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Written by: Conservation Advisory Council

Published: 25 April 2019

Created: 25 April 2019

Last Updated: 25 April 2019

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As the weather warms and we all get ready to enjoy our yards and neighborhood landscape, here are some ways to improve the sustainability of your surroundings:

Go Organic:

Organic yard care gives us a beautiful, healthy, thriving landscape, and it’s also beneficial to us, our pets, wildlife, and the environment. Many organic products, such as fertilizer and weed control, are readily available. Organic landscaping can be accomplished whether you do your own yard work or hire a landscaper. Read the CAC’s previous article about organic landscaping.

Plant Trees:

Trees enhance the beauty of our community, provide shade, soak up water, and help wildlife. Trees absorb carbon dioxide as they grow, further helping the environment. Whenever possible, plant native trees and plants -those that grow naturally in our area--as they are better suited to our climate and terrain. Once established, native trees can thrive with less water and fertilizer (and no pesticides), saving time and money.

Plant Perennials that Attract Pollinators:

Butterflies, bees, and birds play an important role in our environment. Plants that attract these pollinators add beauty to our landscape while helping make our world healthy. Replacing part of your lawn with native plants is an inexpensive, simple way to support a healthy environment and to reduce costly lawn maintenance. Some plants to consider include coreopsis, Joe-pye weed, butterfly weed, aster, purple coneflower, penstemon, salvia, and sedum.

Spare the Mulch:

Placing mulch in garden beds and around trees can help keep moisture in and weeds out. However, too much mulch or improperly placed mulch can seriously harm trees and shrubs. Never pile mulch (or soil) against the trunk of a tree because the mulch will eventually rot the trunk as well as cause roots to grow in the wrong direction. Keep mulch approximately 6” away from tree trunks and no more than 3” deep.

Water Wisely:

To encourage stronger and more drought-resistant plants--and therefore, healthier lawns--water your lawn 2 times per week for a total of 1’’ of water, usually around 30 minutes per watering. During the hottest and driest days of summer, you may need to increase watering to 3 times per week. Watering should be done in the early morning when the most absorption takes place. Use drip hoses to water trees and shrubs. It is estimated that as much as 50 percent of water used for home irrigation is wasted due to overwatering and evaporation. Adding a smart water controller, that automatically adjusts output depending on rainfall, can save water and reduce your water bill.

Properly Care for Your Lawn:

Keep grass about 3” high to promote deeper roots and a healthier, more drought-tolerant lawn. Taller grass is also less susceptible to weeds. Leave grass clippings on your lawn as they provide a natural fertilizer and help the soil retain water. Leaving lawn clippings also reduces the use of gas-powered blowers--a contributor to air and noise pollution--which are banned by the Village from June 1st through September 30th. Using electric or battery-operated blowers to clean driveways and walkways is a viable alternative.

Talk with Your Landscaper: Sometimes old habits are not easy to break, so it’s important to share information and to let your landscaper know that you want an organic, healthy, sustainable yard.

Email the Scarsdale’s Conservation Advisory Council with comments or questions.

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Written by: Joanne Wallenstein

Published: 17 April 2019

Created: 17 April 2019

Last Updated: 17 April 2019

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Westchester residents, many who are still reeling from the loss of federal tax deductions for state and local taxes, now face the prospect of another onerous change to the tax code. This time the code change is under consideration by NYS rather than the federal government. If enacted it could further impact the cost of living in Westchester’s suburbs.

The proposed change in the state code could have far-reaching effects on local golf clubs. The proposed code, which has already passed the State Assembly Real Property Tax Committee, would change the way golf courses are taxed and assess them on their “highest and best use,” rather than current use. In other words, this would allow golf courses to be taxed as if they had already been subdivided and developed into residential homes rather than as golf courses.

If this did happen, real estate taxes for the country clubs would increase dramatically, and clubs would be forced to impose precipitous hikes in dues to their members. Some would likely go out of business.

And if many did close, imagine the burden on local infrastructure and schools if these golf courses were developed into housing … not to mention the loss of open, green space and the tree canopy.

A letter from the Board of Directors of Scarsdale Golf Club to their members says, “The bill sets a slippery slope precedent that could ultimately impact a wider universe of New York businesses and residents. If the proposed tax model is expanded beyond golf courses, New York home owners could conceivably one day receive a letter from their local assessor saying: "We've noticed that under the town's building codes your lot could be subdivided and your home replaced with two (or more) substantially larger houses. Therefore, beginning next year we will calculate your property tax based on the potential valuation of those larger houses...."

