Community Corner

Editor's Notebook: Week in Review

A recap of this week's top stories on Rye Patch

Rye Patch started the week giving our readers 10 ways to celebrate St. Patrick's Day. We listed fun things such as today's Pipes and Drums of the Police Emerald Society of Westchester event at the Rye Roadhouse. Rye will continue to celebrate the holiday this week with events at Playland Ice Casino on Wednesday, and Jameson's Revenge at The Westchester Country Club on Saturday, March 20 at 7:00p.m, which will feature a group of "Trad-Irish" musicians.

We also did a story on Blind Brook's policy of discounted tuition for teachers' children.  It costs Blind Brook residents $25,000 per student in yearly taxes, while teachers who live outside the district can send their children to Blind Brook schools for about $3,000 per student. With a 2010-11 proposed budget that calls for a 2.14 percent tax levy increase, many taxpayers say it is already too costly to pay for educating students in the district and teachers who bring home a six figure salary should bear the full burden of educating their own children. Because the tuition policy is part of the teachers' contract, it's unlikely that the Blind Brook school district will eliminate the discount. So, the debate will continue.

We also featured our usual "Happy Mondays" column, a reader favorite. In this week's column, Peter Gerstenzang wrote about the challenge of getting Happy "to tinkle in a snow or rain sprinkle." Peter has found a temporary solution to this problem, making the suggestion that taking your dog on a familiar street will help him or her release. For Happy, that means Barlow Lane in Rye is the go-to destination.

Find out what's happening in Ryewith free, real-time updates from Patch.

On Tuesday, we also debuted Peter's new column called "Cracking the Code," which takes a comic approach to evaluating everything in the City of Rye's code. Peter's first column was about Rye's graffiti laws, which he says were probably created in the 1980's when hip hop hit the suburbs and poppin' and lockin' was all the rage. Rye Patch is really excited about this new bi-weekly column, so we hope our readers enjoy it. There's a wealth of material for comedic fodder in the City of Rye code...trust us.

We also did a story on the Rye Town Park Commission meeting. During the meeting, a task force of Rye residents presented their recommendations for improving the parking situation at Rye Town Park. The task force suggested decreasing the number of parking spaces by almost 50 percent, erecting parking barriers and raising non-resident parking fees. The commission, which includes Rye Mayor Doug French and Rye Brook Mayor Joan Feinstein, will have until April 26 to enact any changes.

Find out what's happening in Ryewith free, real-time updates from Patch.

We also did a video piece on what people were giving up for Lent, a story on Westchester County's $166 million budget deficit and Rye Brook's amended dogs in park law and its choice for a new police sergeant. 

Rye Patch had several stories this week on the Rye City School District. The growing number of property assessment challenges could have a heavy financial impact on the school district. More than 130 homeowners have filed claims for the city assessor to reassess their property. These owners are asking for more than $5 million in refunds, a figure that the school district is responsible for paying since it relies on property taxes to fund its operations.

We also did a story on the school district putting capital improvement projects on hold because of budget constraints. The district has nearly $20 million in projects on its agenda, but limited money to fund them. It has allocated a mere $300,000 in its proposed 2010-11 budget to a small list of priority projects, which includes more than $125,000 in upgrades at Midland School and about $80,000 for improvement projects at Rye Middle School and Rye High School. 

Our other school story for the week detailed the Rye Administrators Association new contracts. The association, which includes both principals and assistant principals, will get a nearly 7.5 percent compensation increase over the next three years in exchange for administrators contributing more to their health premiums. The administrators' new contracts go into effect on July 1 and expire on June 30, 2013. 

We also featured a story on the opening night of the Rye Arts Center's newest exhibit, "Student Studio: Emerging High School Talent."  The exhibit features the photography and paintings of local high school students, including those from Rye Country Day School and Rye High School. The exhibit closes on March 24, but check out amazing photos of the exhibit from our photographer, Hillary Berkowitz, to get sneak peek of what you'll see when you visit the Rye Arts Center. 

Our weekend stories included Jaclyn Bruntfield's column on the Conservation Cafe's deer management discussion, and a story about the Blind Brook Trojans advancing to the state regional semi-final game next week. 

We ended the week with our usual photo recap and a weekly roundup of Rye sports, so browse through our photo gallery or read our sports recap to see what teams in the area tallied victories or defeats this week.

We've covered lots more, so feel free to search the site for other engaging stories from the past week. Rye Patch will be your source for everything that is happening in the city and town of Rye---from local government and school board meetings to sports and arts and entertainment.

We'll be doing a "Week in Review" every Sunday, so if you missed anything during the week, we've got you covered.


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