Good Lord,
deliver us. Despite the lack of statistics on the number of bicyclists in
Croton, this village seems mindlessly bent on encouraging bicycle parking on
Croton’s narrow sidewalks. The vain hope is that this gesture will relieve
automobile parking woes and give a boost to local businesses.
In a glaring
example of political elitism at its worst, Croton has identified and marked
sites on sidewalks in the Upper
Village
Lacking
opposition, our single-party village board storms ahead, pathetically unaware
that it is working at cross-purposes with the village code. It so happens that
Section 197-1 of the code enjoins riding a bicycle on any sidewalk in Croton
and specifically forbids the parking of any part of a bicycle on any sidewalk
or curb.
It also so
happens that Mayor Leo Wiegman was a trustee in 2005 and voted for Local Law
No. 4 that added the sidewalk parking prohibition to the original code--a
crucial fact he seems to have forgotten.
Isn’t anyone in
this administration familiar with the laws they are charged with enforcing?
Seymour Waldman, the respected former village attorney who kept Croton out of
trouble for many years before being squeezed out by a Republican majority,
would have spotted the goof instantly.
Having
facilitated the violation of the village code to reinforce its green bona
fides, the mayor and trustees will now scramble in disorderly haste to revoke
legislation previously enacted in the interest of public safety.
Robotic Croton boards have awkwardly backed into embarrassing situations in the past. The
skate park disaster of bitter memory springs to mind. Before embarking on that
costly venture, no effort was made to ascertain the number of skateboarders in
the area who might use the facility. Instead, the village board caved in to
what turned out to have been a small, highly vocal pressure group.
In a foolish
attempt to make a recreational facility pay its own way, Croton set an
exorbitant admission price, causing it to be poorly patronized. A white
elephant from the outset, the skate park was quietly abandoned and its
elaborate equipment sold for scrap.
The current
village administration has similarly shown itself to have a collective tin ear
and to be chronically short on common sense. Other recent examples include:
(1) The
overweening favoritism shown to a farmers market at the expense of tax-paying
local merchants. Croton rents the former skate park site to this for-profit
organization at a ridiculously modest fee of $75 and throws in Village services
at no charge. Yet a Croton resident must pay $275, almost four times as much,
to rent Senasqua Park
(2) The bizarre
proposal by the Village to allow cruel bowhunting of deer in Croton’s parks and
sanctuaries while they were being used by the public. This dangerous proposal
met with such vehement resistance it was quietly quashed—but not before the
impatient village administration jumped the gun by testing the skills of
bloodthirsty bowhunters eager for official sanction.
(3) Innumerable
expensive studies by consultants have been commissioned and found to be
useless. The $100,000 station parking garage report is a prime example.
No heads rolled
in elections following these fiascoes. Politicians regularly promise that they
will “run government like a business.” Too often their business model turns out
to be the famously bankrupt Lehman Brothers.
