Tax Watch columnist David McKay Wilson delves into the beyond and future of Scout Field.
The electronic board proclaiming “the House of the Broncos” at Scout Field is suitable for approximately 20 acres of the Bronx River Reserve in south-westchester densely populated.
The Broncos are the mascot of the Bronxville High School baseball team in Bronxville, one of the richest municipalities in the area.
But Scout Field is not in Bronxville, a position where the open area is a scarce commodity.
The board was built six years ago as a component of an assignment funded by the parents of Bronxville and the city of Eastchester. But it is located on a lot in the city of Mount Vernon, one of Westchester’s least wealthy communities. The other component of the park, across the Bronx River, is in Yonkers.
This fenced-in baseball box, whose dugout doors were recently opened to allow public access, serves as the backdrop for a controversy in the Yonkers segment of Scout Field. It was there that Westchester County reached an agreement in 2016 to create a closed sports box at the moment for football matches.
And that’s where an energetic organization of dog owners and park lovers in Yonkers, Bronxville and Mount Vernon since 2017 have struggled to prevent its construction.
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The commitment paid off. The football box plan was highlighted through County Administrator George Latimer.
It would probably never be built.
The controversy involves youth sports, Westchester politics and the destination of a park entirely in Yonkers and Mount Vernon, but controlled and maintained across the city of Eastchester.
Then there is the town of Bronxville, which lists Scout Field as a village park on its website, not to mention that it is in Mount Vernon and is owned by Westchester County.
“Bronxville perpetuates the myth that Scout Field is a component of Bronxville,” said Joan Aracich, a Mount Vernon resident who grew up playing there. “But a blade of single grass at Scout Field belongs to Bronxville or Eastchester.”
The confrontation at Scout Field raised questions about Westchester’s long culture of entrusting some of the county’s parks to local governments, who manage them primarily for the recreational fun of their own residents. Other local government-controlled county parks include Pat Henry Field in Mount Pleasant, Kingsland Point Park in Sleepy Hollow and 100-acre Oscawana County Park in the city of Cortlandt.
Latimer intervened in Scout Field in mid-July after a county contractor issued warning symptoms that herbicides would be sprayed to invasive plant species. Opponents on the floor sounded the alarm and threatened to manifest themselves all day, fearing that paintings on the structure site had begun on the football field.
Latimer stopped spraying. On July 14, he visited the park with several senior county officials. millions of Scout Field projects.
But he trusted his conflicting parts that day in the park that his administration would build the football box at this time while seeking consensus on how to proceed.
“Nothing starts until I say it starts, ” said Latimer.
It’s a relief for Susan Burkat, a resident of Yonkers, one of the organizers of Friends of Scout Field, an organization that has fought the cash out plan since 2017.
“I’d like you to leave yourself in your herbal state, not raised or fenced,” he said. “We will have to leave it as a sanctuary for everyone who uses it today.”
County Park Council President J. Henry Neale needs his panel to participate in a comprehensive review of Scout Field’s future.
“I think the county and others of goodwill give Scout Field a new look,” he said. “It will have to serve all facets of the audience: for concerted team sports, those who need to read a book, parents who need to play with their children, or those who need to play football.”
Eastchester supervisor Tony Colativa is not happy with the latest delays. He said he expects Westchester to comply with the 2016 agreement. The time reserve at the box would be done through the city’s recreation department, similar to its baseball box system.
Colavita signed the agreement and will manage the land for five years as part of its commitment to enter into agreements with other governments to ensure that Eastchester youth sports groups have sufficiently good facilities. The city’s 20-year agreement with the Tuckahoe School District concerned the closure of a block from Siwanoy Boulevard through Cottle School for School Safety in exchange for enough time at the checkout and in the gym for youth sports programs.
Under the Scout Field agreement, Westchester would build the football field with irrigation and fend and the city would create a new parking lot, install a fence around the new parking lot and re pave the front of the park and parking near Midland Avenue.
Four years after the deal began, Eastchester has still advanced on main street or in car parks.
Colavita says the city will fix the road until the county builds the land. He estimated that he would charge Eastchester up to $70,000 for this component of the deal.
