FEINER MAKES NO EFFORT AT WORK SESSION TO PERSUADE TOWN BOARD TO ACCEPT ECC’S RECOMMENDATIONS ON CAR DEALERSHIPS Two days after Town Supervisor Paul Feiner promised Edgemont residents in writing that he would work with his colleagues on the Town Board, and with Town staff, to enact the Edgemont Community Council’s recommendation on car dealerships on Central Avenue in Edgemont – a recommendation which Mr. Feiner said he supports – Mr. Feiner dropped the ball. At today’s work session, Mr. Feiner made no effort to persuade his colleagues or town staff to go along with the ECC’s recommendation that the town board reject a proposal that would give Edgemont’s existing car dealers the right to obtain special permits to expand their facilities – while effectively barring any competing car dealers competitors from opening up their own new car showrooms along Central Avenue. At the ECC’s meeting last night, directors passed a resolution urging the Town Board to reject the proposal on the ground that the better course of action would be to direct the Comprehensive Plan Steering Committee to re-examine permitted commercial uses along Central Avenue to allow new car dealers. Car dealers are not a permitted use along Central Avenue in Edgemont. The three car dealers that remain – Scarsdale Ford, what is now Curry Acura and Curry Chevrolet – each had their uses grandfathered in when the original Central Avenue zoning code barring such use was adopted in the mid 1970s. The ECC directors urged the Town Board to reject the proposal because of concern that a joint request from competing car dealers that would effectively bar competition might create antitrust liability for the Town and because of a desire to expand the range of permissive commercial uses along Central Avenue in order to enhance the tax base in Edgemont. The ECC felt that the better approach was to put all car dealers, those already in Edgemont, and those that might seek to locate in Edgemont, on an even footing by having the Comprehensive Plan Steering Committee come up with a set of acceptable community standards that would apply to all car dealers that may wish to locate on Central Avenue. But judging from what occurred at today’s town board work session, the Town Board and town staff had no interest in the ECC’s proposed recommendation. First, acting town planner Garrett Duquesne, a non-lawyer, said he didn’t think any proposal that would restrict competition for car dealers on Central Avenue in Edgemont would raise any antitrust concerns. Agreements among competitors to get a municipality to limit competition for them in a given geographic area are usually considered illegal per se under both state and federal antitrust law. Mr. Duquesne, however, did say he would contact the three competing Edgemont car dealers to see if they would be interested in indemnifying the Town and its taxpayers from any antitrust risk, as the ECC had asked. Obviously, if the competing dealers don’t think there is any antitrust risk in getting the Town to adopt legislation that limits competition, they should have no problem giving the requested indemnity. But there was no discussion among town board members on what to do if the indemnity request was refused. Mr. Duquesne also said he was opposed to lifting the restriction on car dealers on Central Avenue in any event because of a concern that too many car dealerships might seek to locate in Edgemont, citing as evidence that where he lives along Route 9 in Putnam County, there are too many car dealerships clustered together. Council member Francis Sheehan said the comprehensive plan steering committee might consider lifting the restriction but only if there were rules adopted that would limit how close new dealers could open up next to each other. No town board member considered the possibility that adopting the proposal to grant Edgemont’s existing car dealers the exclusive right to seek “special permits” to expand – without any Comprehensive Plan in place that would contain uniform restrictions for Central Avenue on the potential size and density of such facilities – would give the existing dealers who get their “special permits” before the Comprehensive Plan is adopted a competitive advantage. And with no current schedule in place for even considering a revised Comprehensive Plan, there was no assurance that the Comprehensive Plan Steering Committee would revisit the permitted uses to include car dealers or, if it did, when it would do so. The work session was significant because it was the first opportunity to see if Mr. Feiner, who promised this week a new working relationship with the ECC, would actually work with his colleagues on the Town Board and town staff to persuade them to go along with the ECC’s recommendations – particularly with respect to town matters that affect Edgemont only. Instead, all Mr. Feiner said today at work session was that he supported the ECC’s recommendations. The ECC had pointed out that being “supportive” of the ECC’s recommendations means nothing if it doesn’t lead to the ECC’s recommendations actually being enacted. The ECC had also pointed out that while Mr. Feiner had in the past been “supportive” of other ECC recommendations, not one single ECC recommendation had ever been adopted by the Town Board during Mr. Feiner’s long tenure in office. In other matters addressed by the work session, it appears that the Town may be at risk of losing a $5 million payment offered by the developer Forest City Ratner to mitigate impacts in Greenburgh from the Ridge Hill complex in Yonkers. The Town has until 2016 to use the money on projects to improve traffic safety, but there are apparently no plans in place yet on how the money should be spent and it appears that at least $1.5 million of the $5 million has already been spent on studies with no consensus on what to do. No discussion took place, at least publicly, concerning the controversial $1 million donation that the Town has been asked to accept for 28.7 acres of land in the Village of Tarrytown. Mr. Sheehan did say, before the sound was turned off, that he had sent a letter to the Towns Ethics Board about the matter, but he has not elected to make the letter public.
Posted on: Tue, 09 Sep 2014 16:05:26 +0000