How Much Will the Dromore Settlement Cost Me?

After years of multiple litigations, the Town of Greenburgh settled the lawsuit brought by S&R Development. This particular claim filed in 2016, arose from zoning map changes made by the Town in 2007, which prevented S&R from constructing an apartment building at Central Ave by Dromore Road.  The litigation is long, convoluted, and the facts are disputed.  I'm not going to assign blame.  I'm interested in the costs to taxpayers.  Under the settlement, the Town is to pay S&R $9,500,000.  Of this amount, insurance will cover $2,750,000, leaving taxpayers to cover the remaining $6,750,000.   In addition, it is reported that the town spent over $4million in legal fees to date. Because this is a zoning matter, only unincorporated residents are responsible for forking over these funds;  you villagers can relax and laugh at the TOV suckers.  

Some of you may remember the last big Town Board blunder that residents had to cover and that we are still paying for:  the Fortress Bible settlement in Dec. 2013.   Then, the Fortress Bible Church claimed that the Town's actions prevented it from building on land the church purchased.  The church sued the Town and received a settlement of $6,500,000.  Insurance only covered $1,000,000 of the Fortress Bible leaving TOV (again a zoning matter so villagers had no liability) compelled to pay up.  The town bonded the $5,500,000 with payments payable over 10 years (with interest, the payment by taxpayers was much larger).  At the time, I took the assessed values of a number of homes on Mercer Ave, which were probably slightly above average in value for TOV, and I then calculated that the Fortress Bible judgment would cost my neighbors individually on average about $350 over the bond's ten years to fund that settlement.

While we're getting close to the end of the Fortress Bible settlement bond payments, now we'll have to start paying for the Dromore settlement which at $6,750,000 exceeds the Fortress Bible settlement of $5,500,000.     

How much will Dromore cost residents?

I asked a muni bond expert to review the numbers with me.   We'll ballpark this number based on a few estimates.  I'm going to assume that the Town will issue a ten year bond again like the Town did to fund the Fortress Bible settlement.  This time the bond will fund $6,750,000.  Bond interest rates are low, but rising, and the bond won't be issued immediately, so we'll go with an estimate of 2.00%.  With an annual principal being paid of $675,000 at 2% interest, the actual payout by taxpayers would be $7,492,500 over the ten years.

Funding the Dromore bond would require a 1.37% increase in the current B (unincorporated) budget.   The Greenburgh town tax rate is currently 6.12112 per mil for TOV property owners.   A homeowner with a $500,000 assessment currently pays $3,061 dollars in town taxes per year (remember that town taxes do not include school, fire district and county taxes).   Someone with a home valued at $750,000 pays $4,591 in town taxes, etc.   

For the Dromore settlement, the $500,000 home owner will pay an extra $41.39 in taxes next year and a minimum of $325 over the course of the ten year settlement.  Similarly, the $750,000 homeowner will pay an extra $62.90 next year, and a minimum of $485 over the entire settlement.    

Add in Fortress Bible and you can see that typical TOV single family homeowners will have the pleasure of paying from $560 to more than $850  in additional property taxes arising from these two mostly uninsured, town board litigation fiascos.    

Granted, these extra taxes are being paid out over 18 years.  Except for the first few years of the Fortress Bible payments, all such tax increases are non-deductible because of the SALT cap.  These estimates do not include more than $ $4,000,000 in litigation payments to outside lawyers already incurred by the town for Dromore.   

So bottom line:  how much is Dromore going to cost me?  I estimate a minimum of $436.  Then add in my share of the legal costs, which I'll guess as costing the town about $500,000 per year over the past 6 years in additional property taxes  (about 75% of the town budget is paid for from property taxes), or a very rough 1% increase in property taxes for each of those years. As a result, I'll guess that I've already paid above $200 for the litigation costs.  In conclusion, I'll estimate that I have - and will have - paid cumulatively at least $986 in additional property taxes for these two settlements.       

GREENBURGH COVID ACTIVE CASES AND "GREATER GREENBURGH" VACCINATION RATES

 At 43 total active COVID cases (June 1), Greenburgh has returned to low numbers last seen on October 2, 2020.   For context, the lowest number since the pandemic started was 25 active cases on August 25th.  

