Maybury Balks at Deadline for Housing Settlement Comments

A tight deadline to respond to information released this week that will be incorporated into a new zoning analysis related to the affordable housing settlement sparked scathing criticisms from Mount Pleasant Supervisor Joan Maybury.

Maybury, who has been highly outspoken on issues related to the 2009 agreement, argued that the 31 municipalities named in the settlement were given only one day to address potential inaccuracies in data released on Monday that had been collected for the upcoming release of the Huntington Analysis.

The highly anticipated Huntington Analysis, now scheduled to be released on Sept. 8, will evaluate residential zoning to find out if a community’s current zoning is discriminatory by pushing minorities to specific parts of town, a controversial issue related to the settlement.

On Monday, Maybury said that while municipalities had been informed that the deadline for responses was abruptly stretched to Friday, Aug. 29 instead of Tuesday, she said the town would not be opening the data package because of  “too many restrictions.” One restriction limits a municipality to viewing the new data on only one computer, she said.

“The timeframes supplied to make comment are absolutely unacceptable,” Maybury said. “The Town of Mount Pleasant will initiate a review of the methodology and data employed as was required the last time a report was forthcoming. Our legal department and zoning department will review as well.”

The supervisor’s reaction was prompted by an Aug. 21 e-mail from Noam Greenspan, an attorney for James Johnson, the monitor assigned to oversee implementation of the settlement. Greenspan said a secure website has been created to allow municipal officials to review the data and to provide  comments to the monitor.

“I apologize for the tight timeframe, but due to the deadlines imposed on the monitor by the county and the (federal) government, it could not be avoided,” Greenspan stated last week.

The issue has also sparked harsh words between Maybury and Board of Legislators Chairman Michael Kaplowitz.

When reached on Saturday, Kaplowitz said he was part of a Board of Legislators majority which agreed to have the housing monitor complete the analysis because failure to do so would have jeopardized $16 million in Community Development Block Grant money to Westchester over a three-year period, Kaplowitz said.

Kaplowitz then took issue with Maybury’s recent behavior regarding housing settlement issues at meetings in White Plains and during private conversations. The chairman said during one recent phone conversation he had with Maybury she called him “an SOB.”

“Her actions are very unprofessional,” Kaplowitz said.

He added that municipalities are under no obligation to reply to the new data.

Maybury, who derisively called Kaplowitz “a career politician,” said the chairman has been of no assistance to municipalities. She said the county should be helping the towns on issues related to the settlement because it was reached between Westchester and the federal government.

“Mr. Kaplowitz was less than helpful when notified on Friday of the monitor’s timeframes,” she said last week. “Since he was involved in speaking with the monitor in this attempt to move the …process forward, one would think he would help.”

Maybury also worried about incorrect zoning assumptions contained in the new data.

“We would expect incorrect information to be immediately deleted and the report to be corrected for the record before its release,” Maybury wrote in her response to Greenspan. “This would be especially important since incorrect assumptions regarding zoning were contained in the last report.”

Greenspan said the monitor’s housing consultant team has prepared reports using census and demographic data received from the county for the 31 Westchester municipalities. Mount Pleasant was listed as one of those municipalities.

There must be 750 units of affordable housing built by the end of 2016 for the county to comply with the settlement.

Maybury has maintained the housing settlement should not have an impact on Mount Pleasant because it hasn’t accepted federal grant money in decades.

“The Town of Mount Pleasant has not received or applied for any Community Development Block Grants for close to 25 years,” she said. “We will vehemently continue to maintain we are not directly involved with this settlement in any action taken by the federal government now or in the future.”