Opinion: Privatizing Playland: Rob Astorino's $25 Million Joke on Westchester?

On June 10th, 2015 the Westchester County Board of Legislators LPPH (Labor, Parks, Planning & Housing) and Budget Committees will be voting on whether or not to pass the proposed privatization deal with Standard Amusements ”out of committee” and onto the full 17-member BOL for a “yea” or “nay” vote during the regular BOL meeting at 7pm on Monday, June 15th.

The contract that the BOL members are expected to vote on was presented to them with no advance notice by County Executive Rob Astorino in a surprise announcement on April 15th, 2015. He announced that day that he was sending the contract to the BOL for review and approval and was stipulating a 60-day review process and expecting a vote on June 15, 2015. The County Executive’s office spent the entire winter secretly working on the deal with Standard Amusements all the while refusing to release the “Biederman Report” that he had commissioned last summer and which we now know his office received back in December of 2014.

Interestingly enough, the Biederman Report specifically recommends that the County privatize mangement of the Park and choose Standard Amusements as the operator. During the review process it came to light via an admission from Deputy County Executive Kevin Plunkett that the Biederman Report that was conveniently finally released simultaneously with the announcement of the Standard contract on April 15th was not the exact same document submitted to the CE’s office by Biederman back in December of 2014. To the best of my knowledge we are still waiting to see the original report sent to the CE’s office, and we don’t know if it suggested picking Standard from the get go or if that was later inserted into it as the CE’s office continued to tailor their version of what they called the Biederman Report “draft” (ie: how to avoid releasing it under FOIL requests) to reflect the contract with Standard that they were busy all winter hammering out without any input from the Public or the BOL. And yes, County Taxpayers, your fiscally conservative County Executive would have you believe that Dan Biederman only submitted an incomplete “draft” and that we paid him $100k for it. Money well spent? Many would beg to differ.

Subsequently, the BOL members were left scrambling to research, vet and review a 15-year contract that they had no involvement or input in developing, with just a 60 day window. The CE’s office put the pressure on them by stating that it had to pass by June 15th so that Standard Amusements could get into the Park this summer while it was open to “shadow” the staff there and see how things run during a “co-management” period before we officially hand it over to them in October. Much credit should be given to Pete Harckham and his LPPH Committee for expeditiously setting up a series of weekly review meetings to cover the 60-day period.

The BOL review process has been thorough, and should you choose you can go back and watch online videos of all the meetings. We are almost at the end of the review process and much has come to light, while many more questions still remain unanswered. One of the many highlights that stuck out to me was one of the first ones to come out at the first meeting and it was a Doozie.

At that first review meeting, it seemed like the big news story was that Nick Singer from Standard Amusements went on the record to put Rye’s worst fears to rest and assure everyone that despite language the CE’s office (and yes folks this is indeed a red flag here) insisted on including in the contract asking Standard to “consider” putting some sort of temporary sports fields in the parking lot, Standard had “considered” it and had no intention of doing it. They stated that it really wasn’t technically feasible, and not something financially viable enough to be worth their interest. So, in short, Singer assured us all “NO FIELDS!” I believe Nick Singer when he says “No Fields!”, but we all need to wonder why the CE’s office still felt it so important to include that issue in the contract at all. And, by the way, when the BOL had a “walk thru” review meeting at the Park with Standard Amusements a few weeks ago, Kim Morque, President of Sustainable Playland was there tagging along with the rest of the interested public. OH! I almost forgot - the Biederman Report also specifically called for John Abate and Eric Degraw from ”Playland Sports” - YOU know, the guys who wanted to build the 95,000 sq. foot Field House in the parking lot - to RUN these “temporary fields”. Danger Will Robinson! DANGER! DANGER!!