Vaccination numbers increase.  I'm removing 10595 (Valhalla) from these charts because, looking at registered voters, I discovered that there are only 200 registered voters in Greenburgh in 10595 and the majority live in the various seniors facilities at 55 Grasslands Road. Removing 10595 from "Greater Greenburgh" only very slightly increases the overall vaccination rates.  

The county is now replacing the 18yo+ %s with 12yo+ %s.  However, as we don't have the 2020 census yet, I still would like to see the Census populations that the County is using for these calculations.  For example, are they using 2019 ACS projections (such as found at https://censusreporter.org/, or is the county just applying the 2010 numbers?).   

Maybe Memorial Day weekend is suppressing numbers, but the increases are very mediocre.  Just 1,625 "Greater Greenburgh" (including Scarsdale, Sleepy Hollow and WP portion of 10603 and 10607)  residents got a first shot over the week ending June 1 - the smallest in three weeks.  And this low pace comes after  12-15 year olds were approved.  

We're now seeing the "North Greenburgh" zips, which have the highest minority resident percentages, start to close the gap with the most white/asian zips, as it looks like the high vaccination rate zips are either maxing out on remaining residents wanting to get vaccinated or a lot of people went away for Memorial Day weekend.  In any event, overall, fully vaccinated rates increased  only to 53% from 52% from May 24 to June 1.  I'll wait for the next non-holiday week before trying to quantify the declining pace.  But, as some pundits are starting to ask:  with all the people who actually had COVID (likely many more than the positive cases) and all the vaccinated residents, have we effectively reached herd immunity?

"GREATER GREENBURGH" COVID RATES AND VACCINATIONS: ACTIVE CASES TUMBLE WHILE VACCINATIONS PROGRESS - SOMEWHAT

Town of Greenburgh active COVID cases as reported by Westchester County have tumbled to levels last seen in early October

As of May 25, there were 29 active cases in unincorporated Greenburgh and 33 in the six villages. 

Source https://wcgis.maps.arcgis.com/apps/dashboards/280339d96db14efd9cc304dba0f3a71d

Vaccination rates show a more complex story of slowing and disparate progress:

These are "Greater Greenburgh" numbers (10583 includes Scarsdale, 10591 includes Sleepy Hollow, 10595, 10603, and 10607 include adjacent neighborhoods outside Greenburgh), but as I offered previously, Greater Greenburgh total rates likely don't distort actual Town of Greenburgh vaccination numbers.   The totally vaccinated population increased from 47% to 50% from May 9 through May 17.   We're seeing progress right?    It's hard to say:  12 to 15 year olds became eligible for vaccination on May 13 in New York.  One might expect to see an increase in first shot vaccination rates as a result.  However, with this data purportedly covering through May 17, this data release may have come too soon to reflect the impact of the newly eligible age group.    

The concerning indicator is the number of residents who have their first shot only (J&J's one shot vaccination is practically irrelevant as only 112 Greater Greenburgh got the J&J from 5/9 - 5/17  - a large drop from the already minuscule number of 225 who got the J&J between 5/2 and 5/9).    Disappointingly, the number of first shot only residents decreased to 9,776 as 5/17 from 11,133 as of 5/9.   Simply, the pace of residents getting vaccinations appears to be slowing.  Not a big deal you say?  

If we hope to reach herd immunity rates townwide, we'll need to pick up the pace.  Even if all "one shot only" residents got vaccinated tomorrow, townwide we'd be at only 56%, with Elmsford and Valhalla well short of even 50%.  Valhalla is starting to look like a vaccination refusal problem and now we have a drop off in the Dobbs Ferry pace to monitor. 

And, as shown below, the first shot decrease rate is not evenly distributed.  Wealthy Scarsdale and Hastings actually saw first shot only numbers increase from May 9 to May 17 - a possible indication of parents getting their teens vaccinated in advance of summer programs?  

Maybe it's a one-time blip and will be self-correcting as more teens get shots, but the "first shot only" decline and the persistent disparities in vaccination rates between zip codes demands attention and even accountability.  

