Voters Choice Party Challenges Non-Partisan Party Slate for Scarsdale Mayor and Trustees

(Updated 2-9) An independent slate of candidates for Scarsdale Mayor and Scarsdale Village Trustee have filed a petition to challenge the candidates selected by Scarsdale's Citizen's Nominating Committee in the March 2017 election for the Board of Trustees of Scarsdale Village.

The slate is led by Robert Berg who is running for Scarsdale Mayor, with Brice Kirkendall-Rodriguez, Carlos Ramirez and Robert Selvaggio for Village Trustees.

The newly formed party, named "The Scarsdale Voters Choice Party," is challenging the Village's Non-Partisan system which calls for the selection of candidates for the Village Board by an elected group of nominators who vet and interview candidates behind closed doors. The Voter's Choice Party promises to "usher grassroots democracy" back to Scarsdale by offering residents a choice of candidates to vote for in a general election.

The party's new website charges that recent "Village mayors and trustees have failed to carry out their fiduciary duties ... and failed to oversee Village operations and staff," and decry the "mishandled second town-wide revaluation" and "perennially crumbling streets. " They promise to "act openly" and bring "transparency" to Village government.

Absent from the statement are positions on some of the most pressing issues now before the Village, including plans for an extensive overhaul of the Scarsdale Library, development at the Freightway site, historical preservation and land use laws, storm water and sewer maintenance, renovations to Fire Station #1, sustainability initiatives and more.

Any resident who wishes to seek a position as mayor or a trustee can gather the necessary signatures and file a petition by the deadline to appear on the pre-printed ballot. Challengers to the non-partisan system can also run as write-in candidates.

This particular slate was formed around an almost two year battle around the second tax revaluation which culminated in an Article 78 proceeding against the Village signed by two of the party candidates among the 151 participants. The suit asks the Village to roll back the assessments to 2014 values, though the Village has no legal means of doing so. If they fail to roll it back, the suit asks that the 151 participants be paid back the difference between their 2014 and 2016 tax payments. It is not clear where these funds would come from and if the balance of taxpayers would be assessed to meet the payments.

The Article 78 was signed by Mayra Kirkendall-Rodriguez, wife of candidate Brice Kirkendall-Rodriguez for the Scarsdale Committee for Fair Assessments. She was the leader of the campaign to void the 2016 revaluation, which according to the suit, "resulted in a substantial shift of the tax burden to those larger properties to which their owners objected. Such systematic undervaluation of larger homes for the purpose of shifting the tax burden to smaller burden violates both the constitutional rights of owners of Scarsdale's smaller homes to equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution and under Article I, Section 11 of the New York Constitution, Equal Protection Clause and the statutory rights of Scarsdale home owner to be assessed at a uniform percentage of value as mandated by Section 305(2) of New York Real Property Tax Law."

In the process, for the last two years, Rodriguez and her followers filed FOIL requests for thousands of emails and spent countless hours building their case against the Village Board, Village Manager's Office, Village Assessor and John Ryan. The Village Attorney and staff had to defend the Village and review these emails before they were released which strained their resources. The controversy hampered the ability of the Village Board to deal with little else on their agenda. Among the charges in the suit are that the Village gave unfair tax breaks to public officials. However the tax rolls shows that Berg, Kirkendall-Rodriguez and Ramirez also enjoyed reductions in their assessments from 2014 to 2016. Although most agree that the revaluation model was sloppy and haphazard, it's not clear who was damaged or received favorable treatment.

If there is no settlement of the Article 78 lawsuit before the election on March 21, the new trustees and Mayor could have a say in its outcome and potentially benefit from the settlement.

Berg, who is now running for Mayor, is a former President of the Scarsdale Forum and in that role he chaired the Citizen's Nominating Committee, a group that he is now criticizing as secretive. Berg also championed the first revaluation in 2014 and in the summer of 2016 he served on the Board of Assessment Review and heard grievances from the 2016 revaluation. Before the second revaluation was filed, he repeatedly warned that it was a "train wreck waiting to happen."

This is not the first time Berg has sought to overturn the status quo. In 2013 he led a coalition of residents to successfully defeat the first Scarsdale School budget to fail in 43 years. He rented a list of the names and addresses of 3,200 households without children in the school and urged residents to vote against the budget. He galvanized voters to come to the polls, eliciting 1,720 "no votes," in an election that normally only attracts about 700 total voters.

