Yonkers, NY

Proposed 7.8% property tax increase will help preserve city services

There is an proposed 7.8% property tax increase that will help preservce city services and get the deficit as well. In the spending plan for $903.3 millions , 1.18% total increase in spending over last years's . The major is trying to avoid several hundred jobs cut crucial city and school programs.

"We're in a recession and just as families and businesses across Yonkers are doing, we had to find ways to cut back and we have. Yonkers now has a balanced budget, but it's one that avoids the kind of cuts in education and other services that would have decimated this city," Amicone said at his budget briefing to members of the City Council at City Hall on Wednesday.

Here are the Budget Highligts.

• $903.3 million total budget (1.18 % increase over FY 2009)
  • $419.2 million municipal budget (1.95% increase over FY 2009)
  • $484 million public school budget (0.52% increase over FY 2009)
• $105.7 million projected budget gap closed
• No layoffs and no further reductions to core city or school services
• Eliminates 11 vacant positions: smaller workforce than in 2004
• Lowest total and percentage spending increase in last six years
• Discretionary spending reduced by 5.6%, nearly $1 million
• Includes funding for new class of 50 police officers to fill retirement vacancies
• Includes funding for new class of 25 firefighters to fill retirement vacancies
• Proposed 7.8% increase in property taxes (avg. increase of $552 per homeowner)

Deficit Reduction Summary:

Bottom line the major is again going after Yonkers property taxes. The mayor is also contribution to the Yonkers public schools for 218.8 Millions,more per student ($ 9, 061) than any other large city in New York State.

I recall reading a letter from my father written in August of 1945 to his parents on the news that the Second World War was over. He said that the feeling among the men was not one of celebration or joy, but weary relief. My Dad was in the Signal Corps on Leyti Island in the Pacific Theater. He, like many Americans, bowed his head in thanks when the Japanese officially surrendered on the USS Missouri.

On the Missouri that day of the surrender was a young marine who would move back to the USA and live in Yonkers, NY, just a few miles from where my father and mother raised my brothers and myself. Our families would be a few zip codes apart. My Dad never met this Marine. I met him just shy of a year ago.

Once a Marine, always a Marine, and this Marine, now this dignified octogenarian was in, to use his own words, a pickle. He was in the car business for many years, raised a son and a daughter with his beloved wife, and by the time they were retired, their home was paid for. However, she became terminally ill a few years ago, and the Marine did everything he could to get her better. He borrowed every cent he could on the house to pay for a cure, but a remedy, as many of God's answers are to our ears, not the one he sought. Then, when the rate adjusted up and the economy shifted down, he found himself drowning in debt.

I will never forget our first meeting. Walking through that house and hearing his story and how he got where he was struck me as the ultimate irony. I remember thinking that this guy right here is a HERO, and he deserves better than this. Each room had a story. Even his workshop, where he made model planes, gave me a tangible awareness of his family's 50 years of happiness there. As bad as the circumstances were, he wasn't a victim. He just wanted to know a plan to make things right. The only way out would be a short sale, and I promised him my best.

I will tell you now that this has been one of the hardest files I have ever worked on, and it has taken me and his attorney a full year and two buyers to get this short sale approved. It has been so hard that I am even reticent to write this post for fear of jinxing the good news, but I can't be silent. I took this file extremely personally, because this is how I would want someone to treat my father. This is also one of the very few times I had a client who had every reason to be high maintenance and difficult who instead always spoke to me like I was a boxer returning to his corner. We were on the same team.

Moreover, I feel that I owe my client a debt of enormous gratitude. As hard as this was, and as beleaguered as I feel right now, I know this my experience is NOTHING compared to what this Marine has been through. My Dad and my client had a far better reason to be weary in August of 1945.

Several Years, City of Yonkers helped developed southwest which was a completion of new residential, commercial, and public development projects and the creation of new businesses and thousands of new jobs. Now new project has unfolded which are the HOPE VI redevelopment of the Mulford Gardens public housing complex, the construction of the Father Pat Carroll Green housing, and the redevelopment of the historic Nepperhan Valley Industrial Park.