 

May 9 to May 17

 

Money in the Greenburgh Supervisor Campaign: Revenue

The campaigns filed their campaign finance disclosures through May 17.  Adding in these new numbers to the January filing, we find:

CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTIONS RECEIVED

TASHA YOUNG:  $38,343

PAUL FEINER:     $33,962  

[NOTE: Paul Feiner started the campaign season this past Fall with $87,263 in his campaign account] 

Tasha's impressive haul, dating back to the start of her campaign in October 2020, comes from 252 individual donors (many of whom have made multiple donations).  Unlike Tasha, Paul has not itemized his donations under $100 so we don't know how many actual donors he has.  Paul does have 114 itemized donors (i.e., donors who made individual donations of $100 or more).    Assuming that Paul's non-itemized donations (totaling $6562) average about $50 per donations (similar to Tasha's "small" donations), we can guess that Feiner has another 131 donors, bringing him up to 246 total, almost the same as Tasha.   Of course there may be donors making multiple donations within Feiner's receipts.   

While Tasha is winning both the donations and donors battle, she is trailing in the important indicator of fundraising within Greenburgh.  Fewer than half of Tasha's donors (103 of 252) and funds ($17,240  or 45%) come from inside Greenburgh.   We don't know Paul's in-disrict totals becasuse of his annoying failure to itemize small donations, but among his itemized donors, 105 of the 114 are in-district amounting to $24,240.  So even without accouting for in-district small donors, Paul has surpassed Tasha within Greenburgh in both donors and donations.

As noted above, Tasha has surprised some with strong fundraising, but her $38,343 to work with is less than 1/3 of the $121,198 that Paul Feiner has had available for his campaign as of May 17.

Big Spenders: Paul has seven donors (including apparently a married couple in Edgemont forking over $2000 each) who have written him checks in the amount of $1000 or more; Tasha has five such big donors.  

EDGEMONT LUVS PAUL!:  some will be surprised that Paul got 18 itemized donations in the amount og $8300 (nearly 25% of all donations!)  from Edgemont residents.  Non-itemized donations could be adding a lot more.  Tasha has just 8 total donors from Edgemont for a total of $1,229.  

A lot of Paul's donors are familiar names from his past fundraising: you know who they are.  Tasha has some interesting donors including elected officials like Westchester County Councilmembers Alfred Williams and Catherine Borgia, State Senator Kevin Parker, and a possible donation from the Satmar Rebbe. 

We'll look at expenditures soon, once I can figure out what's going on with the filings.   

   

"GREATER GREENBURGH" COVID VACCINATIONS DATA: PROGRESS BUT CONCERNING TRENDS

Westchester County  released vaccination data through May 9 (updating the previous May 2 release).  Here's the current status of Greenburgh zip codes (i.e., "Greater Greenburgh" which includes Scarsdale, Sleepy Hollow and parts of White Plains and North Castle):

Notes: 

1.   I'm leaving out the +18yo numbers for now because teens are now getting vaccinated (16 and 17 yo's have been eligible for more than a month) and I don't see that the underlying totals from the county separate out under-18 year olds to back up the percentages the county presents.  I went to the County Center with my 17 yo daughter today for her second Pfizer shot and a lot of teens were there with parents.  Until the county clarifies the data, I'm not going to present their claims for 18yo+ vaccination rates.

2.  Pretty good progress, right?  Fully vaccinated residents went up from 43% to 47% in the week of May 2 to May 9.  This included nearly 6000 Greater Greenburgh residents getting a second Pfizer/Moderna shot and a mere 225 getting a Johnson & Johnson shot.  For the J&J implications, see below.

3. Keeping pace with Westchester County.   According to NY DOH, Westchester's "at least one shot" rate is 56% and fully vaccinated are at 47%.  The "at least one shot" is slightly ahead of Greenburgh and fully vaccinated in the same, but these state numbers are dated 5/15, so the County has had extra time.  It is plausible that Greenburgh has pulled slightly ahead of the county although slowing "1st shot only" numbers  cause doubt that Greenburgh could have passed the county significantly.  I stand by my previous claim that Greenburgh and Westchester County vaccination rates are effectively the same, but I'm willing to be disproven.  

4. J&J avoidance:  Among 40,500 Greater Greenburghers aged sixteen and higher who had not received any shot as May 2, only 225 chose the Johnson & Johnson one-shot vaccine during the following week - contrasted with 1,651 who got their first Pfizer or Moderna shot.  Just twelve percent of people getting their first shot of any kind chose one-shot J&J over two-shot Pfizer/Moderna.  The public's now widespread trepidation toward J&J shots may have serious implications and leads to the question of: 

5.  Have Vaccination Rates Peaked? 

While from 5/2 to 5/9, 6,130 (4%) of Greater Greenburgh residents completed their vaccinations, only 1,651 (1.1%) of Greater Greenburghers got their first Pfizer or Moderna shot. It is commendable, however, that we are seeing higher first shot rates in low-rate vax zip codes like Elmsford, WP and Tarrytown (what is going on in Valhalla?).  Nevertheless, the slowing first shot rate overall, combined with J&J avoidance, gives rise to concern about our ability to reach herd immunity levels.  Maybe expanding vaccinations to 12 to 15 year olds this week and future lowering age thresholds will save us.     

