Town Board Meeting Grows Heated During Public Comment

The first Town Board meeting of the year rolled along smoothly Thursday night as the board steadily crossed items off the agenda but later grew heated during the public comment portion of the meeting.

The date of the switch to curbside trash pick-up has been pushed back from Jan. 11 to Jan. 25, announced Supervisor Joan Walsh. The delay is needed to get ample notification to all residents, according to Walsh.

There was discussion of issuing a limited number of permits to the disabled and those aged 80 and older, however no decisions were announced.

"The idea is to make it so that there are very, very few people. You can't have everyone with an exception.

Walsh started the meeting off on a hopeful note as she gave her State of the Town address, which included a list of goals for 2010 such as revising the Master Plan, developing the MTA property with commercial and residential space and working with the county on constructing an ultraviolet water treatment plant that will be done in 2013.

The Town Board approved Walsh's request to petition the State Legislature to grant Harrison the right to impose a hotel tax on hotels within the town limit.

"We've asked for it before, but all of the towns and villages in Westchester are joining as a block, hoping for more consideration," Walsh said."There are hotels in this town and we would like to get those tax dollars."

Several staff appointments were made Thursday night in light of last month's retirements. Anthony Robinson was designated the Acting Commissioner of Public Works; Michael Amodeo was designated the Acting Town Engineer; Anthony Marraccini was designate Acting Chief of Police and Mark Heinbockel was designated Acting Assessor.

Toward the end of the meeting, several residents stood up to give their comments on several items that weren't on the agenda, and the meeting quickly grew heated.

Residents Lucielle Held and Elizabeth Pritchard, a former councilwoman, stood up to give their criticism regarding the town's Law Department.

Held asked the town's lawyers to give an extra day of work without pay because she was concerned about the amount of money being spent on the Law Department. Pritchard gave a list of ethical guidelines to the board members and asked them to review them, but only after reading several guidelines advising officials not to appear biased.

Town Attorney Frank Allegretti fired back saying that although he only has office hours two days a week, considerable more time is spent actually working for the town.

"There have been dozens upon dozens of frivolous lawsuits against us ... I spend between 40 and 50 hours a week working for the town," he said.

Former Harrison Police Office Ralph Tancreddi who was officially removed from the department last month stood and began to spout off what board members called a personal attack, and asked him to stop speaking.

Councilman Frank Sciliano went so far as to ask Tancredi to leave.

"If you want to continue your outbursts, I ask you to leave," said Councilman Frank Sciliano.

Another former town employee, Steve Sorace, spoke several times, mostly to air his grievances that there was no public hearing on the retirement incentive program the town used to save $2.2 million from this year's budget.

"This was an unfair situation," he said.