“We asked the county to keep its share of the market,” Colavita said. “We wait patiently for them to install new lawns and irrigation. We’re disappointed. But we can’t count.”
Bronxville Mayor Mary Marvin was also disappointed by the county’s reluctance to move forward with the agreement.
“I’m very disappointed in the lack of determination,” Marvin said. “Where I grew up, I would say about some people that it was unexpected that you could sit in your chair without a spine for so long.”
An ever-evolving municipality organization has been managing Scout Field since the 1970s. The land, which he donated to the county in 1888 until the time he was mayor of Bronxville, has become a component of the 807-acre Bronx River Reservation.
A 1979 agreement placed the park under the rule of Yonkers, Mount Vernon and Bronxville, one of the towns of Eastchester. Although none of the park lands run by the municipality are located in the village, the fields have long been used through Bronxville High, St. Joseph’s School and the village’s summer camp program.
By 2005, Yonkers had left Scout Field Pact, so Bronxville and Mount Vernon were in control. A relic of the agreement, which expired in the mid-2010s, remains attached to the park’s gate on Midland Avenue, where a sign warns that the facility is under the jurisdiction of Bronxville, Mount Vernon and Westchester County.
Today, Bronxville and Mount Vernon are out. And the city of Eastchester has been around since the mid-2010s, when it reached an agreement with the county executive at the time, Rob Astorino, even though the fields he would run were in Yonkers and Mount Vernon.
Although Yonkers withdrew from Scout Field administration 15 years ago, that hasn’t stopped Mayor Mike Spano from intervening in the long-term county park in his city.
Democrat Yonkers told Tax Watch that he would only use the box structure at Scout Field if “Yonkers has the same access and time to use it, because other communities will have the right.”
Colavita said Eastchester had earned the schedule because he had taken care of the maintenance of the land and intended to invest in the main street and parking lot once the land was built.
“It’s ridiculous, ” Colavita of Spano’s opposition. “No one else spends a penny. Eastchester offered to do it.”
In the early 2010s, Bronxville’s parents sought to upgrade the Scout Field baseball box in Mount Vernon, which was used through Bronxville High Broncos. This plan is in line with Astorino’s preference to seek personal donations to fund certain park programs, such as Motorcycle Sundays on the Bronx River Boardwalk.
Mother Diana Rabbits said she raised more than $50,000 to buy the Broncos board and bring clay and clay to the baseball box. The box expanded, with the center fence of the box 415 feet from the plate, allowing football games in the starting tray. The entire complex was surrounded by a fence, adding a fenced-in enclosure, which paid through the city of Eastchester, Colavita said.
This happened when Astorino sought to consolidate his Republican base in Eastchester, one of the county’s remaining Republican strongholds. Updates were installed without the permission of County Parks Commissioner Kathy O’Connor, who required it through the agreement with Bronxville and Mount Vernon, in accordance with an Access to Information request.
The structure of the baseball box bypassed an environmental review, which would have explored the structure-related disorders on an alluvial plain, as was done for the sports box that has not yet been created at Scout Field in Yonkers.
“It’s a little surepticio,” Latimer said.
O’Connor, who remains a park commissioner, said last week that she was unaware of the structure until the assignment was completed. County spokeswoman Catherine Cioffi declined to comment on whether there were ramifications for the unauthorized structure.
Rabbits said his organization works heavily with Marvin, the mayor of Bronxville, who at the time managed the land for Westchester.
“County officials were there at the opening of the grounds,” Rabbits said. “We deliver drawings. The mayor wouldn’t let us do anything unless it’s on the rise.”
O’Connor said neither she nor David DeLucia, who was in the park structure allocation index at the time, knew nothing about it. She told the Parks Council that DeLucia discovered that the assignment had finished its tours one morning.
Obtaining county approval for the structure would have required an environmental review to land on an alluvial plain.
Astorino, however, aware, said William F. B. O’Reilly, your spokesman.
“From what I understand, this is a joint assignment across Eastchester, Yonkers, Tuckahoe, Bronxville and Mount Vernon that has been under discussion for over a year,” O’Reilly said. I’m sure the county is aware of that.
Now it’s Latimer’s turn for Scout Field’s long-term. Eastchester has thirteen months left on his five-year contract.
Is Latimer on time?
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