Andrew Vitelli

Up Close & Personal with Democratic Nominee for County Executive George Latimer

October 21, 2017 by Andrew Vitelli

It has been 13 years since State Senator George Latimer left county government to serve in Albany. Latimer spent 13 years on the county’s Board of Legislators before his 2004 election to the New York State Assembly, including two terms as board chairman. Now the Democratic nominee for Westchester county executive, Latimer calls a return to White Plains, and to a leadership position, a “natural fit.”

“It is the opportunity of an executive job not just to, as legislators do, advocate for ideas and sponsor ideas,” Latimer tells the Inside Press. “But to actually administer a government and to try to shape it in a direction that you think is positive.”

Latimer, a Mount Vernon native who has lived in Rye for 30 years, worked as a marketing executive for companies including subsidiaries of Nestle and ITT before entering politics. He was elected to the Rye City Council in 1987, then to the Board of Legislators in 1991. After four terms in the Assembly, he was elected to the Senate in 2012.

Latimer announced his candidacy for county executive in April, winning the backing of the Democratic committee and in September, defeating county legislator Ken Jenkins in the party’s primary. Now, he looks to unseat County Executive Rob Astorino, a Republican who has convincingly won two elections in a Democrat-heavy county. While Astorino has highlighted his administration’s record of keeping the tax rate down, Latimer believes the incumbent’s overall fiscal record is flawed.

“What I am going to promise to do is to get an honest set of eyes to look at our fiscal situation,” Latimer says. He plans to ask the state comptroller to do a full audit of the county, he elaborates, and will then create a blue-ribbon commission comprising members of the business community, academia and others to chart a responsible path forward.

“If you think that we can run the county forever and never raise a tax because politically people don’t like taxes,” Latimer says, “then you are going to have to make some decisions about cutting everything and having no services.”

While the tax levy has held steady–even dropping slightly during Astorino’s term–Latimer claims the headline numbers do not paint a full picture. For example, the county has been too reliant on borrowing for recurring expenses, Latimer says, and may now be overestimating projected sales tax revenue in order to avoid a budget gap. Naturally, Astorino disagrees. “I think George has been in Albany so long he now has Albany math,” Astorino quips. (For a deeper look at Astorino’s policies and platforms, see the accompanying article about Astorino: https://www.theinsidepress.com/spotlight-on-republican-incumbent-rob-astorinos-final-bid-for-county-executive/)

Favors Consolidating Services

Latimer says he will look to generate alternative revenue sources or to save money by consolidating services before raising property taxes.

He does not promise to keep taxes flat, saying that he will need to see the 2018 budget and get a deeper look into the county’s finances, but notes that he has no intention of breaking the tax cap. “If we can deliver another 0 [percent increase] that would be good, but I don’t marry myself to any commitment until I know the specifics,” he says.

Similarly, Latimer acknowledges that bringing back every position cut by Astorino is unrealistic.

“On merit, you probably need to restore a ton of it. But the money isn’t going to be there,” he says. His priorities, he adds, are to strengthen the Department of Public Works, police services and the planning department. “Some of the downsizing that [Astorino] has done is probably sensible,” Latimer admits. “The question when you [make cuts] across the board is, are you throwing out the bathwater and the baby?”

In November 2016, Astorino announced plans to enter into a public-private partnership for Westchester Airport. The deal would have seen Oaktree Capital Management pay the county $130 million upfront for a 40-year revenue-sharing lease. Though that plan was stopped by the legislature, the county is now considering several competing plans to privatize the airport, which is located partially in North Castle.

Latimer sees privatization of the airport as more or less a nonstarter. Giving up control of the airport not only cedes a source of revenue, Latimer explains, but gives the county less control over decisions with environmental and quality of life implications.

“I don’t want those decisions on that asset being made by a private sector entity unless there is a reason for it,” Latimer says. “And there is no reason for it except that [Astorino] wants to fill a budget gap.”

Optimism in the Last Stretch

This race, Astorino tells Inside Press, will be his last run for the office he has held since shocking Andrew Spano in 2009. This means, in all likelihood, it will be the party’s last chance to knock off the incumbent, perhaps before he takes another shot at the governor’s mansion.

