March 3, 2017 by The Eastchester Review

Eastchester REVIEW THE

March 3, 2017 | Vol. 5, Number 9 | www.eastchesterreview.com

EFD rejects bid, delays Union Corners project By COREY STOCKTON Staff Writer

MITCHELL HITS MARK

Eastchester junior Cassidy Mitchell, seen here in an early-season game against Ursuline, scored her 1,000th career point on Feb. 23, in a Class A quarterfinal win over Lakeland. Mitchell and the Eagles will take on Walter Panas at the Westchester County Center on March 2, after press time. For story, see page 15. Photo/Mike Smith

County lawmakers push to ban sale of synthetic weed By JAMES PERO Staff Writer With a new piece of legislation, Westchester lawmakers will look to piggyback on a recently passed New York City law blockading the spread of a synthetic marijuana known commonly as “spice.” The county legislation, introduced jointly by Republican legislators David Tubiolo and John Testa, would enact a countywide ban on the sale of the synthetic drugs—which are currently sold legally over-thecounter under state law—by amending portions of the county’s consumer protection code. “We’re doing what we can to make our county as safe as possible,” said Tubiolo, of Yonkers.

“These are deadly toxins.” In New York state, both the sale and consumption of the drug have been under increasing scrutiny over the past year, spurred in part by 33 Brooklyn residents who overdosed this past summer on a popular brand of the product sold under the moniker “K2.” The side effects experienced by users of that strain of the drug included extreme disorientation, loss of motor control, and erratic behavior that required police intervention. According to Testa, of Peekskill, at times, the reach of drugs like K2 has hit close to home. Earlier this year, Testa explained, White Plains first responders were called to inter-

vene after multiple individuals began exhibiting what he described as “strange behavior.” Later, Testa said, it was determined that they had ingested synthetic marijuana which had been sold to them only a block away from the county government’s White Plains headquarters. “It was a wake-up call for us to pay attention to this and combat it in Westchester,” Testa said. This past summer, the drug also swept multiple Yonkers residents which resulted in police intervention according to Yonkers Police Sgt. Dean Politopolous. While regulators on both a state and federal level have made attempts to quell the spread of synthetic marijuana

—most notably through a 2012 congressional act that listed many of the compounds found in those drugs as Schedule I substances, the most serious class—the fight has often been a battle from behind. According to Tubiolo, while state and local governments have banned many of the compounds found in the commercially sold drugs, manufacturers have skirted embargos by altering their recipes by just a few molecules. “We were aware that people had been changing the chemicals,” Tubiolo said. “We’re trying to be pre-emptive.” The county law currently before the Westchester Board BAN continued on page 10

The Eastchester Fire District will have to wait to give the Union Corners firehouse the facelift it has been planning for years. The district, which has been considering renovating the 86-year-old station in the Chester Heights section of the town since November 2015 or earlier, published a request for proposals for work on the building’s exterior late last year. But in February, the district rejected the sole bid it received, further delaying work on the firehouse, which is due for both interior and exterior upgrades. The district would not release specific information related to the cost of the bid or what the district had originally estimated the cost to be. The Review has submitted a Freedom of Information Law request seeking the most updated bid specs and all responses to the request for proposals. That response has not been fulfilled as of press time. However, one source with knowledge of the bidding process told the Review that the project was estimated to cost approximately $800,000, while the only bid submitted to the district would have cost more than $1 million. The bid was officially rejected by the Board of Fire Commissioners at its Feb. 15 meeting. During the meeting, Commissioner Peter Incledon, who heads the House and Apparatus Committee, confirmed that, “The bid was substantially

higher than the price that was anticipated to complete the work that was outlined in the bid spec.” The district has previously said that the repairs planned for that station would include mostly aesthetic improvements, including window and roof replacements as well as some of the brick at the front of the building which does not include load-bearing brick. Gutters, leader pipes, woodwork and the chimney cap would also be replaced. The district has said that it plans to run similar renovations on the interior of that firehouse once exterior renovations have been completed. In the meantime, the Union Corners firehouse has already started to show signs of wear in the interior. In November, the terrazzo floor in the station’s single firetruck bay began to give way to the weight of the truck. In December, the district spent $8,016 to purchase steel plates and $9,350 to have those plates welded to the firehouse floor to better support the truck, which had been left outside of the station for a month to stymie the damage. An initial report submitted to the district by FSI Architecture in November 2015 estimated that repairs to both the interior and exterior of the station could cost between $2.2 million and $3.4 million, respectively, although the scope of project work, and therefore likely the associated costs, has been reduced since the report was issued. EFD continued on page 8