But guess what? That good news about the fields *wasn’t* really the big news story that came out of that first meeting. All of the news media missed the big story. The REAL news was that Singer admitted that in all this time that they have been working on getting the contract (3-4 years now), and in all the time that they spent over the Winter working with the CE’s office to hammer it out....they had NEVER DONE A WALK THROUGH OF THE PARK. Ok, put on your crash helmets and fasten your seat belts, because when that revelation hit ME, I almost fell off my chair. Think about it for a minute. I had always assumed they came up with their $25 million number to invest in the Park based on having assessed what needed to be done/fixed/restored down there. Boy was I wrong! They were just throwing spaghetti at the wall.

These folks have been trying to get the contract to run an 87 year old Amusement Park, Beach, Pool and Boardwalk for almost four years now. They’ve spent a ton of time and money thus far, and are poised to spend $25 million on the place when they get in there. And they had never been given any information from the CE’s office about what Capital Improvements projects needed to be done and were never given the opportunity to walk thru the Park with inspectors of any kind to assess the condition of the property. They had never kicked the tires or checked under the hood. They had absolutely no clue what they were walking into until they did a hastily scheduled two-day walk through the week after that first review meeting.

Playland has been suffering under the County thru decades of mis-management ever since the 1980’s and the years of deferred maintenance have taken their toll. During that first meeting, after Singer’s admission that they had never done a walk through or assessment of the actual conditions at the Park, Legislator Mary Jane Shimsky asked them about Capital Improvements projects. She specifically referred to one in particluar, known in short as “The Colonnades”. For those unfamiliar with this “project” it is a massive undertaking towards restoration of the historic columns (Colonnades) that line the center of the Park on both sides looking from the Fountain down towards the Music Tower. The Colonnades in the back north quadrant of the Park have been gone for years due to a fire back in the late 1960’s I believe, and the ones standing in the rest of the Park are badly in need of full restoration. When the engineering study was done way back in 1998 - and no that’s not a typo, I DO mean Nineteen-Ninety-Eight, as in, back in the 20th Century- the cost for the project was estimated at somewhere between $7-$8 million. It has still never been done. Back then, the BOL wouldn’t approve the money because they thought it was too expensive and they could get it done cheaper. Yup. Current BOL Chairman Mike Kaplowitz has admitted that at least twice now during the review meetings that he was not on board with approving that money as a Freshman Legislator and inexplicably he still stands by that decision to vote it down. It cannot perpetually go undone without eventually becoming a public safety issue and it will now likely cost us almost twice as much to do. So thumbs up on that one Legislator Kaplowitz!

When Legislator Shimsky brought the Colonnades up to them she pointed out that that one project alone would take a substantial bite out of Standard’s $25 million - of course also assuming that what would have cost $10 million many years back would cost significantly more today due to inflation and the extra 17 years of deterioration that has taken place as the project has been left undone by BOL after BOL and several CE’s. (So hey, Rob Astorino, here’s some good news: I don’t completely blame you for *all* the problems down there! It’s actually NOT all your fault!) Shimsky asked them if they had some other pot of money to dip into after paying for that project...and she was met with dumbfounded dead silence for a few beats. It’s on the video. (Thurs. April 23, 2015 LPPH Committee meeting, fast forward to minute marker 34:35 for discussion about the Colonnades between Harckham and Kaplowitz and again with Shimsky around 49:40 )

Finally after a few awkward moments of the air being sucked out of the room, Andy Miniglia of the Standard team asked if there was any engineering study for that project. There is, and they had never even been told about it let alone given it by the County Executive’s office throughout all the months of contract negotiations. That was when the question REALLY came up: What exactly is Standard’s $25 million going to pay for and what exactly is it NOT going to pay for?

Continued....click here for Part 2! Keep reading, it gets crazier!

For the Standard Contract, the Biederman Report, the Cap Improvement projects reports from 1998 & 2009 and other Playland related info click here and scroll down to the Playland Improvement Plan links.

For more updates as things happen visit and ”like” the Friends of Playland page on Facebook!

For info on the Public Hearing at Rye City Hall next Tuesday, June 2, 2015 at 7pm click here