Don't Throw the Baby Out With the Bathwater

(This is an editorial written by Scarsdale10583 site founder Joanne Wallenstein) Watching the presidential debate on Monday night and reflecting on recent rumblings in Scarsdale, I couldn't help but draw some parallels between the national and local political scenes.

In the first debate, Donald Trump called our country a "disaster" and made sweeping and damning generalizations about complex issues and historical events. He repeatedly blamed his opponent Hillary Clinton for failing to defeat ISIS, for sending U.S. jobs overseas, for poor race relations and for a host of other global issues.

Here in Scarsdale, we have a similar debate going on, with a few despondent residents calling our Village a disaster and blaming Scarsdale's past and present mayors and trustees for failing to manage the professional staff at Village Hall.

One member of our community, who led the opposition to the 2016 tax revaluation, posted the following as a comment on Scarsdale10583.... "The damage that two sets of mayors, Boards of Trustees, and village managers have inflicted on residents is incalculable and will have lasting negative effects on any capital plans that the village or school district have."

Like candidate Trump, she and a former president of the Scarsdale Forum are suggesting that flaws with the 2016 property revaluation indicate that Scarsdale not only needs new leadership, but that the entire system of governance, Scarsdale's Non-Partisan system, should be overturned as well. In the September 23rd issue of the Scarsdale Inquirer, Bob Berg says, "The system is not working. It's a disaster here." Opponents appear to be advocating for contested elections for Mayor and Trustees, which would put Scarsdale into full campaign mode for a good part of every year.

Let's take a step back and consider whether Scarsdale is indeed a "disaster." From my window, things look pretty good. I live on a beautiful tree-lined street. It's free of trash, garbage cans and cars, since overnight street parking is not allowed. Our police and fire departments are respected and quick to respond. If I want to go to the city, I can walk to the train. My children benefited from first-rate schools and I use the public tennis courts and lovely town pool. It's easy to access the Village for food, coffee, and other necessities and I often run into people I know in town, fostering a sense of belonging and community.

One might ask what does governance have to do with any of this? In fact, it has everything to do with our experience here. Our Board of Trustees and our Mayor carefully consider how everything from the sanitation to the recreation departments are run. They pass resolutions to manage parking, paving, parks and events. In fact, there is little that you use or enjoy here that is not managed by the Village staff and overseen by our elected officials.

Yes, there have been issues. The second revaluation was not conducted in the way it should have been done, and sometimes people at Village Hall can appear high handed and dismissive to residents' concerns. But if you watched or attended any of the well-publicized meetings at Village Hall on the revaluation, you could see that both the managers and the board have accepted full responsibility for the flawed process and are seeking ways to ameliorate its effects and improve future revaluations. For those who were unfairly assessed, the Board of Assessment Review considered over 1,103 grievances and granted reductions to 373 property owners out of a total of 5,900 property owners, or about 6%.

Is that a reason to disrupt the non-partisan process that has served the Village well since 1930? According to the Non-Partisan Resolution, the system was put into place to, "Obtain the services in public office of many men and women who would not have been available merely as the candidates of a political party in contested elections for village and town office." The League of Women Voters of Scarsdale studied the Non-Partisan system and found that, "The intention of Scarsdale's nonpartisan system is to attract the best possible people to run for school board, village trustee and mayor while minimizing electioneering, money, partisan politics and agenda-driven candidates. Scarsdale's nonpartisan system allows the focus to be on bettering our community, rather than on running costly campaigns."

Though to some, the Non-Partisan system appears to squash public debate, what it does do is to allow qualified and thoughtful residents with the best interest of Scarsdale in mind to serve as Village leaders, without conducting political campaigns. A democratically elected committee of nominators seeks qualified candidates who take an objective approach to the issues at hand and seek solutions that work best for the village. If the Board needs expertise in engineering, sustainability, the law or finance, the committee seeks out candidates who fit the bill. Anyone, with any view, is invited to run for the nominating committee or to put in their name for consideration for Village Trustee or even Mayor.

As a 26-year homeowner in Scarsdale, I take comfort in the fact that we have a truly representative government that considers the rights of all residents. I am wary of ceding our leadership to neighbors who come to their positions with a focus on a single issue or a wrong to right.

Let's not permit a few loud and angry residents to claim to represent us... or to say that the system is broken when it's not.

We received the following responses to the opinion piece above from Robert Berg, Bill Stern and Bob Selvaggio of Scarsdale:

Robert Berg:
I just read your article recommending against changes to our CNC-run system for electing Village officials. I think you sugarcoat the Non-Partisan System. It works fine when we don't have to address significant issues and are just concerned with the day to day operation of our Village. It really fails badly when it comes to anything substantial or meaningful. To wit, for 45 years, successive Village Boards and Mayors failed to do a property revaluation. That's incredibly poor governance. And the Ryan reval debacle? What more needs to be said?

Then take a look at the Christie Place situation. That building site came super close to becoming another Freightway monstrosity before last-minute community opposition stopped the madness. And while the Christie Place condos are a great project, they were fraudulently marketed as a permanently low tax opportunity for seniors. Now the rest of Village taxpayers has to perpetually subsidize their taxes because two Boards and Mayors want to protect these unfortunate luxury condo dwellers forever -- even after the units transfer hands -- and they are unwilling to do what is fair to everyone.

Take a look at One Palmer, a hideous structure that failed to comply with the Board of Architectural Review requirements. How in the world was that disgusting building allowed to be completed by our Building Department? Why wasn't a stop work order issued and enforced until the building was reconstructed to plan? Something is real fishy there. What did the Mayor and Village Board do about that building while there was still time. Absolutely nothing!