6.  Is Herd Immunity Possible?  Maybe, but it's increasingly questionable  

The definition of herd immunity is debated.  Now, whether or not Greater Greenburgh reaches the 80% vaccination level is irrelevant: the target has to be achieved regionally to be meaningful.  But will Greenburgh (or any place) reach that level?   As of 5/9, we were at 47% totally vaccinated, which is primarily but not exclusively, comprised of adults (16 to 18 year olds have been eligible since early April).    How will we get to 80%? As of last Thursday, 5/12, 12 to 15 year olds became eligible for vaccinations.  With 23% of Greenburgh residents younger than 18, the expanding age ranges should push up numbers.  

Yet the fact remains that nearly five months into the vaccination program,  Greenburgh stands at about 60% of adults fully vaccinated with wide variations within zip codes.  While vaccinations were hard to find early on (hence programs like COVID Angels), now we're at a point when vaccine appointments are easy to obtain, with many facilities allowing walk-ins.   Considering the slowing first-shot only number of just 11,113 (7% - which includes 16 and 17 year olds), have the large majority of adults willing to get vaccinated already gotten their shots?  It's a plausible fear that vaccinated adults will stall out around 70% townwide.  This concern - that we are pushing up against the limits set by vaccine refusal (coincidentally or not, 30% seems to be the refusal number nationwide) - makes it imperative that teens and children get shot at very high rates for Greenburgh to have a chance to reach 80% overall.    

7.  Am I being unfair to Greenburgh?   Our Town Supervisor sent out a mailer this week that centered his campaign for re-election around the Greenburgh "Covid Angel" program that he organized to help schedule vaccination appointments for residents.  Now that the town's COVID vaccination "success" is being politicized, I feel that responsibly reporting the data becomes more important, particularly when the data I'm presenting shows that Greenburgh's vaccination rate may be no higher than the rate for Westchester County generally.  Unfortunately, the vaccination data from the county website comes organized by zip code which prevents a precise analysis of just the Town of Greenburgh.   Maybe Paul Feiner has Greenburgh-only data: I haven't seen it.

As I've written before, the 11 zip codes that cover all of Greenburgh also include much of surrounding communities.  Thus, in addition to  Greenburgh's 90,991 residents, the data above also includes Scarsdale (33,000 residents), Sleepy Hollow (11,600) and parts of White Plains and Valhalla/North Castle (16,500).  Does including 61,000 neighbors along with Greenburgh's 91,000 residents skew the Greenburgh's rates, one way or another?  As an experiment I pro-rated the data for the impacted zip codes.  I created another spreadsheet reducing all vaccination and population numbers for 10591, 10603, 10607, 10595 by 50% and 10583 by 80% to reflect the % of population that appears to lie within Greenburgh's boundaries (relying on censusreport.org as usual).  But still, we are left with unverifiable question: is Scarsdale vaccinating at higher rates than Edgemont?  Is Tarrytown vaccinating at different rates than Sleepy Hollow, or are Greenburgh's Fairview neighborhoods vaccinating at different rates than White Plains neighbors sharing the same zip code?  Maybe Greenburgh's COVID Angels pulled these neighborhood rates far above the adjacent communities and our neighbors' lower rates are distorting Greenburgh's success?  

I doubt there is much variation between the vaccination rates for the 50% of the WP, Tarrytown and Valhalla zip code residents living within Greenburgh and those living outside. How can I say this?   Look at 10523 (Elmsford).  The Elmsford zip code is entirely within Greenburgh and the 10523 vaccination rate is lower than any adjacent Greenburgh zip code.  Elmsford's vaccination ranks among the lowest zip codes in Westchester County outside of the cities of New Rochelle, Mount Vernon and Yonkers.  It is lower than any of the White Plains zip codes.  Consequently, without more data, it may be just as likely that it is Greenburgh pulling down the averages in cross-border zip codes.  It is impossible to tell without more data and, until shown otherwise, I'm not going to adjust zip code total rates to reward or penalize Greenburgh.