Democrats were optimistic four years ago when Astorino saw a challenge from New Rochelle Mayor Noam Bramson. Obama won the county by 25 points the previous year, and Bramson looked to keep Democratic voters engaged with a focus on national issues such as guns and abortion. Astorino, focusing on taxes, won with 56 percent of the vote.

Latimer points to a handful of differences between his race and Bramson’s. Bramson, as the mayor of a city, was less well-known than Latimer, who represents a third of the county in Albany. And he notes, around 45 minutes into an hour-long interview, that so far in the conversation he’s spoken only about local issues. But, he continues, “there is the Donald Trump factor.”

Trump received just 31 percent of the vote, five points worse than Mitt Romney’s 2012 showing, in the county. Latimer has looked to tie Astorino to the president–a picture of the two Republicans together features on at least one of Latimer’s campaign mailers, while Astorino’s veto of a bill limiting the county’s cooperation with immigration enforcement was dubbed “Trump-like.”

“Donald Trump, as every day passes by, is giving more people doubt into what it is that he is all about,” Latimer continues. “I don’t know about Wisconsin, but he is definitely less popular in Westchester than he was a year ago, and I don’t see Rob distancing himself at all from Trump.”

Latimer does not seem to be going all-in on the Trump card. His campaign has centered on challenging the incumbent’s fiscal record. But he also does not hesitate to oppose, for example, the county executive’s decision to bring gun shows back to the Westchester County Center.

Latimer recognizes the challenge in taking on Astorino, whom he calls “a very sharp guy” and “a great communicator.” He points out, though, that he has been in tough races before. His 2012 election over Bob Cohen for the Senate seat vacated by Suzi Oppenheimer came two years after Cohen nearly knocked off Oppenheimer, a 14-term incumbent.

His contest in November will be his toughest yet.

A Proponent of Dialogue, Armonk’s Don Gregg Shares his Views… on the North Korea Threat, Trump and More

June 3, 2017 by Andrew Vitelli

On April 17, as national news headlines warned of an impending crisis and possible war between the U.S. and North Korea, Westchester native and Armonk resident Donald Gregg was one of the few Americans sitting across the table from a North Korean, let alone a high-ranking diplomat. Gregg, the U.S. ambassador to South Korea under President George H.W. Bush, was having lunch with two senior North Korean diplomats and trying to make sense of the latest flare-up in their countries’ animosity.

“We were sort of laughing at the fact that here we are, speaking to each other very civilly,” Gregg recalls, addressing a small group of locals at St. Stephen’s Church in Armonk. “And the news was full of how North Korea was going to be at the center of the next crisis, and the world may come to an end.”

The meeting was nothing new for Gregg, who for decades has been calling for dialogue between the American and North Korean governments.

Gregg’s long career in public service included multiple stints on the peninsula, including as CIA station chief in Seoul from 1973 to 1975 and as ambassador from 1989 to 1993. After retiring from government, he served as chairman of The Korea Society, which promotes cooperation and understanding between Koreans and Americans.

Gregg’s first trip to Pyongyang came in 2002 at the urging of former South Korean president Kim Dae-jung. He has gone five times since, with the latest trip coming in 2014, and has witnessed significant economic growth over that period.

“The people were living better. The conditions were better,” Gregg says of his last visit. “The roads were better, the cars were better, the clothes were better. The body language was better.”

Gregg was in Seoul during some of the tensest moments between the North and the South under the reign of Kim Il-sung, so fear of a sudden attack by the leader of the Kim dynasty is nothing new to him.

But despite the rhetoric coming from Pyongyang, he sees North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, like his grandfather, as a rational actor unlikely to risk his regime through some kind of ill-considered act, like a major attack on the U.S..

“The North Koreans are not suicidal,” Gregg says. “They are not going to use one of their weapons against us, because they know their country would be obliterated.” Even the Kims’ pursuit of nuclear weapons has been undertaken with the regime’s survival in mind, he adds.

“I’ve talked to the North Koreans, and they say ‘We’ve looked at you very carefully. You do not attack people who have nuclear weapons,’” he explains. “That’s the root cause of it. They are scared to death of us.”

The CIA, White House and Two Koreas

Gregg grew up half an hour south of Armonk, in Hastings-on-Hudson. In 1953, he married Margaret Curry, an Armonk native and 1947 Pleasantville High School graduate.

