Dog Park in Ludlow Park

At the moment we're stuck. The Department of Transportation of New York State, which has jurisdiction over all that land along the west side of Riverdale Avenue has reviewed our request for permission to build a dog park and is ready to issue a permit! That's the good news. The bad news is that if we in Ludlow Park become the Permittee, we have to pay the State $525 per month (!) in permit fees AND carry insurance coverage of $2million per occurance which will cost us another couple of thousand dollars annually. This puts the dog park financially out of reach for our community.

Nortrud Spero and I have met with our councilman Wilson Terrero and several key figures in the City of Yonkers Administration to try to convince the City to become the State's Permittee thereby eliminating the monthly fee because they are a municipality. Even Mayor Mike Spano has spoken out for the City to become involved, but, so far, the City's Corporation Counsel has advised against it due to liability issues. We continue to press them on this issue.

Meanwhile, Assemblywoman Shelley Mayer has become involved in pressuring the State to ease up on the monthly fee for us. We are waiting to see how successful she is.