A Letter From a Concerned Neighbor About the Sunshine Home

Dear friends and neighbors,

Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s “just the facts” leadership has included taking real actions and producing tangible results. His timely decisions to protect New Yorkers are commendable and have saved countless lives during this pandemic.

The governor’s daily briefings have often focused on the virus’s impact on nursing homes for seniors, but the time has come to also share state-wide information on the situation at pediatric nursing homes and the medically fragile children who live there. As the Governor stated last Friday, “We are still learning about Covid-19. The more we learn, the more facts change. Now children may be affected.”

In our town, the Sunshine Home for medically fragile pediatric patients has continued with an expansion from 17,500 to 142,500 square feet (an almost 8-fold increase). The result is 54 very sick children are housed in the middle of a huge construction site. There were already grave concerns about the review of this construction project and inadequate consideration of the children’s safety.

A pandemic was not on anyone’s radar during the New Castle Zoning Board’s review of the Sunshine Home’s existing license and expansion application- but neither were the children themselves nor the environment. Radium contaminated well water test results, inadequate rural roads, lack of on the record comments and request for serious review by the New Castle Fire Department, acceptance of an Indian Point emergency shelter-in-place plan without a request for the actual plan and no mandate for an Environmental Impact Statement (though SH is located in the Teatown nature area- a critical, sensitive reservoir watershed for Ossining and a Westchester biodiversity corridor) are but a few of the under evaluated concerns swept under the rug in the Board’s ‘review’ of the situation. Therefore, the granted zoning variances will result in a hugely expanded facility on a rural road and a footprint larger than the Empire State Building in a vital wooded preserve area of Northern Westchester.

New Castle first responders are miles away from Sunshine. Timely assistance will range from dangerous to unavailable depending on weather and other factors. And now there are new unanswered and life-threatening questions.
• Are the County Department of Health and New Castle fully monitoring what has been happening during construction at SH?
. Sunshine children regularly require trips to the ER. Have any been sent to local hospitals since March? Have they been sick with the virus on the way to the hospital or have they contracted the virus while there? Have they received full medical care during the pandemic?
• Are nurses and other staff at SH tested twice a week as required at senior nursing homes? How are they faring?
• Are the children being tested?
• Were the children jeopardized during the ventilator crisis from access to resources and staffing expertise at SH?
• Are nurses and children going outdoors during heavy construction? The SH website states medically fragile children are doing well on their “large bucolic site surrounded by nature.” The reality is that dust and debris are flying everywhere and noise is constant at this Turner Construction site.
• Turner Construction has a number of workers on site. Has their team followed all the Covid-19 safety rules? They share crowded parking options with nurses and staff.
• Does the approved expansion make sense post-Covid-19? Social distancing on short notice is virtually impossible with the open floor expansion plan.

The children have no access to safe, quality outdoor experiences and, instead, are subject to urban level construction and pollution whether indoors or out. The WHO worries that this deadly pandemic is far from over. Without serious review, these medically fragile children will once again be subject to inadequate emergency plans and under-supported by local governmental agencies. It is inconceivable that this expansion was approved on the facts. The current pandemic only increases already unacceptable risks that were pointed out.

The sane and compassionate decision at this time would be to issue a stop work order and reevaluate the entire situation at a higher, more impartial, level. The lives of these children and those not yet on site might depend on it.


Thanks for reading.

Cynthia Manocherian