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Mamaroneck to close day laborer hiring site
By CANDICE FERRETTE
AND ERNIE GARCIA
(Original Publication: January 25, 2006)

MAMARONECK VILLAGE — A parking lot near Columbus Park will no longer serve as an official hiring site for day laborers as of Feb. 1 — a move that is already drawing criticism from Hispanic advocates.

Laborers who wait there for work have become a liability for the village while neighboring communities aren't doing their part, according to a resolution adopted by the Board of Trustees in a 3-2 vote this week. The site could reopen April 1, but only if Larchmont and the town of Mamaroneck agree to open their own sites, the board decided.

"These are not residents of the village. They are locusts. They are takers. They come in here and take, and they won't ever give back to the community," Trustee Joseph Angilletta said about laborers from other communities who gather in Mamaroneck village. "I was elected to protect the residents of the village."

The decision comes as day laborers — and controversies around them — proliferate throughout the region. On Jan. 7, a half-dozen Rockland County residents opposed to illegal immigration protested near a hiring site in Spring Valley. On Jan. 9, Brewster police arrested eight day laborers on trespass charges because they were playing soccer on a school field while class was in session.

Some Mamaroneck village trustees said the parking-lot site was being used by laborers and contractors from outside the village — particularly since a site in New Rochelle closed in December.

Angilletta said that in recent months, the sharp increase in the number of laborers lingering in and near the park and public-safety complaints from neighbors in the Washingtonville section of the village prompted him to propose the resolution at the village board meeting Monday night.

The trustee cited the cost of policing the site and responding to incidents there as a liability for the village.

"You could say that it's already cost us $2 million, because nobody wants to go to that park, and that's how much the park costs," he added.

It was unclear yesterday exactly how the village's resolution would prevent the laborers from congregating in or near the public park.

"You can't stop people from standing around, and you can't tell people where to stand, but this will no longer be the village's official site for day laborers," Village Manager Leonard Verrastro said.

Mayor Phil Trifiletti, a Republican, was joined by the only Democrat on the board, Tom Murphy, in opposing the resolution.

"It's time for Larchmont, Rye and Harrison to do something," Trifiletti said. "It can't all fall on the small village of Mamaroneck. Other communities need to step up to the plate and open up their own sites."

Trifiletti said he voted against closing the site because it would economically hurt the laborers who are residents of the village.

The site is not expected to close until Feb. 1, but Marianna Boneo, co-president of the Hispanic Resource Center of Larchmont and Mamaroneck, said that when she went to the site yesterday morning she saw two police cars blocking the entrance.

"What does this mean? The men are standing there. They will go where they find work, and Mamaroneck has always been where they've found work," Boneo said.

Boneo and the laborers are expected to be out at the site, waiting for work this morning.

"This is like throwing cold water on us when we've been seeking for months and meeting regularly with the mayor and other stakeholders to discuss a better site," Boneo said. "Such a motion is hurtful to the community."

Pablo Alvarado, national coordinator of the National Day Laborer Network, has visited Columbus Park. He said yesterday that his group would consider protesting against the village or even taking legal action against the move.

"I remember when cops used to come and prevent workers from going to potential workplaces," Alvarado said. "If they go back to these practices, they will go back to increasing community tension."

Columbus Park has been a well-known gathering place for day laborers for the better part of a decade but was made into a formal village hiring site about a year and a half ago by the village board with the Hispanic Resource Center. The center hired a coordinator to monitor the site, helping laborers negotiate fair wages and avoid behavior that might anger residents or prompt a police response.

Day laborers gather in communities throughout the Lower Hudson Valley, from Spring Valley to Yonkers. The most organized official hiring site in the area is the Neighbors Link center in Mount Kisco, which has a $300,000 budget and a team of volunteers offering English classes, job training and family activities.

Other municipalities, like Mamaroneck, created designated sites with some kind of assistance for the workers.

On Monday, the Center for the Study of Urban Poverty at the University of California, Los Angeles, released a comprehensive national survey of 2,660 day laborers at 264 hiring sites in the United States. The survey found that just over three-quarters of day laborers were illegal immigrants and that day laborers are spreading into small and rural towns throughout the country.

More than half said they regularly attended church, almost two-thirds said they had children, and about 40 percent said they had been in the United States for more than six years. The median wage paid nationally to day laborers was $10 an hour, the study said.

Yonkers resident Julio Castillo is a former day laborer who is active with Yonkers day laborers in their struggle to have Yonkers designate an official hiring site, which the city is trying to do. Castillo called the village's decision disappointing.

"What a shame for the day laborers. These days everything is turning out badly for day laborers," said Castillo, adding that he understood the village leaders' motives for revoking the site's official status. "If they created a space for their people ... that's what the other municipalities should do."