Two days after Gregg’s 14th birthday, Japanese warplanes launched a surprise attack against Pearl Harbor and drew the U.S. into the war already raging across the oceans on each of its shores. In 1945, at the age of 17, Gregg enlisted in the U.S. Army, where he trained as a cryptanalyst. But before he could be sent overseas, World War II ended. Gregg served in the Army until 1947, then attended Williams College in Massachusetts, where he graduated in 1951 with a degree in philosophy.

Though he narrowly missed World War II, he would leave a mark on the four-and-a-half decade Cold War that followed. He joined the CIA in 1951 and served in Japan and Vietnam, learning to speak Japanese fluently. In 1973 he was sent to Korea, where he served as station chief. There, he helped stop torture by his Korean counterparts and played an important role in the rescue of Kim Dae-jung, who went on to become South Korea’s president.

Gregg worked at CIA headquarters from 1975 to 1978 and then as an Asia policy specialist for the National Security Council under the Carter administration. During the Reagan presidency, Gregg was director of the NSC’s Intelligence Directorate before being appointed Vice President Bush’s National Security Advisor.

When Bush became president, Gregg was appointed ambassador to South Korea. Forty years after joining the CIA in the early years of the Cold War, Gregg now played a role in its end. After Bush’s lone term ended, the Greggs returned to New York and in 1995 moved to Armonk, with Don chairing The Korea Society. He began teaching a course at Williams, looking to get top students interested in public service. In 2014 he published a memoir, titled Pot Shards: Fragments of a Life Lived in CIA, the White House, and the Two Koreas, about his experience.

Gregg has been active locally as well, meeting every month with Armonk neighbors to discuss history, politics and current affairs. “Don has had an immense contribution on the global stage, but he has had an immense contribution locally as well,” says Rev. Nils Chittenden, the Rector of St. Stephen’s, where Gregg is an active congregant. “We as a congregation really appreciate and recognize that we are in the presence of someone that has really had a huge effect on shaping world history.”

A ‘Very Different’ President

Gregg has met eight American presidents. He also met the current president, and though their brief meeting took place years before Donald Trump would seriously consider any political run, Gregg’s view of the 45th president remains broadly the same. “I don’t like Trump,” he says bluntly. “He and I are very, very different people.”

Gregg holds out hope that Trump will change course on North Korea and move away from the escalating rhetoric seen during the first months of the administration. He notes some positives, such as the appointment of HR McMaster as National Security Advisor.

But just as Americans find it difficult to understand Kim Jong-un, Koreans have trouble making sense of Trump’s approach.

“We neither like nor understand the North Koreans,” Gregg wrote in a letter submitted in April to The New York Times, “and fill our gaps of ignorance with prejudice that prevents us from thinking vicariously about Pyongyang, its concerns and policy objectives.”

Up Close with Jean Sheff: Westchester Family’s Beloved Editor

April 24, 2017 by Andrew Vitelli

When Westchester Family editor Jean Sheff took over the helm of the magazine in 2006, the print media industry was on the brink of its most tumultuous period in generations. Publications and newspapers across the country were folding or laying off staff, as the financial downtown hit a sector already facing challenges to its business model.

“Everyone was afraid print would die. Print is not dead, but you have to do multiple things,” says Sheff, who is also the magazine’s co-publisher. “People need their information in a different format.”

Sheff has certainly overseen significant changes during her decade as editor of the monthly publication geared towards parents across the county; it now has a dynamic website, a presence on social media, and increasingly finds ways to engage readers. Articles are geared as much towards parents checking their smartphone on the go as those reading the print edition at the kitchen table.

“You write smaller bits. People don’t have as much time,” Sheff notes. “You have to meet the parent where they are.”

Westchester Family was launched in 1989 by Susan Ross and Felice Shapiro, and this past year, was purchased by Brooklyn-based CNG publishing. This has had little impact editorially, Sheff says, as the new owners stayed the course in taking over a successful product whcih aims to provide support to area parents with columns from experts, features on family-friendly activities and a calendar of events. “You don’t get a degree to be a parent. You’re kind of thrown into it,” Sheff explains. “You need somebody on your side, you need a little coaching, and you need a little support.”

