes, voters should elect Republican Bill Schmidt and a slate of other favored candidates for city council.

Foster, Ginsburg condescendingly sneers, “does not get it.”

“While Westcheser has a severe affordable housing shortage,” he goes on, “Peekskill does not. In fact, much of the housing stock in Peekskill meets the definition of affordable. What Peekskill desperately needs is more market rate housing to bring up the income demographics in the city in order to attract more businesses downtown.”

Translation: Peekskill needs to get rid of its lower middle class and the best way to do it is to drive up the cost of real estate. It’s called gentrification.

But the best part is the threat Ginsburg makes if Foster should win. “Quite frankly, I would see no future for Peekskill and I would have no choice but to pack up and leave,” he says.

The letter disclaims any connection to Schmidt’s campaign, but clearly this tells you who’s really running Westchester these days. It’s the high rolling developers with their wads of money.

I don’t think Ginsburg should leave Peekskill. No, that would be too good for him. After mailing this letter, he deserves to be run out of town on a rail.

I got the Ginsburg missive in the mail anonymously. Using a black marker, the sender scrawled the following words across the text—”pompous, greedy, arrogant, self-serving, B.S.’

To that, I add, Amen.

As they’ve done for the last couple of years, the Westchester County Department of Probation is rounding up the county’s known sex offenders on Halloween night and requiring they attend a lecture on the evils of sex abuse.

No, it’s not a costume party. (But who knows, maybe they’ll bob for apples stuffed with razor blades.) This year’s Halloween roundup will be at the Westchester County Courthouse.

Imagine the ghoulish “fun “—173 registered and non-registered sex offenders all in one place. Talk about night of the living dead.

County Executive Andy Spano initiated the sex offender program on the grounds that kids who go trick or treating on Halloween are easy prey for perverts offering more than candy. It’s well meaning, I suppose, but it always smelled like a publicity gambit more than anything.

After all, Halloween night is probably the one night in the year when parents actually watch their children like hawks.

In any case, I have never heard a case of a child being victimized by a trick-or-treat predator. It may be a myth like the aforementioned “razor-in-the-apple treat.”

It’s getting down to the nasty wire in the Yonkers mayoral race. The other day I received in the mail a barely literate flier from the so-called “Citizens Against Justice,” a thinly veiled front for Sam Zherka, a weekly newspaper publisher, strip club owner and inveterate hater of Republican incumbent Phil Amicone.

It calls Amicone a liar, as in “Fire this Liar!!” and includes two frowning photos of the mayor. Also included are photos of city workers confiscating Zherka’s newspaper honor boxes, which was a dumb move on Amicone’s part. Removing the boxes was done on the flimsy pretext that they were blocking the sidewalks and were a public safety hazard.

And so Zherka is suing the city on First Amendment grounds.

Nevertheless, the flier is a hysterical rant, worthy of parody. “This tyrant and pathological liar has betrayed every citizen of Yonkers,” it says.

Hardly brave, it gives a virtually untraceable return address—a post office box in Mount Vernon.

But the best line of all is this: “Puts the Lively hood (sic) of Every Man, Woman & Child in Yonkers in Jeopardy.”

You’d think that these clowns would have invested in a proof reader for all the trouble and expense they went through to print these cards.

Today’s guest in the first half-hour of “High Noon” will be Jeff Gordinier, editor-at-large of Details magazine. He’ll talk about an article in the latest issue which claims it is now cool to live in the suburbs as opposed to the hip confines of New York City.

Who knew?

Catch “High Noon” today on WVOX, 1460-AM…or listen in by logging onto www.wvox.com.

UPDATE: Here’s the podcast of today’s show:

Download:

Every year it seem the city of Yonkers is in debt, or at least in budget crisis of some sort.

Maybe the city fathers ought to look to its own citizens for a lesson in bottom-line management. According to the November issue of Men’s Health Magazine, the people of Yonkers are doing pretty darn well when it comes to handling personal debt.

The magazine analyzed economic data in 100 major American cities and ranked them from worst to best in terms of individual debt. Letter grades were also assigned.

Las Vegas, Nev. was ranked 100th, or worst, and given an F-grade. Following in order of financial ineptitude were Aurora, Col.; Atlanta, Ga.; Sacramento, Calif.; Detoit, Mich.; and Jacksonville, Fla. All of them got F’s.

Yonkers received an A- and ranked 9th ahead of Wichita, Kan. (10th) and behind Bangor, Maine (8th). The City of Hills is always mentioned as the fourth largest city in New York state, but it beats the field in keeping the wolves away from the door.
New York City gets a B (14th), Rochester gets a C+ (31st) and Buffalo receives a D+ (71st).

The rankings were based mortgage foreclosures, cost of housing, bankruptcy rates, credit card debt and other factors. Though Vegas is the gambling capital of the U.S., that fact wasn’t necessarily cited as the reason for “Sin City’” poor showing. Men’s Health suggested that low employment and a housing bust may be the culprits.

