Jon Mark Sworn in as Mayor of Scarsdale

Scarsdale Mayor Jon Mark and Village Trustees Carl Finger, Matt Callaghan and Bill Stern were sworn into office at a joyous ceremony at Scarsdale Village Hall on Monday April 6th. Surrounded by family, friends, Village administrators and officials, the four officially began their terms of office.

Already well known and respected from a lifetime of residency and four years as Scarsdale Village Trustee, Mark (SHS '65) had many supporters in the audience, including his mother, wife, son, daughter, brother and sister-in-law.

He made a thoughtful speech (shown in its entirety below) that looked back on the history of Scarsdale and drew links to many of the issues that face the Village today. His words were deeply ingrained with the fabric of the community in which he was raised and has called home for decades.

Trustees Carl Finger (SHS '86) and Matt Callaghan are newly elected to the Board of Trustees, while Bill Stern was re-elected for a second two-year term. Carl Finger's mother, Dorothy, who is a former Village Trustee, was also at the ceremony along with former Mayors Miriam Flisser and Carolyn Stevens.

Remarks of Jon Mark, Mayor, at swearing in ceremony:

The shield behind me has a 1701 date on it. That's the date that Scarsdale was said to be settled. If you look around town and see the Village shields in town, you will see the word "settled" under that date. I think that is the date that Caleb Heathcote bought Anne Richbell's estate which stretched from Long Island Sound to what is now the Bronx River Parkway and there is a mural that depicts that transaction on one wall inside the Post Office in the Village. So that is what happened in 1701 and Scarsdale was the Manor of Scarsdale at that time.

Heathcote thought it resembled his town of Scarsdale in Derbyshire, England which was a rocky place -- scarred with rocks -- and had a lot of valleys or dales, so Scarsdale became the name of the Manor.

So we jump ahead, we fast forward, to June of 1915, approximately one hundred years ago. In June of 1915, the Town of Scarsdale was wrestling with a political issue. The issue was that the legislature of the State of New York had it within its power to change the boundaries of towns. And the residents of Scarsdale were concerned that the boundaries would be changed and they would become part of White Plains. They discussed this topic for a couple of months, this is according to Carol O'Connor's history of Scarsdale and also in Harry Hansen's history, both of which were provided to me by Dan Hochvert. The residents put this matter to a vote. What they voted on was whether Scarsdale should incorporate as a Village. A vote was taken in May of 1915, the vote was 142 to 39, reflective of the great turnout we still have today in municipal elections, and the referendum passed. The Village was incorporated and the significance of that was that the boundaries could only be changed by a referendum vote of the residents. They thus took that power away from the state legislature.

The first Village Board, which was made up of the Board of the Town, because the Town had a Board, met on June 26th. It was a five person Board. The population of Scarsdale was under 3,000 and under state law the Village was not eligible to have a mayor. So the Board had a President. The President was Franklin Bethel, for whom Bethel Road presumably was named. Franklin was a Vice President of the New York Telephone Company -- a business man -- and he designed the Village shield. He used the crest of the Caleb Heathcote family and put some other things on there that you can see. I note that one of the other Board members was Rush Wilson and his descendant is with us today as a prominent businessman in town.

That was a fateful decision in 1915 because we, over the last 100 years, have benefited from that decision as Scarsdale has evolved into a residential community that we all know and love. But we have also borne the burdens of that as well. Particularly, and most specifically, in terms of the tax dollars we all have to pay to support the services we wish to receive here.
Pressure is now being put on that decision. Pressure has always existed on that decision because it cost a lot of money to live here. But the New York State legislature through the so called 2% cap, is doing its best to try to pressure the 900 or so municipalities that are in the State of New York into consolidating.

Village Manager Al Gatta has said that can't be the only goal and maybe there is a higher goal to redistribute equity and resources more fairly in some way among residents of the State. Who knows? Maybe that will reveal itself in time or maybe it won't. The point is that the new Board, like the Boards that have recently preceded it, is going to have to wrestle with this existential question: that is, what services do the residents want and expect to receive from the Village, and what are they willing to pay for them – because as we go forward, unless something very dramatic happens, that will continue to be an increasingly difficult decision to make.

There have been some stories recently in the paper about the value of five-year budgeting, as if that was some new concept. It is a very good concept. It's a concept that deserves to be raised and discussed. But in point of fact for those of you who follow our budget process, the Village has always engaged in five-year budgeting. There is an operations budget that addresses the day-to-day operating costs of the Village and there is a capital plan. And if you look on the capital plan, which is posted on the Village web site and is also available in the Library, you will see various projects that are pushed out over five years. Unfortunately, in the last several years, many capital projects have been deferred because of the pressure to allocate dollars to day-to-day operations. So we have always engaged in a five-year budget planning process, and in some cases longer than that, and we will continue to do that.

So here I am the Mayor which is not something I ever thought I would be. I am humbled by the opportunity to serve for the next two years. Obviously, we are not going to resolve all problems in two years, which would be impossible. But we're going to give it our best shot. And I very much look forward to working with our new Trustees Matt Callaghan and Carl Finger, with my old Trustee – not an old Trustee -- Trustee Bill Stern, as well as with Deb Pekarek, David Lee and Marc Samwick. I think we have a great board. I look forward to serving the residents of Scarsdale.

Photo Credit: Michelle Lichtenberg