At the time, Berg said, "The $1 million taxpayers are being asked to dole out this year for the proposed High School Wellness Center is "a pig in a poke." He contended that SHS already had "more than ample physical fitness facilities." Since that time, funds for the new Wellness Center were raised by the Scarsdale Schools Foundation, Maroon and White and a private donation from the Madoff family. The fitness center is now under construction.

Berg and Mitchell Gross also criticized the administration for holding what they called an illegal reserve fund for health insurance claims and ultimately pressured Superintendent Dr. McGill to retire a year earlier than planned. In his surprise announcement Dr. McGill said that detractors had called for him to retire as "a quid pro quo for a Yes vote on the budget next week," which was the second attempt to pass the 2013-14 school budget. The state legislature later gave Scarsdale permission to reinstate the health reserve fund as a hedge against medical claims from the district's self-insured health plan.

The formation of the Scarsdale Voters Choice Party was cheered by some residents who believe they are over-taxed and unfairly assessed. They hope that the new slate will bring strong fiscal management – and perhaps reduced property taxes -- to the Village.

Others who have invested time and energy in Scarsdale's Non-Partisan system defended Scarsdale's system of governance.

Scarsdale's current Mayor Jon Mark discussed the non-partisan system with members of this year's Citizen's Nominating Committee saying,

"The 2016 revaluation, initiated with only good intentions did not work out as planned. Going forward, I have little doubt that any subsequent revaluation will be better managed and executed. However, to make the leap from this one experience – as significant as it was and still is – to a conclusion that would throw out our entire non-partisan system is in my mind is unwarranted. The road forward is to do a better job on the next revaluation – whenever it occurs. I do not believe that the decision-making process – whether it be about the next revaluation or another major decision affecting the Village, the proposed Library renovation to name another example -- is best served by partisans who have a pre-conceived notion of what the results of the decision-making process should be."

About partisan politics, Mark said, "Partisanship will not bring us together as a community. It will not produce consensus solutions to shared problems. Partisanship means, by definition, taking sides. Under a partisan system candidates are elected because they take positions on issues and by doing so win elections by garnering the support of those who agree with them. Once in office, those officials may say they will act for the benefit of all citizens in the jurisdiction, but the reality may be quite different. Having been put in office by their partisan constituency, the minds of the officials may be closed to countervailing views and legitimate concerns of other community members on a particular issue. Following a partisan framework would have the potential of setting one group of residents against another -- a dynamic that in my view does not benefit the governance of a Village in which we all share a substantially common interest."

In a letter to Scarsdale10583.com, former Scarsdale Village Mayor Peter Strauss who support the CNC slate put this new development into historical context:

The announcement that the current slate of the Citizens Nominating Committee (CNC) nominees for Mayor and Trustees is being opposed by another full slate is unusual but not surprising. My concern is the nature and stated position of the group calling itself the "Voters' Choice Party". First a little history:

While the election of Mayor and Board of Trustees has always been open to challenge by other nominees, such a challenge has seldom been exercised by a full, or nearly full, slate of Trustees and Mayor. The last time I can recall that happening was in 1999, when a CNC slate led by Mayor Mark Bench was challenged by a responsible, talented, and long active group led by Lester Levin. It was a spirited campaign with the CNC slate supported by a large group organized by Neil Bicknell. I was part of that latter group and vividly recall election night when we had to count and recount the 2,000 plus votes. For the first time in over 70 years a candidate opposing the CNC slate, Joseph Zock, was elected – by one vote! Joe subsequently served two full terms (four years) as a responsible trustee.

Compare that situation with what we face today – a CNC slate is opposed by the Voters' Choice Party, two of whose Trustee candidates are themselves participants in the Article 78 proceeding against the Village, and whose candidate for Mayor has been a persistent supporter of that proceeding against the Village. To have potential Village Board members who, if elected, could influence the outcome of a lawsuit to their own benefit is an unsavory situation.

My extensive experience with the Village staff, and my personal knowledge of Dan Hochvert, who served as a Trustee when I was Mayor, convince me that a Board refreshed by the new CNC nominees, led by Dan Hochvert and our Village Manager is the appropriate way forward."

Both slates of candidates filed their petitions with a minimum of 100 signatures on February 7, 2017 and each candidate will be required to provide a signed certificates of acceptance to the Village Clerk by February 17, 2017.

In order to decide which party would receive the top line of the ballot, Village Clerk Donna Conkling tossed a coin and the Citizens Nominating Party won, which means that their slate of candidates will be on the first line of the pre-preinted ballot.

Have comments? Please include your first and last name.