Our Readers Respond...

Dear Editor:

I’ve been following the Jing Kelly case since its inception. I don’t understand why this mother Jing Kelly isn’t allowed to visit with her natural child Tristram. The Appellate Division, First Dept. of the State Supreme Court
has already instructed the State NY Family Court under the guidance of Honorable Sara P. Schechter to commence immediate visitation between mother and child. What’s the holdup?

It’s only natural that a mother and child be together. The unfairness of this situation is perhaps due to the Westchester County Judicial System under the tyranny of our former DA Jeanine Pirro.

Please, Honorable Schechter, let this mother and child be re-united. We don’t need to further cause any disruption in Tristram’s life. Four years is long enough. Let’s put aside the conspiracy and criminal activities that have snowballed and causing havoc in the life of an innocent child and a pain-filled heart of a mother.

Patricia Caparelli
Mount Vernon


Dear Editor:

I write to you concerning the City of Yonkers and its continued retaliatory actions as a result of my 2000 lawsuit for employment termination. In March 2004 I won a modest jury award in Federal Court against former Yonkers Mayor John Spencer and the City of Yonkers, for the termination of my civil service position. I contacted everyone in New York State government for assistance before I filed my lawsuit, to no avail. I am a lifelong Democrat whose personal political activities incurred the wrath of Mr. Spencer, currently the Republican nominee for the United States Senate seat currently held by Hilary Clinton. Yonkers has always been a politically corrupt municipality, but it reached new heights under the Spencer administration.

I was almost five years from full retirement age when my position was terminated in July 2000, and could not retire without significant penalty until December 2004. I learned from the City of Yonkers during my trial in March 2004 that they would not provide me with retirement benefits due to the fact that one must retire from the payroll. I subsequently was not afforded medical benefits when I reached full retirement age of 55 in December 2004. It apparently doesn’t matter that I could not meet Yonkers’ retirement criteria due to the fact that they fired me illegally four years earlier – they hinge their denial on a technicality this issue of lost benefits not
being addressed at my trial.

I am a lifelong single and proud parent of a 27-year old son. On the last leg of his lame-duck mayoralty, John Spencer also fired two friends of mine, young single mothers who, unfortunately, did not hold permanent civil service status and had no legal recourse.

Current Mayor Phil Amicone has learned well the are of political vindictiveness under his mentor, John Spencer. Yonkers is denying me the medical benefits I earned through nearly 25 years in the New York State pension system via a legal technicality. What Yonkers is doing is immoral and unconscionable. I won a unanimous jury verdict, and never sought to take the easy way out and settle out of court. Without the awarding of these
medical benefits, I have won nothing and it proves that there truly is no way to fight City Hall.


Joan Gronowski
Yonkers

In Our Opinion....

Last week saw the long anticipated arrival of casino gambling at Yonkers Raceway, known to some as the Hilltop Oval. The track originally opened more than a century ago as Empire City and, featuring thoroughbred
racing, has been a major harness racing facility for more than fifty years. Until it’s closure in 1988, Roosevelt Raceway in Westbury, Long Island, shared the downstate major harness racing action with Yonkers Raceway, with the meet alternating between the two half-mile ovals every three months, or so.

In 1976 Meadowlands Racetrack, owned and operated by the State of New Jersey, a bold new experiment, opened in East Rutherford, only minutes from Manhattan. A one-mile track, offering substantially larger purses,
the Big M, as it came to be known, immediately drew many of the fans and most of the better racing stables across the river. Additionally, OTB, Off Track Betting, had come into existence a few years earlier, and
was beginning to seriously eat into track attendance at Yonkers as well.

Prior to the Meadowlands, and OTB, attendance at Yonkers Raceway, and Roosevelt throughout the sixties and early seventies, typically, was 15,000 on weekday evenings, and crowds of 25,000, or more, were not unusual on Friday and Saturday nights. Track handles of $2 to 3 million per night were routine, and everybody was making money.

Over time, the combined impact of OTB, The Meadowlands, and numerous competing gambling venues, Atlantic City, Indian Casinos in Connecticut, and on-line gambling, to name a few, brought harness racing, even with the advent of on-track simulcasting, to its knees.

Prior to shutting down fifteen months ago, for renovation, and construction of a casino, Yonkers was drawing crowds of 1,200, or fewer on weekday nights, and perhaps 2,500 on weekends. Naturally, with vastly reduced attendance the purses, and the quality of racing stock severely suffered, a situation for which both the Pataki, and Cuomo administrations must share blame. Foolishly state government, which for many years enjoyed abundant revenues, sharing a percentage of the profit from pari-mutual wagering, had virtually allowed “the goose that was laying the golden eggs” to grow feeble and nearly die.

Such government neglect over three decades was particularly shortsighted given the thousands of jobs supported by an active vibrant horseracing facility. After all, it is not merely the owners and trainers and drivers, whose
livelihoods are dependent upon the operation. Feed and hay, and bedding suppliers, blacksmiths, veterinarians, tack shops, shippers, not to mention grooms, feeders, track maintenance personnel, and racing officials, literally several hundred, all involved in the “backstretch,” are implicated.

And, of course, the concessions, the parking attendants, the ticket sellers and cashiers, the restaurant staffs, the program printers and distributors, the security, and cash handling operations, comprising several hundred more in the racing plant itself, as well as front office clerical and support personnel, are all dependent on the health of the racing industry.

Thankfully, along come racetrack casinos to the rescue, albeit very late, almost too late for Yonkers Raceway. We believe better late than never, however. It is a fact that the introduction of casino gambling, in whatever form, whether merely electronic slots, such as Yonkers has installed, or full-blown casino operations such as the Hippodrome, formerly Woodbine Raceway, in Montreal, or the casino at Dover Downs in Delaware, all very significantly benefit racing.

At every track where casinos have been introduced purses, and handles, and the quality of racing has improved enormously, generating revenues and taxes in the municipalities in which they are located that far exceed the added cost of police and other services. We have every confidence that Empire City Gaming at Yonkers Raceway is going to be a huge success, not only for the horseracing industry, but also for the People of the City of Yonkers and the County of Westchester. To be sure, better days lay ahead.