Here’s what NYS Assemblywoman Amy Paulin said about the proposed change in the tax code: “I’m not in favor of this bill. I don’t believe these properties should go from underassessed to overassessed in the blink of an eye.”

The bill is now being considered by the State Senate Committee on Local Government, which is chaired by State Senator James Gaughran.

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Written by: Alexandra Wilson

Published: 09 April 2019

Created: 09 April 2019

Last Updated: 09 April 2019

Hits: 5559

Sal Khan is a man with a lofty mission. His ultimate goal is to create “a free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere.” Upon first glance, that notion may sound impossible, but Khan turned this vision into a near-reality after years of cultivating his non-profit educational organization, Khan Academy.

The TIME’s Top 100 Most Influential People winner came to Scarsdale High School on Wednesday, April 3rd to make a presentation to a full auditorium, followed by a fireside chat with Superintendent Dr. Thomas Hagerman. Many were teary-eyed in the audience as he shared his ideas and story:

Khan began working at a hedge fund in 2003 after graduating from business school. In 2004, a cousin of his asked for help with math after she was placed in a remedial math class. After a few weeks of working with her, the cousin took the placement test again and was placed in the advanced math class. Khan felt invigorated by this experience and began tutoring about 15 of his other cousins. One family member suggested that instead of tutoring his cousins individually, he should put tutorial videos on Youtube for efficiency’s sake; while initially reluctant about this proposition, Khan began making videos and putting them on the web. Khan soon realized that non-family members were watching when the comments sections began to swell with positive feedback.

This hobby evolved into a passion that drove Khan to quit his day job in 2009 to pursue the creation of a non-profit educational organization full-time. By this point, Khan’s one-man operation had tens of thousands of viewers. The first months of running Khan Academy were “stressful” for Khan, who was trying to foster a new family with his wife and spearhead an organization at the same time. The couple ran into financial troubles and began cutting into their savings. However, in May of 2010, a neighbor donated $10,000 to the cause. After Khan met with the generous donor for lunch, she donated $100,000. After struggling to find funding, these donations gave Khan the boost he needed to continue his mission. A couple of months later, the same neighbor notified Khan that Bill Gates was doting on him on television, and Khan could hardly believe what he was seeing when he found the footage. Soon after, Gates’ chief of staff reached out to invite Khan to Seattle so the two could collaborate. From there, Khan Academy soared into an international movement and the team expanded from Khan’s original one-person staff.

There’s a method to Sal Khan’s teaching madness that has already been proven effective in 190 countries in 14 different languages among his 71,000,000 registered users. First, many viewers wonder why Khan and the other tutors never appear in their videos. Khan’s rationale is that when only the tutor’s writing is visible, it feels as though the student and the tutor are looking down at paper on a table, making it feel more personal. Khan believes that the core of learning must be interactive, so he tries to make his videos friendly and entertaining. Furthermore, since humans are wired to steer their attention towards other humans, Khan thought a visible tutor would take away from the lesson. “My unibrow can be distracting,” he joked.

In addition, students can pause or replay the videos at any point they choose, thus preventing them from feeling badly about learning at a slower pace than others. To explain this notion of learning at different speeds, Khan used the metaphor of building a house. He said that if a contractor tells builders, “You have two weeks to build a foundation - do what you can,” then the builders may not be able to perfect it in the given timeframe. When the contract gives a new assignment in a two-week period, the builders may build another imperfect structure upon an already shaky foundation. This pattern would continue until the whole building collapses. Khan equated this to education by saying that students may have gaps in their learning if they try to learn too fast before an exam, making Khan Academy an excellent supplementary tool.

While the story of Khan Academy’s birth is inspiring, the part of the presentation that brought tears to Scarsdale residents’ eyes were the stories of students whose lives have been changed by Sal Khan. He notably mentioned one boy who had dropped out of high school twice during his freshman year, and when he came back to school, he used Khan Academy to catch up. The student then jumped two years in math, graduated as valedictorian, studied computer science at Princeton, and was hired as an engineer at Khan Academy after interning for them. Khan told another story of a Mongolian orphan who used Khan Academy to educate herself and is now a Mongolian translator for the organization. Another family told Khan that they pray for him every night because of the impact he has had on their kids with learning disabilities. These are only a few of the millions of students whose education has been changed by Khan Academy and Sal Khan’s mission.

Has Sal Khan achieved his goal of creating “a free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere”? In a little over a decade, he’s come closer than virtually anyone, and he doesn’t plan on stopping now.