After 18 years in New York City, Sheff moved here “kicking and screaming” in 1992; she was pregnant, and saw Westchester County as a natural middle ground between Manhattan and the country. “I wasn’t a big nature girl,” Sheff admits. “I was coming from the city, and I did not want to be on a dirt road with no lights.” Sheff first moved to White Plains, but then settled in Chappaqua two years later. When looking for a home, Sheff remembers that the first thing she did in each prospective community was visit the local library. “If I liked the library it had a chance,” she recalls. “I went into the Chappaqua Library, and I fell in love. And then I got really serious about looking into Chappaqua.”

Sheff had been working for UNICEF, but left in 1997 to work as a freelance writer for several publications (including Inside Chappaqua!). In 2004, she began freelancing for Westchester Family and two years later she became the magazine’s editor. “All my life, I’ve always been interested in children and families,” says Sheff. “It was just what I was passionate about, right to this day.”

Sheff lived in Chappaqua for two decades, moving to neighboring Briarcliff Manor in 2013. Her daughter, Juliana, now an account manager for the clothing company PVH, went through the Chappaqua school district, graduating from Horace Greeley High School in 2010.

At Westchester Family, Sheff and a small team of two sales managers, editors and mostly freelance writers have built on the magazine’s initial success, staying true to what made the magazine successful. But along with incorporating changes to the medium, the coverage has also evolved. While many of the articles feature local activities or destinations–one of its most popular stories, Sheff notes, tells readers where to go for the best apple picking–the magazine doesn’t shy away from topics like domestic violence.

“It is a good combination of information for parents and features and articles that parents want to read and know about,” says Susan Goldberg, a Chappaqua resident who has worked for the magazine as the calendar editor since 2011. “My kids are adults now, but I think when I was a young mother I would have loved this kind of resource.”

Sheff’s coverage has allowed her to meet and interview some notable sources, from then-Yankees manager Joe Torre to, most recently, Dateline NBC correspondent Andrea Canning. For a profile on Sesame Street, Sheff toured the show’s studios in Astoria, Queens.

But just as important to Sheff are her conversations with the magazine’s readers, which she uses as an “informal focus group” to gauge the publication’s impact.

“Even people who don’t have kids anymore will say, ‘I used to read that all the time. I raised my kids with that magazine,’” she says. “It’s very endearing. They’re very appreciative.”

And it hasn’t just been local parents who have recognized the magazine’s contributions. The publication has won a number of awards, including several from the Parenting Publications of America and the Parenting Media Association. When it comes to finding activities to write about, Sheff says, there is never a shortage. With everything from the Westchester Children’s Museum in Rye to the Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville and with New York City a short drive away, neither parents nor the magazine risk running out of ideas.

“Westchester is just a great place to grow up,” Sheff says.

WWII Veteran Helps Civil War Vets Gain Recognition

December 1, 2016 by Andrew Vitelli

George Pouder and his wife, Aurelia, at their North Castle home. ANDREW VITELLI PHOTO — George Pouder and his wife, Aurelia, inside their North Castle home.

For perhaps more than 100 years, Civil War veterans William Freeland and Albert Ransom were buried in anonymity, their tombstones in the cemetery of St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Armonk either damaged and unreadable or, in Ransom’s case, missing altogether. But thanks to the efforts of a 93-year-old North Castle resident, and the help of an Armonk priest, both men now rest under newly-installed gravestones issued by the Department of Veterans Affairs.

George Pouder, a 48-year North Castle resident who lives near the town’s border with Bedford, first began researching the cemeteries of Armonk ten years ago. A longtime member of the North Castle Historical Society, Pouder joined fellow society member Barbara Massi in a project documenting the burial grounds in Armonk.

“It was supposed to last three months, and it took three years,” Pouder recalls. The project, which resulted in a 166-page report, built on the research of former town historian Dick Lander. “We had a lot of fun doing it, and we found things that [Lander] hadn’t found, which was very unusual.”

During his research with Massi, Pouder took note of how many Civil War veterans are buried in the hamlet.

“I got interested in the Civil War soldiers. It really grabbed me and I couldn’t let go,” says Pouder. His own experience in WWII “made me feel like I had a kinship with these people. I didn’t want them to stay unknown and mute when nobody would know anything that they did.”

