Complaints On Fire Dept & New Field Dominate at VOL Board

by Judy Silberstein

(October 23, 2008) On Monday, October 23 Mayor Liz Feld presided over the first half of the Larchmont Village Board meeting and heard complaints from members of the Larchmont Fire Council over management of the Fire Department. After the mayor left for an appointment, Trustee Marlene Kolbert, in her capacity as deputy mayor, conducted additional business and listened to criticism from a local environmentalist over the lack of monitoring for potentially hazardous runoff from the new artificial turf in Flint Park.

The board’s official actions included a unanimous vote to approve continuing the process of applying for flood mitigation grants for the Pine Brook area through Westchester County. Another vote authorized the treasurer to sell $200,000 in bonds to pay for $180,000 in repairs to Village Hall and $20,000 for the Village’s new GEM electric vehicle (which will later be reimbursed through a New York State Energy Research and Development Authority program.

Flood Fund Grant Flows to Next Stage

Larchmont has passed the first hurdle in a multi-step process for obtaining some of the $50 million Westchester County will be doling out to municipalities afflicted with flooding problems. (See: What's Been Done Since Last Year's Disastrous Floods?)

The preliminary application has been officially accepted and Larchmont is now being invited to enter the next phase, said Mayor Liz Feld. While there were many requirements to be met, including verification of compliance with “a raft of land use regulations, “ she said, filing the application does not obligate Larchmont to make any changes or spend any money at this phase. Ultimately, however, Larchmont would have to expend its own funds as a match for grant moneys.

No match is required for another flood mitigation grant Larchmont has already received from NY State. Mayor Feld said the grant, originally for $100K is now $96K and is being used to cover expenses related to engineering analyses of Pine Brook Drive flooding.

Financing Larchmont During a Credit Crisis

Larchmont Treasurer Denis Brucciani reported on the many items to be covered by a bond for repairs to Village Hall. The list of “much needed improvements” had been drawn up at a meeting in August and had since been pared down to: $10K to replace heating and air conditioning in the engineer’s offices; $7K to stop leaks at both ends of the roof; $13K to replace carpets ruined by flooding and wear and tear; and $111K for replacing a 20 year-old generator required during emergencies to keep operating the building, including its fire and police departments. “We’ve been talking about this for a very long time,” said Ms. Kolbert. "Safety and security" are the highest priority, noted Trustee Richard Ward.

Asked to describe the condition of the municipal bond market in the face of wide-spread financial turmoil, Mr. Brucianni said there was already a shortage of banks lending back in August, when he last had to issue a short-term bond. Only one of four banks responded, and the rate offered, 2.91%, “was 50 basis points higher than it should have been, he said.

Trustee Jim Millstein (whose day job is at the investment bank Lazard Freres) provided a quick primer on the state of the financial crisis, which he characterized as a liquidity problem in the first instance and a solvency crisis in the second. “There has been very, very little lending going on” between banks, he explained, but there did appear to be some recent easing of the rates.

Mr. Brucciani explained that it will take around 60 days to prepare to go out for the $200,000 bond. In his estimation, things are worse now than they were in August, but Larchmont would be deferring any borrowing until there is less stress and better rates.

In the meantime, the Village was making sure its own assets were in the safest of banks and financial instruments. Mr. Brucianni said for his own “peace of mind” he had moved funds out of “Freddie and Fannie,” the beleaguered mortgage lenders, and into treasuries.

Volunteers Voice Concerns with Department Management

Kevin McGinley, president of the volunteer Patrol Company, read a statement on behalf of members of the Fire Council, the governing body of the Larchmont Fire Department. He stressed that the letter was from members who disagreed with last year’s reorganization but had chosen to stay as others were resigning. Standing with him were Carroll Hudders, Frank Armenio, Donald Keck (with almost 50 years of service) and Chris MacDonald, the former fire chief.