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Written by: Joanne Wallenstein

Published: 01 April 2019

Created: 01 April 2019

Last Updated: 01 April 2019

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This year's Westchester Community College Celebrity Salon Series celebrates its 25th anniversary season with leading professionals from the world of media, publishing, architecture, history, and politics. As the first series of its kind in Westchester County, these events continue to attract top names who help the Westchester Community College Foundation raise funds for student scholarships. All of these events are held in private homes and are co-sponsored by TD Wealth and Cuddy & Feder.

Lisa Friel on Thursday, April 4 at 7:00 p.m. Hosts Amy Koch-Oman and David Oman’s colorful and art-filled home is perched above picturesque Bronxville. (A long flight of stairs must be climbed to enter this home.) Friel, special counsel for investigations at the National Football League, once led the sex crime prosecution unit in the Manhattan District Attorney’s office. She will discuss how domestic violence, child abuse and sexual misconduct became private sector issues and how the handling of these matters has evolved, especially in today’s #metoo era.

Maureen Sherry on Monday, April 8 at 7:00 p.m. Hosts Marianne and David Chao reside in a 1920s-era Edgemont home once owned by Meredith Wood, the late president of the Book of the Month Club. After years on Wall Street, Sherry—once the youngest managing director at Bear Stearns—wrote Opening Belle, a novel based on her experience. Sherry, who has shared her perspective on CNBC’s Closing Bell, Fox at Five, CNN and in The New York Times, Fortune and Money, will let us know why she is bullish about women in finance.

Katonah Museum of Art on Friday, May 3 at 6:30 p.m. Host Yvonne Pollack’s Marcel Breuer–designed home will serve as the perfect coda to viewing the Edward Larrabee Barnes–architected Katonah Museum of Art. Join the museum’s Executive Director Michael Gitlitz and curator Michele Wijegoonaratna for a private tour of LandEscape: New Visions of the Landscape from the Early 20th and 21st Centuries at the museum. Works by American modernists including Marsden Hartley, John Marin and Marguerite Zorach featured at the groundbreaking 1913 Armory Show will be contrasted with pieces by contemporary artists including Judy Pfaff and Lois Dodd.

Anna Quindlen on Sunday, May 5 at 11:30 a.m. It seems fitting that Joanne Landau and Fred Schwalb’s Croton on Hudson home, once J.J. Newberry’s hunting lodge where his family gathered every summer, would be where Anna Quindlen will tell us about becoming a grandmother. Quindlen, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and The New York Times best-seller list novelist has just published her tenth novel, Nanaville. Her singular voice has never been sharper or warmer. With the sensitivities and word craft she brought to motherhood in Living Out Loud and to growing older in Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake, Quindlen now illuminates the special joy of grand parenting.

Women’s Self Defense with Tommy Calandrucci on Wednesday, May 8 at 12:00 p.m. Hosts Marianne and David Chao’s large and light-filled gym in their Edgemont home will give participants room to learn some crucial moves. Calandrucci is a boxing and self-defense instructor with a second-degree black belt in Kyokushin karate and extensive training in Krav Maga. He offers a class on the importance of self-awareness in everyday situations as well as how to stave off an attacker. Bring your daughters (13 and up), granddaughters, or nieces! Please wear athletic shoes and attire.

Kate Coyne on Saturday, May 11 at 4:00 p.m. Hosts Dawn Fitzpatrick and John Esposito’s home in Irvington, which boasts a 180-degree view of the Hudson River, was once the residence of Charles Lewis Tiffany. Coyne is the executive editor of People, where she oversees television, film and music coverage, as well as the annual Sexiest Man Alive blockbuster issue. Coyne—who worked at The New York Post’s “Page Six” and is the author of I’m Your Biggest Fan, an unfiltered look at life alongside the rich and famous, will share details of some of her countless surprising (often awkward) interactions.

Arlene Alda on Tuesday, May 14 at 7:00 p.m. Host Edythe Gladstein is delighted to honor the Bronx in her gracious 1916 Scarsdale Tudor home. Alda, a musician, photographer, and writer, began her career as a professional clarinetist. When her children were young, she became an award-winning photographer; now, she is the author of 19 books. Just Kids from the Bronx is a collection of stories featuring recollections of Bronx-born artists, athletes, scientists and entrepreneurs including Al Pacino, Mary Higgins Clark, Carl Reiner, Colin Powell, and Neil deGrasse Tyson.