In February of 2015, Pouder published biographies on more than 100 Civil War soldiers, sailors, and spouses. Two of the soldiers profiled were Freeland, an Army Private, and Ransom, a Corporal who was captured by Confederate forces and held as a prisoner of war at Andersonville Prison in Georgia. Upon seeing the condition of Freeland’s tombstone – which was smashed and facedown – Pouder began fighting for a new stone Freeland, who died of typhoid at the age of 23.

“The VA, in their infinite wisdom, said, ‘Well he has a stone already,” says Pouder, who countered that the stone was facedown and unreadable. In his biography of Freeland, Pouder even offers to dig the grave himself – though ultimately it didn’t come to that.

Applying for the stones was complicated by the fact that the VA would only accept an application on behalf of the cemetery’s custodian. St. Stephen’s was without a full-time priest until January 2015, when Rev. Nils Chittenden moved into the Rectory. Chittenden worked with Pouder to obtain the necessary records and to fill out the applications.

“The VA demands, I guess for good reason, a very high burden of proof of the story of these particular people,” explains Chittenden. “They want documentation about the years they were in the army, documentation about their birth and their death dates, and documentation to prove that they are definitely buried there.”

In Ransom’s case, since there was no stone, it was also not completely clear where his burial site was located. “So [the VA] said, ‘Oh, no dice,’” recalls Pouder. Finally, they dug up a map with Ransom’s plot listed.

“As George’s priest, I wanted to really support him in this endeavor, because it is such a good thing that George is doing,” says Chittenden, whose father served the British Army in WWII. “But also I feel passionately that people who gave so much to the country, who suffered so greatly, and whose family suffered so greatly for what they did, be given that sort of recognition and remembrance.”
Installed in October, the tombstones were officially dedicated on Veterans Day.

Pouder, who grew up in New Rochelle and owned Lieb’s Nursey in the city before retiring 23 years ago, has been a member of the historical society since moving to North Castle; before moving, he had been a member of the New Rochelle Historical Society. His wife, Aurelia, was a member of the History Hounds, a group that met to discuss historical topics. Even the couple’s house is historic; dating back to 1778, only its remote location saved it during the British burning of Bedford during the Revolutionary War.

Along with his publication on the Civil War veterans and his project with Massi on Armonk’s burial grounds, Pouder worked with fellow Historical Society member Nicholas Cerullo on a report about how the town’s residents responded to President Lincoln’s call for draftees during the Civil War. The projects are all available at the North Castle Public Library. Pouder stresses that he has never sought to make money from the projects. “It would be very unlikely that anyone would buy it,” he says. With Ransom and Freeland no longer buried in anonymity, Pouder’s work has already paid off.

Andrew Vitelli is a Westchester native and the editor of Inside Armonk magazine.

Trump Wins, Locals React

December 1, 2016 by Andrew Vitelli

If there was one common theme among Armonk residents and locals Wednesday, after Donald Trump’s election night win over Chappaqua’s Hillary Clinton, it was shock. Speaking to Inside Press the day after the election at Tazza Café in the hamlet, here is what a few of our neighbors had to say.

“I had more confidence in our country to look at the bigger picture, instead of thinking about our nation as just a nation. I wish that people had thought about humanity and voted for someone who believed in climate change and would work to give us a better shot to improve our current situation,” Liza Scher, a 17-year-old senior at Byram Hills High School (though too young to vote, she preferred Clinton).

“I just feel like this country is going back. We’re taking back a lot of the progress we just made. I was just very stunned because I really thought she was going to win,” Monica Aguirre, a 20-year-old Bedford resident who supported Clinton. Aguirre said she was afraid of the impact Trump’s election would have on executive orders issued by President Obama to stop deportations of immigrants who entered the country illegally.

“I didn’t like either one of them. I voted for Gary Johnson. Out of the two of them, I was glad it was Trump,” Joe Souerzoef, a Mamaroneck resident. Souerzoef said he doesn’t trust Clinton and doesn’t believe Trump is a true conservative. He would have preferred Florida Senator Marco Rubio or Texas Senator Ted Cruz win the Republican nomination.

“I think the morning after people need to recognize that we have a new president. Enough mourning, for those who mourn, and it’s time to come to grips with the reality and maybe find and see what positives there are about it,” Gideon, an Armonk resident. A Republican, Gideon crossed party lines to vote for Clinton. However, he hopes that Trump’s election and Republican control of the Senate will break the gridlock that Washington has seen since 2010, when Republicans took control of the House of Representatives.