Check out 2-4 Weaver. The Village Board and Mayor facilitated the construction, with the sale of Village land, of another tax-favored, yet non-age restricted super luxury apartment complex, without extracting from the developer any agreement to ensure that residents pay property taxes based on the fair market value of the apartments. Instead, the units will now be sold as co-ops so that even the Homestead Tax option can't tax them on a fair market value basis. All this to protect the "historic" Heathcote Tavern which now will be dwarfed by the office building-like structure rising on the site.

Look at Superstorm Sandy where the Village was largely without power for 2 weeks and was one of the last municipalities to regain power. None of our elected officials nor Village administrators was capable of putting enough pressure on Con Edison to give us a break and get the power back on. I would have picketed the CEO of Con Ed's house in Rye and held a press conference there until he was embarrassed enough to correct the situation.

Look at historic preservation. The Village Board has been studying this issue for about 10 years straight with no results.

Look at the gutless and unprincipled response of the Mayor and Village Board to the Monte Nido proposal. To assuage a bunch of wealthy neighbors, the Mayor and Village Board unanimously voted to object to the facility, even when they knew that the law was completely against their position. They lack moral courage.

The simple truth is that the Non-Partisan System attracts people who oftentimes lack leadership skills and common sense and who fail to act on principles. Instead, they seem to respond to the wealthiest squeaky wheels. Yet the CNC process forbids anyone from vetting these nominees on their positions or putting them to the test of public debate. This is an absurd vestige of the past. Instead, the CNC listens to a 10 minute rah-rah speech by the candidate, conducts a couple of reference checks, and votes to pick the candidate who gave the best speech. I know. I've been there.

In my view, we need contested elections for Village office so that residents can learn how the candidates approach the important issues. We don't need to have partisan contested elections, but a healthy and vigorous debate among candidates will inform the electorate, and might even get them to come out and vote.

Response to Bob Berg from Village Trustee William Stern:

Dear Mr .Berg:
Your comments about Sandy and the response of the Village need some more information. First during Sandy the Village staff and many of the elected officials literally camped out in the public safety building to manage the crisis. Con Ed was not very responsive claiming they were overwhelmed. In my case my neighborhood was cutoff by a neighbor's tree which the neighbor neglected to take care of- no fault of the Village. The Village identified one issue which was that if a local tree took wires down ConEd would cutoff the whole neighborhood miles around. The Village manager and Trustees subsequently had several public meetings with ConEd and their technical high level management on how to move forward .We got them to install equipment on the poles segregating the electric supply into many small subdivisions so that the next time there is a power failure due to lines taken down only a small number of houses will be affected. I believe Mr. Harrison was present at these meetings as they were publicly announced. As a result of Sandy the generator law was drastically changed allowing residents on small lots to have generators. Picketing is not an acceptable form of governance. To say the Village did nothing is far from correct.

The reval issue and its consequences is a source of great pain and angst to both the Village Board and the Village management. Legal issues prevent elected and appointed officials from saying no more until everything is resolved We are subject to the slings and arrows of innuendo, attack, and insults because we are not able to comment officially, unofficially or as individuals. I was hoping that residents would understand this. Silence from the elected officials and management does not mean inaction.

The Village has been criticized for sending one of it's employees to a professional meeting. The Village does this frequently for its key staff and these are planned way in advance. I am sure that the critics of this practice attend professional meetings in their fields. My own experience in my professional life is that these are no vacations but hard work and for me exhausting.

I want to compliment you again for your difficult work at the BAR and the sacrifice of summer work that you and your members made.

Best regards,
Bill Stern

From Bob Selvaggio:

Simply put, voting in an uncontested election in which the positions of the "candidates" on issues of importance to the Village is fully obscured (at least to the voter) is as irresponsible as it is irrational. Those in JoAnne's basket of "despondents", notably Bob and Mayra in their rebuttals, make an excellent case for the sub-optimal outcomes that have been associated with allowing the CNC party to run unopposed in recent years. And even those of us of lesser talents understand that our time is too valuable to waste in voting when we have no choice among alternatives. As much as we all might abhor Clinton's corruption and Trump's brutishness, I cannot imagine any of us would prefer not to have the opportunity to choose between the two.

My hope is that good Scarsdale citizens will step forward as Mayoral and Board candidates to provide robust challenges to the CNC party's slate of candidates, not out of partisanship, but rather out of civic virtue. I have personally implored Mayra to throw her hat in the ring, and I do hope Bob Berg will do so.

I want the ability to vote for candidates who assure me that they are committed to fair real estate taxation based on a universally applied percentage of market value that is equal for all homeowners. It boggles my mind to think that the current CNC-appointed Board voted UNANIMOUSLY to continue our citizens' forced subsidy of a group of millionaires living in Christie Place. I want to vote for candidates who will clean house in the office of the Village Assessor and for one or two who have the expertise in housing finance and statistical analysis to assure that the next reval is done correctly, and by the best firm among a number who respond to an RFP in a competitive bidding process. I want to know that the candidates I support are committed to fiscal prudence and zero-based budgeting. I also want to know, for example, their stances on forced mulching, their positions on library expansion, and on solar panels.

We can do much better for Scarsdale by encouraging our residents to run for office in competitive races and to provide full disclosure of their positions on key issues. I have observed that the citizens who fill Village Hall hoping to catch the attention of the group sitting on the dais far above and removed from the crowd know their stuff and come prepared. Many among them would serve the Village well.