As residents and voting citizens of the now 16^th Congressional District, we are on the cusp of a critically important election on Aug. 23.

The United Hospital site is coming up in village meetings again. A current proposal has 775 multi-family residential units, 200 age restricted units (that's easily 1,000 more toilets) as well as a 120-room hotel.

With the expiration of pandemic-inspired eviction moratoria along with rapidly rising costs for fuel and building materials, many local landlords are scrambling to raise rents in the Village of Port Chester. This is their right, within reason, but their tenants also have rights. At the Board of Trustees meeting on June 20, Sustainable Port Chester Alliance hoped to start conversation and debate about this topic by asking the Village government to help protect those rights:

Our future as a nation, and as citizens of a world order dominated by liberal democratic (small “d”) values, will be determined in the next few months as we struggle to develop any kind of national consensus on the events of Jan. 6 and nervously try to affect the outcome of the Ukrainian war with Russia.

I am writing to alert you about a new policy for business owners in Port Chester that is not only unfair; it is likely illegal.

Last week’s article in this paper regarding unresolved parking issues in the new Form Based Code (“Hello Houston, We’ve Got a Problem,” Westmore News, June 9, 2022) was not a surprise. The Village of Port Chester rushed to approve the Form Based Code (FBC) without truly understanding it. It’s time to stop the development madness; the Village should stop all large-scale development, take the time to understand and fix the FBC, and then start up again.

The idea of justice in our society is a recurring theme. What is justice? How does one obtain justice? Is justice delayed, justice denied? While I toy with these ideas daily, I see the justice system failing individuals, marginalized groups, and communities daily.

Can mere mortals like you and me (and Blind Brook resident Naomi Schaefer Riley), who are not “of” the educational establishment, criticize it without getting fierce blowback? 

On Saturday, May 14, Sustainable Port Chester Alliance held a “Meet, Greet & Eat” event in the Key Foods parking lot on Midland Avenue. We offered passersby a free slice of pizza and a free ticket to a raffle for $50 gift cards in return for filling out a short paper survey. 

For many years local interfaith congregations have joined with the students of the Gay Straight Alliance (GSA) at Port Chester and Blind Brook high schools for a fundraiser. The congregations have hosted the fundraiser and the students have been volunteers for the event. 

In light of the recent tragedy at the elementary school in Uvalde, Tex., I would like to present the following questions to our Port Chester School Board:

The State Legislature has passed the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act of New York. It has serious consequences for all municipalities in New York especially Port Chester.

I would like to extend my gratitude to all the voters who supported my election on May 17 to the Port Chester School Board and for voting “yes” on the budget.

It is over 100 days of war in Ukraine and the collective West gets tired. The West gets bored. The West worries so much about the cost of fuel, which is sure much more important than the life of some Ukrainian child. I get it. 

It was very heartening to see that not only village residents read the Westmore News but that village officials read the News and the Letters to the Editor such as my “poop letter.” Now that the planning commission has recognized that all the proposed over-development will overwhelm the sanitary sewers of this village, I want to bring attention to a problem, not of too much bad stuff in our old, clogged, root filled, and rusty waste pipes, but of too little of the good stuff.

First Buffalo. Then Uvalde. But Uvalde—I just can’t get Uvalde out of my head.

Maybe it’s because I have twin grandchildren, age 9 soon to be 10, in the 4th grade. The age of the slaughtered Uvalde children.

Thanks for your coverage of the thoughts of this 88-year-old senior citizen. You and Dick Hubert have really given me the opportunity to continue thinking and participating in a community where Rickie and I have lived for 55 years.