Let’s talk infrastructure. ZZZZZZ. C’mon, don’t fall asleep, especially if you live in Yonkers.

For years, I’ve been bitching about the ridiculous system—I should, say non-system—of billing water users in Yonkers. I live there, so I know what I’m talking about.

Once I got a bill out nowhere demanding I pay $1,200, like it was high-end brand of vodka or something. This outrage routinely happens to city residents, and there are a number of reasons for it which I’ve pointed out ad nauseum in my Journal News column. That the city did away with regular water-meter readers many years ago had something to do with it. Actually it had a lot to do with it.

The bottom line is that few people believed the biannual bills were fair and accurate. And that posed a big problem for the city.

Well, here’s the good news. Pending approval from the City Council, an $18 million , two-year project to upgrade the system will begin in September. The idea is to install state-of-the-art meters outfitted with radio transmitters in every home and business that uses city water, according to David Simpson, who is director of communications for Mayor Phil Amicone.

The meter overhaul will be formally unveiled tomorrow at a 1:30 p.m. press briefing in City Hall, Simpson said.  Part of the presentation includes excerpts from a couple of my columns, which does minor wonders for my fragile ego.

The City Council will hold a public hearing on it at 8 p.m. Tuesday.

A vendor has already been selected to do the job—Ameresco, Inc.—which will install the meter, set up the radio towers and they’ll send out notices telling rate payers when the installations will take place.

Simpson said once the meters are installed, rate payers should be more confident that what they’re paying is what they actually owe. In some cases, he said, bills will go up.

“I don’t want to overstate the problem,” Simpson said, “but there are a lot of people ou there who disconnected their meter maybe because they had an illegal apartment, or they turned their meter around and tampered with the sytem and they’ve been getting away with paying substantially less than they should which meant that it cost more money for everybody else in the district.”

The new system will also detect leaks.

Mike Kaplowitz, a Somers Democrat and vice chairman of the Westcheter County Board of Legislator, will be my guest on the High Noon radio show tomorrow (Thursday) on WVOX.

We’re going to talk about the Gary Kriss affair, Boss Ryan and just about every thing else under the sun except for pet care, summer movies and sex. Just kidding. Sex is always a welcome topic.

Anyway, tune in to 1460 AM at 12 noon or log onto wvox.com. Calls as always will be taken at 914-636-0110.

UPDATE: The podcast is up. Take a listen.

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What’s all the fuss about three Westchester County legislators performing in drag? I don’t get it.

I don’t understand why members of the burgeoning transgendered community were offended when the three Democratic caballeros—Ken Jenkins, Vito Pinto and Jose Alvarado—performed a skit in drag at a senior citizens event held last weekend at the Polish Community Center. They were accused of mocking a minority.

But I think the ire is misplaced. Maybe these guys like to wear dresses. Did that occur to anybody…hmm? Rudy Giuliani liked to dress up in women’s clothing, didn’t he? If anything, he was offensive mainly to women because he was so ugly and talked in a campy falsetto. Plus, in one of his cross-dressing episodes, he actually kissed Donald Trump, who is offensive to almost everybody and for a whole lot of reasons.

The Board of Legislators has  been taking  a significant amount of  crap lately, but this  is just wrong.  We need to be more understanding, especially at time when the DVD box set of Carmen Miranda movies has just been released in stores.

The legislators should run out and get it for some costume ideas. Platform heels and fruit basket hats should look good on them.

John McCain will never be accused of being hip. His attempt at humor with the “bomb, bomb Iran” take off on the Beach Boys 196os tune “Barbara Ann”  fell flat for poor taste… and it was also a crappy song.

Now the McCain campaign has co-opted “Still the One,” the Orleans hit that, if played enough times, can make your head explode. U.S. Rep. John Hall, a Democrat whose 19th Congressional District includes Putnam County and much of northern Westchester, was the front man for Orleans and he’s not happy that the song was used without his permission.

“We objected just as we did when George W. Bush did the same things four years ago,” Hall complained in an e-mail newsletter. “It seems like John McCain just keeps on demonstrating that he hasn’t learned from any of Bush’s mistakes.

I was driving down the Bronx River Parkway and was somewhere south of Scarsdale when I saw a car go by with an American flag fluttering off the starboard bow. I took special note because vehicular showing-of-the-flag has been a rare expression of patriotism since the heady post 9-11 days when it seemed every car was decked out in red, white and blue.

But what really surprised me—but only for a split second—was that the guy was driving a Toyota Corolla. How times have changed. “Buy American” used to be the auto industry battle cry.  A generation ago, the flag wavers called you unpatriotic if you drove a Japanese car.

Not anymore. Today, Toyota is the world’s largest auto maker, and it has more than 16 percent of the American market share. They have plants all over the U.S.

Sixty-three years after the Marine planted the national banner on Mount Suribachi in the middle of one of the bloodiest battles in American history, we’re now putting the flag on Japanese-made cars and without the slightest sense of irony.

Several years ago, I attended an event in New York City honoring Walter Cronkite, the reigning emperor emeritus of network news.