William Helmreich on Wednesday, May 15 at 6:30 p.m. Hosts Kate and Seymour Weingarten’s New York City apartment building was featured in the iconic movie Ghostbusters and has breathtaking views of Central Park. Helmreich traversed every block of New York City during his research for the writing of his award-winning book, The New York Nobody Knows. For his subsequent 2018 walking guide, The Manhattan Nobody Knows, he retraced most of his many steps—walking more than 9,000 miles to date. Helmreich has shared the magic of what he learned along the way on Oprah, NBC Nightline, CNN and in The New Yorker and The New York Times.

Out of My Head - movie screening and discussion on Wednesday, May 22 at 6:30 p.m. Hosts Wendy and Howard Berk’s media room in their well-appointed Scarsdale colonial will be a great place to catch this flick. Share the journey of a mother and daughter as they discover the truth about living with chronic migraines. Writer/director Susanna Styron's credits include Sidney Lumet's TV series 100 Centre Street and the web series All Downhill From Here starring Brooke Adams. Styron's partner on Out of My Head, Jacki Ochs, is a documentary producer/director who executive-produced Keith Beauchamp’s Emmy-nominated The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till. Dr. Richard B. Lipton, the co-director of the Montefiore Headache Center, will join the filmmakers to answer questions about this complex and often misunderstood disorder afflicting nearly a billion people worldwide.

Justin Hefter on Thursday, May 23 at 7:00 p.m. Host Diane and Marc Greenwald’s F. Scott Fitzgerald meets Elmore Leonard warm yet elegant Scarsdale home is the perfect place to hear about the unlikely kismet involved in Hefter’s life-affirming story. In March 2015, Hefter, along with three strangers helped interfaith activist Mohammed Al Samawi escape from war-torn Yemen. Samawi’s book about the rescue, The Fox Hunt: A Refugee’s Memoir of Coming to America, is being made into a movie by La La Land producer Jordan Horowitz. At the time, Hefter was the CEO of Bandura, a company he created to encourage intercultural cooperation. Most recently, Hefter helped launch the African Middle Eastern Leadership Project as he continues to seek to advance human rights around the world.

Sam Sifton on Wednesday, May 29 at 7:00 p.m. Hosts Suzanne and Andy Yearley’s meticulously updated 1929 Scarsdale colonial has a sumptuous double kitchen where Suzanne teaches her consistently sold-out “What’s for Dinner” classes. Sam is food editor for The New York Times, founding editor of the newspaper’s cooking app, and a columnist for its magazine. He has also served as the paper’s national editor, restaurant critic and culture editor. His upcoming book, See you on Sunday! A Cookbook for Family and Friends, emphasizes the joys of breaking bread with those who matter most.

Kenneth R. Weinstein on Sunday, June 2 at 4:00 p.m. Join hosts Denise and Camillo Santomero III in their stunning Georgian Mott Schmidt Bedford home and gardens fully restored to their 1926 design. Weinstein is president and CEO of the Hudson Institute, a Washington think tank dedicated to U.S. leadership and national security. A political theorist by training, he is the chair of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, the oversight board for the Voice of America, and serves on the U.S. Trade Representative’s policy advisory board. Weinstein will share his take on what he calls President Trump’s “disruptive” style of governing.

Bill Sherman and Matt Vogel on Monday, June 10 at 7:00 p.m. As you step inside their English-style pub, hosts Carla and Brian Eccleston’s 1911 Pelham Manor home will transport you across the pond. Sherman is the music director for Sesame Street and an Emmy, Tony and Grammy award-winning composer, producer, arranger and orchestrator. He is currently working on the film adaptation of In the Heights with Lin Manuel Miranda (2020). Emmy award-winning actor and director Matt Vogel is the puppeteer for Kermit, the Count, and Big Bird. He has been a Sesame Street muppet performer since 1996 and a core Disney muppet performer since 2008.

Peter Blauner on Thursday, June 13 at 7:00 p.m. Hosts Greg and Kathiryn Werlinich’s contemporary Rye Brook living room provides a safe place to talk about scary crime novels. Blauner is the author of eight novels, including The New York Times bestseller The Intruder and 2018 L.A. Times bestseller Sunrise Highway. His short fiction has been anthologized in Best American Mystery Stories and on NPR’s Selected Shorts. Blauner was also staff writer and co-executive producer for several television shows including Law & Order: SVU and Blue Bloods. He will discuss his approach to writing for TV versus writing novels.

Cocktails and hors d’oeuvres will be served at all salons. Salon fees are $165 per event. For further details, call 914-606-6558. Or visit www.sunywcc.edu/celebritysalons.