Incidentally, anked first with an A+ in debt management are the people of Billings, Mont. I’ve always liked Billings.

The other day, I asked Yonkers Mayor Phil Amicone to name one kind of store he’d like to see come into the city’s downtown.

Without missing a beat he replied, “We don’t have a book store. You cannot walk outside City Hall at lunch time and buy a book. I mean, you can buy a paperback at some of the stationery stores. We don’t have a Borders, a Barnes & Noble… We have a great library, but we don’t have a bookstore.”

It’s something he said he’s been working on with the big book chains, but they will only follow when the downtown experiences a change in demographics, i.e. more educated yuppies.

New Rochelle is the same way. No bookstore.

You listen to mayoral candidates extoll the virtues of their cities, that they’re the “greatest cities in the world” and all that. But no city can truly claim any real progress until it has a bookstore.

Toward the end of today’s “High Noon” radio program, New Rochelle Mayor Noam Bramson answered a a couple of questions about the controversial Ward Acres issue.

That’s the northend park where for years dog owners let their pets run off leash. In a controversial move, the city imposed a law which has limited the hours for “dogs gone wild” and also created a special licensing fee for anyone who takes their dog to the park with or without a leash.

This has caused a contretemps and has become an election issue, which Bramson believes has been blown out proportion.

He may be right about that.

But midway between a rather wonkish answer to a question, I asked him if he owned a dog.

“I do not,” replied. “But I don’t know if that’s necessarily material.”

Sure, I said, but laws like this can really rile dog owners.

Bramson continued, “I understand. Look, my wife grew up with retrievers. I have close personal friends who walk their dogs every day at Ward Acres. I understand the passion that surrounds this issue.”

The full interview can be heard by clicking onto the High Noon menu on this blog.

The Yonkers Chamber of Commerce sponsored a debate between the Yonkers mayoral candidates on Tuesday, which I mention only in passing in my Oct. 18 column. A major league snore, the event was held after breakfast at the St. John’s Riverside Hospital cafeteria.

To say the least, charisma is not a word that came to mind when I watched the byplay of Republican incumbent and Democratic challenger Dennis Robertson. Amicone is at least coherent, but Robertson badly needs a debating coach. He also needs to develop vision for the city’s future. He has a “vision thing” problem.

Both candidates are almost fatally humorless. But two funny things happened during the debate, which, by the way, is a misnomer for what amounts these days to nothing more than the disconnected recitation of campaign talking points. Hey, I know this is Yonkers, but give me a break!

The first funny thing was the coin toss to see who would go first. The coin was tossed by former mayor Angelo Martinelli. Amicone called “heads,” and Martinelli flipped the coin, then fumbled the catch and the coin fell to the floor. Heads it was…Is nothing on the level in the city of hills?

Anyway, it was certainly all down hill after that.

Funny number 2 was that throughout the “debate,” the hospital intercom kept going off, drowning out the candidates. For all I knew they could’ve been summoning a doctor to come quickly to perform a mass lobotomy on the terminally bored.
Reminded me of a “Three Stooges” episode in which Moe, Larry and Curly played doctors and the intercom kept going, “Dr. Howard, Dr. Howard, Dr. Fine!”
I can hear Curly know, “Woowoowoowoowoo!”

My guest on “High Noon” this coming Thursday will be New Rochelle Mayor Noam Bramson. The show airs on WVOX radio at 12 noon…but you knew that, right?

So turn your radio dial to 1460 AM or listen online at www.vox.com to hear the mayor and, if you want, you ca join in the conversation by dialing 914-636-0110.

UPDATE: Here’s the podcast of the show:

Download:

They’re at it again! How do they dream this stuff up?

Last night the Westchester County Board of Legislators passed yet another one of those nutty “raise awareness” laws that are supposedly designed to save people from their own apathy, stupidity and negligence but in reality, will have no impact whatsover on the course of human events.

This time, the danger is inflatable swimming pools! They are the board’s latest scourge.

Citing statistics that children under the age of 4 have a drowning rate more than three times that of other age groups and that 17 children drowned in 2005 as opposed to 10 in 2003, the board went into high gear. They created a law that makes it mandatory for retailers to post a county advisory, warning consumers of the drowning hazards of inflatable pools. Of course, if store owners don’t comply, fines will be levied between $150 and $250.

It’s ludicrious to even say this, but intelligent parents hardly need a sign to remind them that placing an infant in a foot of water requires vigilance. Dumb parents aren’t going to pay attention no matter what.

Laws like this are an attempt to give the impression that the legislators are concerned about public safety. The intentions are good, but the result is patronizing. You can trace these kind of laws back to the Surgeon General warnings on cigarettes—a sound policy that runs amok these days.

Here’s one the board should consider: They should pass a law requiring that sex shops like Romantic Depot carry signs on inflatable dolls: “Warning, this is not a flotation device.”