Andrew Cuomo, a cell tower defeat for Verizon Wireless and heat pumps

My latest Tax Watch column on Andrew Cuomo's return to live in Westchester County got me thinking about all the Cuomo stories I've written over my years with Gannett in the Hudson Valley.

I’ve covered Andrew Cuomo since the late 1980s, when he arrived on the scene in Westchester to build housing for the homeless. It a contentious time during Westchester's homeless crisis, with unhoused families or single people crammed into motel rooms or shelters. Cuomo wanted to build a model transitional housing complex on six wooded acres carved out of the campus of Westchester Community College.

The neighbors in Greenburgh's Mayfair Knollwood neighborhood rose up, going so far as to attempt to create the town's seventh village so its zoning board could prohibit the center. Then came the aftermath, and the attempt by the town of Greenburgh to tear down the affordable housing while Cuomo was governor after the homeless program ended.

Politics brought him often to Westchester. I recall his ill-fated 2002 run for governor when I interviewed him as he walked through downtown White Plains on a hot summer day, weeks before he withdrew from the race before the September primary.

I was involved in coverage of his gubernatorial campaigns in 2014 and 2018. I also wrote about his life in Chappaqua, with Sandra Lee, at her home on Bittersweet Lane, and the issues involved in the surprising low assessment on her home by the town assessor, despite the upgrades showcased in national magazines.

I also documented how Cuomo continued to be registered to vote in Chappaqua after he’d broken up with Lee, and had made the Executive Mansion in Albany his home. He finally registered in Albany a year later in October 2020.

After Cuomo resigned in disgrace in August, 2021,  I was among those curious about where he’d end up living. I’d forgotten about it until after the June gubernatorial primary, won by his successor, Kathy Hochul. He most likely would have had an opponent if he hadn’t resigned.

Board of Elections officials in Albany led me to the answer. A clerk there told me he’d kept his registration at the Executive Mansion through May, nine months after he’d left town. Then he’d moved back to Westchester County.

I was intrigued. Where would he land?

Turns out he moved into the palatial home of his sister Maria, and her husband, fashion designer Kenneth Cole, in Purchase. But Cuomo’s spokesman told me that the former governor wasn’t spending much time in Westchester this summer as he plots his next chapter with friends out on Long Island.

Cell tower victory over Verizon Wireless

Imagine opening a letter to learn that town officials had decided – with no community input – to site a cell tower 140-feet high at the end of your hilltop cul-de-sac?

That’s what happened to residents on Walton Drive in Mahopac in the summer of 2020 when they learned that the Carmel Town Board had struck a backroom deal that benefitted two members of the Town Board but left the residents seemingly without recourse.

It cost the Walton Drive neighbors close to $100,000 to fund a lawsuit in state and federal courts against the settlement, which they were informed had exempted the plan from the town’s planning board, zoning board of appeals and any environmental review.

It didn’t seem fair.

And two years later the residents emerged victorious in state Supreme Court, as the judge found that a town cannot waive its public process to resolve a federal lawsuit. Now comes the waiting period during which time the town or Verizon Wireless could file an appeal of the judge’s decision. Or it could go back to U.S. District Court in White Plains, were Verizon’s original lawsuit was supposed to be resolved by the settlement.

That would mean the two original sites could come back in play: on Dixon Road by the Crane Road ball fields or next door to the rental complex on Croton Falls Road, owned by former Town Board member Mike Barile and his daughter, Emily. Barile testified against the tower before the planning board, and recused himself from the vote when the settlement came to the Town Board.

Con Edison's heat pump problems

The calls keep coming in from contractors, homeowners, and climate activists regarding last week’s investigation into the mess created by Con Edison through its Clean Heat program.  One contractor told me he was owed hundreds of thousands of dollars for incentives to cover the cost of heat-pump installations.

Still no word from the Public Service Commission about when it will rule on Con Edison's application to have access to other pots of ratepayer-funded monies to cover $760 million in heat-pump incentives for 2022.

Thanks for reading,

David McKay Wilson, columnist

Email: dwilson3@lohud.com

Twitter: @davidmckay415

Mobile: 914-217-5600

This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Andrew Cuomo returns to Westchester, Mahopac residents beat Verizon