“We are trying to make your plan work, but the situation has been consistently deteriorating,” said Mr. McGinley before reading a list of 13 separate complaints that included: lack of compliance with safety standards; problems with attendance and financial reporting; lack of distribution of funds to the volunteer companies; and a bypassing of the council’s authority by Richard Heine, the career firefighter hired by the board over objections by the volunteers.

“We have tried to work out these problems with the chief you appointed, but he lacks commitment, interest or capacity to make the improvements needed,” concluded Mr. McGinley, who then asked for a meeting between the Fire Council, the chief and the board “so we can resolve these issues and try to make this fire department function properly.”

Mr. Millstein, who serves as fire commissioner, admitted that “I have been delinquent” in following up on a meeting in which he thought the various issues had been resolved some months ago. A new meeting would be scheduled, (and, indeed, by Tuesday, Chief Heine reported that a session had been scheduled for October 30.)

“Wow, that’s a hard act to follow,” said Chief Heine, when he rose for his regular departmental report. He seemed surprised at the charges and said he had received no feedback since asking council members more than four months ago to discuss departmental organization with the four companies that together make up the volunteer side of Larchmont’s combination career-volunteer department.

Asked the next day about the listed complaints, Chief Heine said that he knew of no instances where the safety standards had not been met and that many other charges were not accurate. He admitted that he had withheld the distribution of insurance funds to the volunteers because they had not produced all financial records as requested. He also admitted that volunteer morale is low "for the five members who presented that letter.” However, he said low morale was not the general case.

He said the current roster has a total of 39 members on active status, 16 qualified as interior firefighters and 12 with a 15% attendance record at fire calls or training events, the benchmark required for attaining various departmental privileges. On the list are six new members approved at the Monday meeting, including two college students who will volunteer during school breaks.

While volunteer numbers are still below the pre-reorganizational level, “Attendance is going up, membership is going up – how does that jibe with what these gentlemen presented?” he asked.

Untested Field?

Catherine Wachs, a Mamaroneck Town resident who has raised objections to using ground rubber tires as infill at the new Flint Park field, presented results of testing on spilled rubber crumbs she collected adjacent to the field during construction. While admitting that her tests were not scientific, she noted that lab results showed elevated levels of: lead, a neurotoxin; cadmium, a carcinogen; zinc, which is toxic to aquatic wildlife; and boron, a reproductive toxin. She wondered why no filters had been installed to control for hazardous elements.

Ms. Wachs said she had tests conducted at her own expense only after she became convinced that the Village was not undertaking periodic testing, as promised during public hearings in June. She was also highly critical of the mayor for not responding to her inquiries and for not making sure that proper procedures had been followed during construction to prevent rubber crumbs and silt from contaminating nearby waterways.

“Where do we go from here?” she asked in a prepared statement. “We have a community to maintain for ourselves and preserve for our children.”

Trustees Kolbert and Millstein admitted that not all regulations had been perfectly met. “We tried to be a responsible village,” said Ms. Kolbert. They also agreed that baseline testing had not been conducted, but suggested that it would not have been useful, given conditions uncovered during excavation for the field.

“We basically took that field and cleaned it up,” said Ms. Kolbert, describing the extra costs incurred to remove tons of old sewer pipes and other buried debris that dated back from the years when the area was used as a dump. Given that the field is complete, “testing can now begin,” said Mr. Millstein.

Ms. Kolbert also said that Larchmont is committed to maintaining the park and all of its new features, which will be a large and continuing job. The Department of Public Works has already been waging a constant battle with invasive vines that are threatening to choke many of the new waterside plantings, she reported.

Following the meeting, Ms. Wachs continued her conversation with Mr. Millstein, who stressed that “every field is different” because the tires making up the infill come from different sources. He added, “if we have to put in zinc filters, we will; if we have to spend the money, we will.”

Clearly, however, the issue was not laid to rest on Monday night. As she prepared to leave Village Hall, Ms. Wachs commented, “If I don’t keep coming back and being a pain, I wonder how much of it will get done on its own.”

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