Mamaroneck REVIEW THE
February 17, 2017 | Vol. 5, Number 7 | www.mamaroneckreview.com
Town gun ban gets axed By JAMES PERO Staff Writer
Village Building Department records now online By JAMES PERO Staff Writer For the first time in village history, members of the public are able to peruse almost the full gamut of Building Department records as quickly as an Internet connection will allow. Earlier this month, the vast
majority of village Building Department records were made available online, as part of a broader initiative to streamline government operations, cut cost and increase transparency, according to Assistant Village Manager Dan Sarnoff. “It’s a nice system to allow us to streamline how documents
are requested and received and hopefully make it easier for residents, business owners and other individuals who want to browse documents,” Sarnoff said. According to Village ClerkTreasurer Agostino Fusco— who has worked extensively on the project—the initiative to
upload the village Building Department files has been ongoing since 2011 and is another step toward a more holistic attempt to digitize all village records. Currently, Building Department files, in addition to meeting agendas and minutes, and RECORDS continued on page 8
A proposal from the Mamaroneck town board that sought to ban guns on town property has been shelved after vehement public backlash as well as trepidation over the law’s constitutionality. “We were definitely wrestling with what kinds of protections can we really provide,” said Town Supervisor Nancy Seligson, a Democrat. “We decided that we would table it for now.” Among the major discussions leading the board to sideline the initiative, Seligson said, was difficulty in deciding just how to enforce the law; specifically, whether the town had the resources to conduct adequate searches on members of the public entering a building. “We started to think about what it would take to have some kind of search when people come into a building,” she said. “We decided we didn’t have the wherewithal to do that at this time.” After some contentious discussion at a public hearing last month, the town board also realized that it could be facing several potential lawsuits if the proposal had moved forward. That public hearing saw dozens of owners and activists voice their concerns. Among them was Scott Sommavilla, president of the Westchester Firearms Association, who told the Review that his gun rights collective
was “lawyered up.” Increasingly throughout the past several months, municipalities across Westchester County have begun to tackle the regulation of guns, following the controversial opening of a gun store in Harrison that operates less than a mile away from an elementary school. The store sparked widespread criticism throughout Harrison as well as an online petition to find a way to close down the store that was signed by 3,500 people. While the county Board of Legislators introduced legislation to ban gun shows in countyowned facilities—a law that was later vetoed by County Executive Rob Astorino, a Republican, and has since been retooled and sent back to committees—the village of Rye Brook has taken preliminary steps to ban gun stores within a certain proximity of schools. Currently on the county level, lawmakers will mull over the codification of a slew of provisions regulating gun shows countywide. That discussion stemmed from the administration of County Executive Rob Astorino, a Republican, moving forward, last month, with a gun show at the Westchester County Convention Center; the first gun show held by the county since 2010; a previously scheduled show was canceled in the wake of the 2012 shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in GUN continued on page 9