By Eric Wolf Schoen
Your one handed columnist reporting for duty. I underwent shoulder surgery last week under the good hands of Drs. David and Daniel Shein at the state of the art Hudson Regional Hospital in Secaucus, New Jersey. All went well and the only annoying thIng is the sling on my shoulder. The hospital uses state of the art robotics, but you are asleep during the procedure so I didn’t see the robots at work.
One thing you are grateful for when you wake up from having your shoulder repaired and see the bill is health insurance. Without it these procedures you go through can be very expensive. God forbid you lose your job and your health insurance, make sure you get Cobra insurance which serves as a bridge for you until your next job.
Yonkers the 10th Dirtiest City in America?
Every year the folks at LawnStarter undertake the task of trying to sift through the garbage, evaluate area pollution and living conditions to try and locate some of America’s dirtiest cities. Why a company would want to criticize cities where people use their services I don’t know. Unless maybe people are not using their services in the various cities they criticize. According to the company, Yonkers is the 10th dirtiest city in America.
LawnStarter is a marketplace for outdoor home services. Their basic business is keeping your lawn in good shape.
To try and determine which of the 200+ cities across the nation are the dirtiest LawnStarter looks at various key factors to come up with its yearly rankings. Air quality, the number of landfills and junkyards, overcrowding, homes with mold, mice or rats, homes that have signs of cockroaches, and many other factors to come up with four categories, pollution, living conditions, infrastructure, and consumer satisfaction. They gave a numbered score for each city in each category and then averaged the scores for each city across all categories to reveal the 152 dirtiest cities in America.
Living conditions and consumer satisfaction were the leading factors in Yonkers nearing the top of this year’s list. Yes, a lot of Yonkers housing stock is old. Old housing stock comes with mold. A lot of building is taking place in Yonkers, particularly on the Waterfront. Digging soil can bring up rats and mice. But look at the finished product. Isn’t it better than the vacant land that was there before.
Do they take into account the major strides Yonkers has made in cleaning up its municipal housing, in many cases knocking down the old and building new? And the development taking place in various areas of the city where nothing existed before! Areas in the planning stages for years. Empty bank turned into Chick-fil-a? Ridge Hill?
People like Yonkers because of its proximity to New York City, the magnificent city that exists within a 30 minute car ride. The diverse restaurants you will find on South Broadway and various ethnic stores you find along many streets in Yonkers are well known in the region.
I never hear people say they hate living in Yonkers because if they don’t like the city there are many places they can go. Rents were low in Yonkers and Housing prices were lower than in many communities years ago, but that is not the case anymore.
The article ends with the statement, ‘Clean cities tend to have lots of tidy, healthy, green lawns. If you need help getting and keeping your yard looking picture-perfect and pest-free, LawnStarter’s pros can help.’ Guess they are trying to sell their services. Do you think Yonkers residents after having their city criticized are really going to use LawnStarter? It’s up to you!
By the way the survey refers to Yonkers as a New York city about a one-hour drive from the Hudson Valley. I thought Yonkers was in the Hudson Valley! Maybe those that prepared the article need to do a little more homework! Yonkers has a character, a flavor that is hard to describe. I never hear people say Yonkers is a dirty city. Go back to the drawing board LawnStarter!
Do Away With Self Checkout Lanes?
I like the convenience of a self checkout lane. I can make sure the price is right, make sure all my coupons and discounts come off and pack my bags the way I like them packed. I know there is a lot of theft going on in stores from Target to the Dollar Tree, but I don’t think the elimination of theft will occur if you close down or limit the items purchased at the self checkout line.
At Target for example, many of their self checkout lines are monitored by cameras. Now if an employee sees something not being scanned and does nothing about it, that’s a store issue. If an employee sees something on the bottom of the shopping cart not scanned and no one does anything about it that’s a store issue. The security guards at Target (we call them Officer Target) have to get off their cell phones, stop looking at the pretty girls and watch what’s going on in front of them. They are there to stop theft.
Having so many items locked up can turn into a real pain in the ass. The other day the Yonkers Target had a woman taking product out that is locked up who did not speak English. Does that make sense? Other times I have seen people looking for the store employee with the key to unlock the cabinet for 10 minutes. Stores have to have employees close by to fetch up locked items.
And is giving the customer the locked item as they continue doing their shopping going to stop theft. The only way to stop theft is if the employee goes to the cashier with the item and customer to pay.
I was at Dollar Tree on McLean Avenue the other day. Dollar Tree does not have self scan aisles. An employee caught a man and a woman stealing, and they got into a verbal exchange. The kind petite employee was not going to risk her safety in stopping the couple from taking the things out of the store they did not pay for. So off they went.
There has got to be a better way of stopping theft than closing or limiting the number of items you ring up at the self checkout line!
Is Sustainable Westchester for Real?
I have been using energy efficient light bulbs in all the fixtures in my apartment since before my mother died in 1993. They have kept my utility bill low usually in the $50-$60 range. There have been boiler issues in the complex I live in thus causing me to frequently use an electric heater in my apartment this winter. My neighbors have been forced to use electric heaters. I don’t like to use them as they can be dangerous. They usually increase your electric bill.
I got my bill last week and it is more than double what I usually pay. I chalked it up to the portable heater. Than I read David McKay Wilson’s story in the Journal News right before press time. Electric customers of Sustainable Westchester pay $48M more with 2-year renewables pact.’ Is that part of why my electric bill went up?
If you remember, Yonkers residents had to opt out not in. According to Wilson’s article, the head of Sustainable WESTCHESTER said opt in models do not provide them with sufficient electric usage to make the program feasible. Issue #1. The requirement that you opt out, not in. Issue #2. Sustainable WESTCHESTER is being by run by several former elected officials, not by individuals trained and educated to manage these operations. The politicization of these programs always puts up my tentacles. Yonkers is represented on their Board of Directors by Jason Baker, Deputy Commissioner and former campaign coordinator for Mayor Spano. I do not believe he receives compensation as a Director.
So stay tuned. Somehow reliance on Russia has something to do with with electricity rates going up and this whole program. That, Issue #3 has me more worried than anything else!
Reach Eric Schoen at thistooisyonkers@aol.com, or friend him on Facebook Eric Schoen…just look for him in the picture with Joan Rivers!
