More Free Stuff 

 

In the event you haven’t been paying close attention to the 2020 Presidential race, several of the candidates are promising free stuff — notably, cradle-to-grave healthcare, forgiveness of student loan debt, free rent if it’s more than 30 percent of your income, and even mortgage relief to homeowners had no business taking out a mortgage in the first place.  

 

Sentient beings are rightly suspicious of politicians handing out free anything, but now may be the time for Rye residents to reasonably demand something in return for the ridiculously high taxes they pay.  

 

Many describe Rye’s downtown as quaint, but an increasing number of residents and visitors will add that the trash receptacles are overflowing four to five days a week, the pedestrian crosswalks are poorly marked and anything but pedestrian-friendly, parking is in short supply, and the increasing number of drivers making U-turns on Purchase Street — for a coveted unmetered space near Starbucks or Longford’s — and backing the wrong way into municipal lots is creating a mini Wild West situation.  

 

Until Metro-North does its part to improve the condition of the train station parking lot, I think commuters deserve free parking.  

 

Until the County repairs Theodore Fremd and Midland avenues, described as two of the roads in the worst condition in a recent city street and pavement study, Rye taxpayers should get a refund check on their County tax bill. (Just this week, the County Executive’s office announced repaving projects totaling $3.8 million for Harrison and Port Chester.) 

 

To create a fund to purchase another 100 trash receptacles, the City should fine anyone seen stuffing household garbage and pizza boxes (we may need a few bins just for pizza boxes at our current consumption rate) into the current receptacles. It might also pay to make the offenders do downtown cleanup time. 

 

The removal of newspaper boxes outside the Post Office, which are regularly filled with half-filled coffee cups, fast food wrappings, and even soiled diapers, would be a giant step toward beautification. Unchaining the illegally chained newspaper boxes throughout town would be another. 

 

To ensure that businesses, in addition to restaurants and nail salons, survive and even thrive in Rye, additional parking is essential. Meanwhile, perhaps we should consider a moratorium on restaurants and nail salons, big contributors to the parking shortage, until additional parking is created in downtown.  

 

To fund a parking fund, let’s start by imposing large fines on those who take up more than one space every weekday in every municipal lot. 

 

Let me be the first businessowner to offer to park outside of the Central Business District to free up parking for shoppers. And that’s not a campaign promise. 

 

• Robin Jovanovich