In Rye, Local Government is a Spectator Sport

Perception is the reality, and in Rye and Rye Brook, local government is a spectator sport, an ongoing version of playwright Thornton Wilder's "Our Town" only hereabouts the players are for real. Several citizens –ranging from French nobility to a character dressed as "Mr. Floatie" to protest waste allegedly polluting Long Island Sound –make frequent appearances at the City Council and Board of Education meetings.

But is their participation a sign of an engaged electorate, an enraged constituency or a nuisance factor in the way government functions in these municipalities? Are they community activists, civic watchdogs or gadflies? You be the judge.

Never-Ending Critics of the Blind Brook School Board

Rye Brook's Dick Hubert and Sam Marcus, for example, are constant critics of the Blind Brook School District and make frequent appearances at school board meetings decrying higher taxes.

Hubert, 71, a documentary filmmaker and video specialist, for example, argues for transparency in the budget process, urges preparing students for the 21st century without wasting time on allegedly outmoded courses, wants to trim what he calls bloated teacher salaries and curb rising taxes spent on what he considers an out-of-control school budget that has Blind Brook spending an estimated $25,000 per student from kindergarten through the 12th grade, an amount that he says ranks with the highest in the nation.

"Those escalating taxes and pay increases are inexcusable given the current economic climate, and they are driving empty nesters and seniors living on fixed incomes right out of town," he said.

Hubert's interest in community activism goes way back, more than half-a-century, back to his Massachusetts' student newspaper days on The Sagamore, where he grew up professionally on the motto: "An informed public is the foundation of transparent government."

His mother was president of the League of Women Voters, so she brought him up on the idea of community and political involvement as part of one's civic responsibility. One of his first documentaries was on the role of education in preparing the youngest and brightest for leading roles in the 21st century. He has carried over that interest from Rye Brook to involvement in his college's future as a long-time member of the Amherst Board of Trustees (he is now a Trustee Emeritus).

Marcus, 64, is a Cornell graduate school grad, and a retired businessman who believes you get the kind of government you deserve, and that involvement in community affairs makes for better local government.

"I want quality education at sustainable cost, " he said.

"I'd like to know why we spend $25,000 per pupil, when Cambridge, Mass., where all those college professors from Harvard and MIT send their kids, spends $16,000," he added. "Something's wrong there, and I want to find out what it is."

As a former member of the Blind Brook Budget Advisory Committee, he wants bottom line accountability and fiscal responsibility.

Blind Brook School Board President Steve Kaplan points out there is a difference between what he can say while sitting on the dais in a public capacity, and what he thinks, especially with a School Board election coming up, and Hubert running for the Board with Marcus as his campaign manager. So, he is keeping an open mind.

Rye's School Board Watchdog

In Rye, where the school district's $36.7 million payroll for 2008 included 134 employees earning more than $100,000, Bertrand deFrondeville, 73, an aristocratic,  idealistic member of French nobility, frequently speaks out against rising educational costs in a more than 3,100-student district where Superintendent Edward Shine earns $268,623, the average Rye teachers earns $83,181, the highest paid teachers earn over $140,000 (William Schrammel, union chief and head of the physics department, earns $143,701 while teacher/football coach Dino Garr earns $141,741) and the head custodian Angelo Morganti swept up $141,607.

DeFrondeville argues for a nuts-and-bolts, no-frills quality education, urges teachers and administrators to curb their financial demands given the economic climate, even advocates an austerity budget in these tough economic times when teachers and administrators should not be exempt from financial sacrifice.

DeFrondville is a nuclear engineer, a financier and is a graduate of France's equivalent of Annapolis and MIT (one of his forebears was a founder of the school). He said he helped France design its first nuclear submarines and holds multiple physics and business graduate school degrees. He has sent four kids through the Rye public schools.

He has also been a substitute teacher in the Rye schools, as has his wife, Barbara, a retired teacher in the Bronxville school system. So the deFrondvilles know the territory. Bertrand, a hereditary marquis from one of France's oldest and most respected families, believes it is his civic responsibility, a kind of noblesse oblige, to be engaged in the local educational and government process.

He is ultra-concerned about keeping costs down at a time when rising costs and taxes are driving so many seniors out of Rye during the current economic downturn. He said he spends countless hours studying budgets and costs in comparable school districts while looking to save Rye a buck. He is one of the founders of the Concerned Citizens for Responsible Educational Excellence in Rye (CREED). He can often also be seen making his educational points on Rye Cable Community TV.

Community Activists Frequent Rye City Council Meetings

Other frequent Rye participants at community meetings range from Ray Tartaglione, a car service operator who bedeviled former Mayor Steve Otis by often showing up at City Council meetings dressed up as a character called "Mr. Floatie" to protest alleged Hen Island pollution of the Long Island Sound, to Henry King, a long-time resident who may hold the record for attending the most City Council meetings. 

King, a more than 40-year Rye resident who began regularly attending meetings about four years ago to speak out about the Beaver Swamp controversy, told Patch at a recent City Council meeting that he felt obligated to attend these meetings because it was a small sacrifice to make considering that all of the council members volunteer their time to serve the city.

Rye Mayor Doug French says that community activists play an important role in city government.

"But their participation must come in a structured way during the time when the meeting is open to public discussion, sticking to the salient points in a minimal amount of time, say three to four minutes, with the option of meeting with the Council members on an individual basis either after the meeting, or at another scheduled time," French told Patch.

Consider, for example, the Hen Island summer bungalow controversy, he said, where Tartaglione, in effect argued, residents are polluting the Long Island Sound because of allegedly sub-standard sanitation procedures, those charges denied by long-time residents of the summer bungalow colony who allege Tartaglione, who could not be reached for comment, is a disgruntled resident who has an ax to grind.

"It does no good for the speakers on the Hen Island situation to argue back and forth with Tartaglione, that's not going to help the Council come to a decision."

"On the other hand, there's someone like Sis D'Angelo, a responsible community resident who has been speaking out at Council meetings for something like 30 years now, calling things to the Council's attention, like two rundown gas stations being an eyesore at the entrance to town a while back, to, most recently bringing to our attention how dirty Purchase Street is. We checked it out. Sis is right. And we're doing something about it."

Apparently, civic participation in local government can yield results.