So what happens when we pro-rate out these cross-border zip codes based on population estimates?  We find that completely vaccinated rates for Greenburgh remain the same at 47% but "at least one shot" people fall from 55% to 53% and current "first shot Pfizer or Moderna only" falls from 7% to 6%.   This is not a great sign for Greenburgh's current vaccination success, but these numbers are tenuous and I only tried this adjustment to explore whether my data was distorting Greenburgh rates.

Answer:  I don't think I'm being unfair: to the contrary, it may be that  rates for Greenburgh cross-border zip code rates are pulled up slightly by adjacent high vaccination zip codes (i.e., Scarsdale).  It best not to guess at a Greenburgh adjustment.  That said, I'll be very happy to be proven wrong.  

IMPACT OF COVID ON GREENBURGH SCHOOL DISTRICTS ENROLLMENT

The New York State Department of Education has finally released all the current ('20-'21) school year enrollment data.  These numbers were anticipated (maybe just by me) to examine for evidence of the impact of COVID closures on public school enrollment. I'm starting from the premise (suggested anecdotally) that in the 2020-21 school year some parents, frustrated by COVID-related school closures and unhappy with distance learning, withdrew their children from public schools in favor of non-public schools, as well as home-schooling.   For example, news stories suggested that Greenburgh's Rivertowns were ground zero for an emerging national movement of "pod" learning as an alternative to online public schools. Did parental threats of withdrawing kids from COVID-closed public schools actually come to pass?  Yes, but to a small measure and only in a some of the "prestige" school districts.  On with the data! [as always, Tarrytown, Pocantico Hills and Valhalla school districts include communities outside of Greenburgh]

A. 2020-2021 School year totals

B.  Comparing 2020-21 with 2019-20 school year

sources:  http://www.p12.nysed.gov/irs/IRSReports.html; https://censusreporter.org

Overall, public school K-12 enrollment townwide dropped by 296 (or -1.8%) while non-public (including home school) numbers increased by 142 (+10%).   All districts but Valhalla (can someone explain Valhalla?)  saw an increase in nonpublic enrollment.   The variations within the districts, however, are striking, and a closer look points to varying causes.  

Greenburgh Central (GC) public school K-12 enrollment has been dropping for several years (down 12% since '16-'17), but in past years this drop was not attributable to a shift from public to non-public: district non-public enrollment has similarly decreased (10%) during the same time frame.  As I've written before, familes with school age (K-12) kids are disappearing from the GC district at an alarming rate, not seen elsewhere locally.  Nevertheless, we did see an uptick in GC non-public enrollment for the first time in a number of years with that number of students increasing from 502 to 520, which suggests that concern about school-related COVID closures motivated the families of at least 18 students to leave GC for alternatives.  

It is no suprise that the big shift away from public schools came in several of the more "presitgious" school districts, i.e., Hastings, Ardsley, or Edgemont.  Some of these shifts, however, are quite small:  only 16 more kids left Edgemont public schools.  Pocantico Hills is not really comparable as it is a tiny K-8 school distict only.   Bizarrely, Irvington, which is demographically comparable to Edgemont, Hastings and Arsdlsey, defied this trend and saw only tiny non-public growth.   Least surprising is that Hastings-on-learningpod saw a signficant non-public increase, with about half of these additional departures going the home school route.  Similarly in Ardsley, about half of the leavers went to home school.  Presumably, nearly all of the home schooled kids will return to public school next year, if they haven't already.  

In percentage terms we saw a big increase in non-public kids in certain school districts which, as evidenced by the home school increase, was certainly COVID-related.  The totals overall were unprecedented but not dramatic. The Town of Greenburgh is definitley not seeing the death of public education (although we may be seeing the demise of families with school age kids in GC, but that's a different story).  Of the "name brand" school districts, only Hastings saw a public school decrease exceeding 2%, and with most of those going home school/pod route, most of this loss will likely be restored next year.    

GREENBURGH (ACTIVE) COVID CASES - One year of data from Westchester County

One year ago, Westchester County revised its COVID (nearly) daily data reporting to show "active" case, instead of total cases.   This has allowed tracking the increases (the waves and ripples) and falls of cases in Greenburgh

From May 5, 2020 through May 5, 2021

 Still, 15 months into the pandemic. deaths reported by town/village remains a closely guarded state secret.