Update from Mayor Jane Veron

Here are remarks delivered by Scarsdale Mayor Jane Veron at the Village Board meeting on Tuesday January 11, 2022:

Happy New Year, Scarsdale! I hope the holidays offered you time to enjoy family and friends and to take a well-earned break from some of life’s daily demands. I know the recent COVID surge has added further stress, and I wish a speedy recovery to so many of our residents and employees and their extended families who are fighting the virus. The good news is that this strain is not as virulent as others, and I remain optimistic that we will get through this challenge and see normalcy soon return.

I want to give a special shout out to the Scarsdale Volunteer Ambulance Corps who has rallied to provide vaccinations, boosters, tests, and masks to the community. Please remember, they are volunteers, supported by your philanthropy, and motivated by a fierce allegiance to public health and safety. They have been working nonstop, and we are enormously grateful and lucky to have this resource in our backyard.

Now let’s look ahead. As we embark on 2022, I want to reiterate the Board’s commitment to evolving Village government into a model for the 21st century, adopting best practices, embracing innovation, and preparing soundly for the future.

Over these past several months, we’ve experienced a transformation at Village Hall that is unlike any we’ve seen in the recent past. With a new strategic and financial planning framework, a new Village Manager, our extraordinary tenured staff who have been joined by several new professionals, Scarsdale government is poised to lead us forward.

You’ve heard us describe the push to digitize, and you will experience the beginning of this evolution in our re-engineered budget process. We invite you to our budget kick off next Tuesday, January 18, at 6 pm. This newly conceived meeting will offer insight into debt policy, give updates from the water rate study and then set the stage for the budget discussion with goals, objectives, and KPIs as well as fee schedule proposals. This budget cycle, we will bridge past practices with new approaches. The goal is to offer more time to deliberate with public involvement and greater ease and accessibility. Our Village Manager will detail the schedule in his remarks.

You’ve heard us speak about our desire to invest in the future. With the Pool Complex Study and the Complete Streets, Village Center Mobility and Placemaking study, we’re doing just that. Both projects are in the works, and we will provide updates along the way. Be on the lookout for opportunities for public engagement. They’ll be coming in Q1.

You’ve heard us dig into the long standing infrastructure and quality of life needs, and our work session this evening exemplified our focus on making necessary improvements. For those not in attendance, Planning and DPW staff reviewed tangible next steps on Scarsdale’s Hazard Mitigation Plan and Tropical Depression Ida’s After Action Report. It was an incredibly thorough and informative discussion and I encourage you to watch the video.

And finally, you’ve heard us describe our wish to work in tandem with the schools on multiple overlapping issues. Tonight is a perfect example of progress in the Village School partnership. On our agenda is a resolution that ensures smooth linkage in public safety matters.

Change takes time, and we won’t get everything perfectly right at the first go. But please know our intentions are pure, the commitment is there, and I am so excited to see what the future holds.