Mayor Asks Residents to Complete Survey Regarding the Future of the Scarsdale Pool

The following statement was made by Scarsdale Mayor Jane Veron at the May 10th meeting of the Board of Trustees:

Over the past couple weeks, my travel schedule has picked up, and I’ve been connecting with government officials at the local, state and national levels. When they hear I am Mayor of Scarsdale, they ask me what it’s like to have such an active and engaged population. I say it makes us the very best. 

This Board wants to facilitate connection. Last evening, many of you joined Trustee Gans and me at the Dine the ‘Dale tent for informal conversation. The topic that consumed our time was the pool survey, and your strong feelings about that beloved community asset. You reminisced about your early days in Scarsdale when the pool was the place to make new friends and to teach your little ones how to swim and you spoke as passionately about your summers as empty nesters, reuniting with old friends. It is clear that the pool has played a prominent role in your lives. 

Since we announced one year ago that we were embarking on the Pool Complex Study, you have flooded my inbox, stopped us in the street, at games and in the market to share your perspective. No one will be left out. We want to hear from each and every one of you as you help to shape the direction of the pool complex project. 

When we selected experts to guide us on the pool complex project, we searched for not only those who had deep experience with the engineering and design of community pools but also those who understood the importance of community input. For this project, our consultants engaged a professional market research firm, and they suggested an online survey for the entire community, to be as inclusive as possible. They said that we would get essential and broad reaching insight from an open online survey. The Board supported the inclusivity of that approach but also wanted to conduct a statistically valid survey as a safeguard to the qualitative one. We have been asked to ensure that special interest group responses don’t drown out the myriad of perspectives in the community. So, we will be getting the best of both worlds.

Every member of this community will have the opportunity to share your thoughts. The survey contains 4 pages of questions that seek your views on pool design, operation and financing. It is not good enough to ask for your vision without also understanding what you are willing to pay. So, please do soul searching and think hard about your responses. For those of you with children in your household, ask them what would make the pool a major draw. When I’ve been a guest at the schools, many of your sons and daughters have enthusiastically shared their ideas with me. In fact, they delivered their artistic renderings of daredevil slides and water features. They certainly feel passionately about the Scarsdale Pool. 

For those of you randomly mailed, please don’t put the survey aside. Dive right in and share your views. We need these surveys completed so we have a full data set. The qualitative and quantitative surveys will complement one another, and every perspective will be captured.

Moreover, we will host in person community engagement opportunity during the Scarsdale Music Festival on June 4 as well as June dates at the pool. You will get the chance to speak directly to our consultants who will have interactive activities for adults and children alike.

As long as you participate and don’t delay, the experts will be able to synthesize and analyze your input and will present the findings to the public this summer. You will be kept apprised at every stage of this project’s development.

I can’t underscore enough how important your participation. Your collective input will guide the development of the concepts for community consideration. We will engage again, speak about the tradeoffs, refine and modify and come to consensus. So, join us. Be a part of the journey.

And it is not only the pool that we are reimagining; we are also rethinking the Village Center with the Mobility and Placemaking study. We seek to improve traffic and circulation, multimodal connectivity, and the activation of gathering spaces. Earlier this evening during our work session, FHI presented results of their data collection which included past studies, walking tour feedback and drone insight. They reviewed high level key findings and suggested focus areas for next steps. What is super exciting is that next month, they will have some ideas and concepts that offer real time potential solutions for the Village Center. You can follow along and submit comment on our dedicated website www.scarsdalemobility.com or simply visit scarsdale.com and scroll down to our update. And please accept our invitation to join us on June 14 at 6 pm for our virtual public meeting to present ideas and concepts on this project.

The online survey link will go live on Monday, May 30. In the interim, a random sample of residents should be receiving surveys in the mail as soon as next week. Please all, give us your feedback!