Not so strategic is the Downtown Task Force plan.

Mayor Roach and planning commissioner Gomez led tonight's presentation. Both are energetic, intelligent and sincere. Unfortunately, the entire activity is weighed down with traditional White Plains junk, namely adhering to the wishes of the existing sources of influence: people who live in houses outside of downtown. Especially influential are the hill associations, Battle and Fisher, especially Battle.

Blah, blah, blah.

That was pretty much the comments by all of tonight's speakers. But without realizing it, Roach and Gomez represented the narrow wishes of the geographically isolated and small number of people living on Battle Hill on the wrong side of the tracks. The city already has detailed plans for new street crossings for that constituency. Does any other neighborhood have that?

They think they got input from all sources but they only got Battle Hill, Fisher Hill and, of course, CNA, which Roach and Gomez will placate in yet another meeting tomorrow. I don't think they visited or heard from any condo, co-op or rental apartment building.

Typical telling point by Gomez: Battle Hill wants new downtown buildings angled so that Hill people can look through openings between them. No regard for the view of the new people who will be living in them; Gomez was oblivious to that. He thought he was showing open mindedness but what he actually showed was the silly undue influence of the very few people on Battle Hill who might actually have a view across the tracks of downtown White Plains. Most people on Battle Hill have no such view.

The MTA guy, who represents an entity that continues to embarrass itself and White Plains with that ridiculous clock tower with the wrong time, babbled about White Plains having all these regional buses coming into downtown. Neither he nor any of the others have ever seemed to wonder how the heck that benefits White Plains. You think someone hops off a Connecticut Transit bus and shops in White Plains or simply takes the Metro North train into Manhattan?

And those reverse commuters the mayor and MTA guy like to emphasize: are they actually coming to White Plains from Manhattan as implied or are they coming from elsewhere, both north and south? Many are leaving the train station around 11AM and walking up Hamilton Avenue or Main Street. I'm guessing that they are headed to jobs in retail sales or service, not some law office. I doubt they can afford the rents that new buildings will charge.

I walked past the dreary bus terminal at the White Plains train station today at about 4:30 PM. Many Westchester county Bee-Line buses, including doubles, were pulling in, all with almost no passengers. Who wants to live at the functional equivalent of Port Authority Bus Terminal?

These are just a few of the obvious contradictions and absurdities in the primitive plan. The mayor and planning commissioner want to dictate to developers all manner of detail. A fundamental problem is that they are way too influenced by narrow old line perspectives and worse, they don't realize it.