Now it's Ashburton Ave in Yonkers NY Turn, because of the downtown in Yonkers that attracted private investment, now the city focuses on ashburton and its neighborhood. City of Yonkers have three goals to revitalizes Ashburton ave ( Lower Westchester County NY )

· Make better housing and Commercial Street for local residents and that connection between the parkway system, Nepperhan Valley, and the waterfront.

· Revitalize existing housing, through infill construction and rehabilitation.

• Provide appropriate parks, open space, infrastructure, and community facilities to support a revitalized neighborhood.

The Master Plan for Yonkers, NY (ashburton ave) is aimed at improving the physical environment; the plan will put forward sets of development: one focused on improving the avenue itself, and the second fostering residential and commercial development, open space, landscaping, and parking. The plan closes with suggestions for implementation measures: these are zoning changes, urban renewal, design guidelines, and review of potential environmental impacts.

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The new visions for ashburton have be storefront retail space for small business and have an upper level apartment with great views, and widening street. Which will allow traffic to flow before and create more parking for everyone, plus green space to form an attractive pedestrian walkway. Ashurton will improve local residents and business, that going to create a visual attractive street and encourage local residents and through motorists to stop, walk and shop.

The Urban Renewal Plan's primary goal is to implement the Ashburton Avenue Master Plan. This Urban Renewal Plan has been designed to achieve the development goals outlined in the Master Plan. Specifically, the goals of the Urban Renewal Plan are:

Elimination (substandard and deteriorating residential, commercial, and industrial areas and environmental deficiencies by providing land areas for a balanced and integrated arrangement of land uses which are consistent with the neighborhood.) The sites will be used for residential construction, including a mix of low-income, moderate- income and market-rate housing. To re-establishment retail areas through development of sites to support commercial activities on Ashburton Avenue.

Improved community facilities, including parks and school sites, in order to properly serve existing and proposed residential and commercial areas. Offer off-street parking to serve the needs of residential and non- residential areas and to improve streets, sidewalks, curbs, and storm and sanitary sewers, when necessary, with the ultimate goal of locating utility lines underground.

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Work started in mulford garden housing comples today Tuesday, December 9 2008. Bulldoze razed several building it yonkers first demolition and the country oldest public housing complexes and mulford garden beginning phase of $180 million ashburton urban renewal plan .

The plans includes making a neighborhood style housing, wider streetscapes, on street parking, better lighting and yard space. The new townhouse style homes will fit in with the surrounding community and better housing policies will create more opportunity for residents to advance.

The mulford gardens was 17 building and 550 units, all of which have been vacant for more than a year. The new housing stock is from HOPE VI housing grant $20 million and $180 Millions are from the urban renewal program . The projects included in the program are:

· Demolition of Mulford Gardens

· Creation of more than 450 replacement housing units, the first of which (Croton Heights Apartments -- a building with 60 affordable units) will open this month

· Street widening of Ashburton Avenue to accommodate better east-west navigation and more parking

· Streetscaping projects along Ashburton Avenue to beautify the neighborhood with new streetlights, benches, planters, pavers and more

· Construction of new public parks along the Ashburton Avenue corridor to create a neighborhood community

• 2009 opening of 62-unit Fr. Pat Carrol Green neighborhood development on corner Ashburton & Nepperhan Avenues -- affordable housing OWNERSHIP opportunities

The first of the replacement housing stock, a 60-unit affordable housing building known as Croton Heights Apartments, was constructed off-site only a few blocks away, and will open to the first new residents next week. Also included in the first phase of Mulford Garden's replacement housing is a senior citizen affordable housing building located on Ashburton Avenue that is scheduled to open in 2009.

Later stages include the redevelopment of the Mulford Gardens site into a neighborhood of low- and mixed- income housing that will blend with the surrounding community, a stark contrast to the cordoned of enclave that was Mulford Gardens. The Mulford Gardens site redevelopment is expected to last through 2010.