All the giants of the hot medium were there—Dan Rather, Mike Wallace and a bunch of others. You would have needed the lubricating assistance of a 55-gallon drum of Crisco to squeeze all those egos out the door.

They call came to kiss Uncle Walter’s ring. For a small-fry print guy like me, it was fascinating to watch, not unlike like viewing a cross between  “Animal Kingdom” meets “Anchor Man.”

The well-wishers jockeyed and juked to position themselves in the glow of the Great Man’s aura.

I wanted to meet Cronkite because my father, a TV writer  had written a couple of scripts for him for the “You Are There” series and “The Twentieth Century,” a  documentary show that aired on Sunday nights back in the late 50s and early 60s.

But every time I tried to talk to him, somebody with power and influence would cut in and interrupt. I was virtually invisible to a crowd of people who shared a common characteristic that seemed to burn in their eyes—driving ambition.

After awhile, the interruptions got  a little ridiculous. And I decided that the next guy who tried to butt in would get the elbow treatment. And the next guy was Tim Russert.

Just as I was about to extend my hand for the fifth time to Cronkite, Russert came out of nowhere to pay his respects. Like the rest of them, Russert had that determined, get-outta-my-way look.

But just as he was about to step in front of me, I gave him a slight nudge and threw him off course. Then I moved in on Cronkite.

I shook Cronkite’s hand, introduced myself and mentioned my father for whom, I quickly perceived, he had absolutely no memory.

Mumbling something close to a goodbye, I left him to Russert, who didn’t seem to be irritated in the slightest by my power move.

I recently received my $1,200 economic stimulus check from Uncle Sam—and boy I can hardly wait to pay my bills with it.

George Bush wants Americans to plow the federal rebate money back into the economy by buying junk at the mall, but most working people are more likely to pay down their debt, and the rich—well, they’ll put in their savings accounts.

We’re going to talk about this and other topics today on “High Noon,” my WVOX radio program, which airs at 12 noon, of course. QUESTION OF THE DAY: What do you plan to do with your rebate check.

Join the conversation by tuning in at 1460 AM or listen on line at wvox.com. Calls will be taken at 914-636-0110.

UPDATE: Here, a few days late, is the podcast recording:

Download:

This came over the transom to yours truly. It’s a May 19 directive to all Westchester County commissioners and department heads marked, “Per the request of the Deputy County Executive.”

That’s none other than Larry “The Brain” Schwartz.

It starts out this way: “In an effort to reduce the spending and reinforce proper use of cellular devices, we are asking each department to thoroughly analyze their cellular and Blackberry (sic) from both Verizon Wireless and Nextel on an ongoing basis.”

Interesting, no? No  doubt the Schwartz edict was inspired  by the recent Journal News  FOIL investigation into the use and abuse of cellular devices by the Board of Legislators. “The Brain” obviously wants to avoid similar revelations that might embarrass the executive branch. So the whip has been cracked.

Guidelines were immediately put into place. They include:

*Bills must be analyzed for proper usage. Callers are limited to 450 minutes of use per month, unless they get approval for more from the chief information officers. All plans without authorizations to go above 450 minutes will be reduced to the 450 minute maximum by June 1. (That was last week). Anyone going beyond the minutes may be held responsible.

• No text messaging.

• Personal use should be only occasional and of short duration.

• No 411 directory assistance calls. Too expensive.

• Replacing a device must now be approved by the chief information officer.

County Legislator George Oros, R-Cortlandt, who serves as the GOP minority leader, will call in to today’s “High Noon” radio program to talk about the Gary Kriss affair and the state of county government.

Don’t miss this show. It airs at 12 noon on WVOX at 1460 AM, or wvox.com if you’re out of the immeidate listening area. Calls will be taken at 914-636-0110.

Oros and two other Republicans on the board have called for the immediate suspension of Kriss, whose free-wheeling purchasing of electronic gadgets, books and other things, has come under the intense scrutiny of a criminal investigation. Kriss is the $150,000-a-year chief adviser to Bill “Boss” Ryan, the Democratic chairman of the board,

Oros and the other Republican legislators, Jim Maisano of New Rochelle and Gordon Burrows, said that under Ryan, “the public has lost trust” in the board of legislators.

UPDATE: Here’s the podcast of the show:

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Today’s Question: What’s the story with a Westchester County-owned vehicle that was seen parked in upstate Saratoga Springs?

Well, we know that County Executive Andy Spano has a second house up there, but as of this writing we don’t know if Spano was the actual occupant of the white, four-door Toyota spotted on Broadway near two popular restaurants—The Cafe Circus and Brindisi’s. Maybe it’s a county employee on a special mission.

Given the higher and higher cost of gasoline, we can only hope and trust that genuine county business is being conducted up there. I mean if it’s not an official trip, what would the taxpayers think?

We’ll try to follow this. A call was placed to his chief adviser Sue Tolchin, and the word was it ain’t Andy.

Hmm…could it be Boss Ryan, the chairman of the Board of Legislators? We are checking that out,