Kudos for Departing Trustees Justin Arest and Lena Crandall

With two new trustees elected to serve on the Scarsdale Village Board, Tuesday March 22, 2022 was the night to say goodbye to two hardworking trustees who will now retire from service. The opening hour of the Village Board meeting was devoted to lauding Deputy Mayor Justin Arest and Village Trustee Lena Crandall for four eventful years at the helm.

There was consensus that Arest had played a vital role in navigating rough waters during the pandemic, that threatened to sink Village finances. Working with then Mayor Marc Samwick the Village was able to reduce costs and set aside funds to meet revenue shortfalls and COVID expenses. He continued to oversee the budgeting process and worked with Mayor Jane Veron to change the way the budget was built.

Trustee Crandall was lauded for her advocacy for trees, parks and the environment and her leadership in formulating the Village’s policy on smoking, marijuana sales and usage. Consideration of the new MRTA law, was one of the major issues the board handled during the 21-2022 term.

Here are excerpts from some of the comments about the two made by their fellow trustees, the Mayor and visitors to Village Hall:

Trustee Ahuja, Scarsdale’s most junior trustee, noted that the two departing trustees had much in common. He said, “I have only worked closely with both of you for a short time but I am struck by how lucky Scarsdale is to have you serve the town. Both of you share three incredible traits:

Commitment – you both work hardest when no one is looking.

Caring – I don’t know two people who care more for the people who live and work here.

Command of the detail – no one has more command of the details than you!

He quoted athlete John Wooden who said, “It’s the little details that are vital – little things make big things happen!”

The Mayor noted Crandall’s “unwavering dedication, unstoppable energy and her strong passion for natural beauty and the environment.” She said, “You enliven the debate with anecdotes and storytelling … I admire your forthrightness and appreciate that you do not shy away from speaking your mind.” About her reputation as an environmentalist, Veron said,
“No doubt you’re an expert in parks and trees but make no mistake, your influence goes far beyond that ….you should be exceedingly proud of all you have accomplished.”

Turning to Justin Arest, she remembered meeting him on the ad hoc committee on communications and said, “I knew that with you we had struck gold.” Speaking of their partnership she said, “We have worked hard these past four years on every issue the board has confronted. I don’t think there is an important issue that you have not touched.”

Speaking of his dedication she said, “You are always in, all the time. Village Hall is your home away from home. You have a willingness to tackle issues head on… you are facile with every nuance and able to cull through large piles of information to get to the issue. You live and breathe your duty.”

She continued: “I have been honored to have you as my deputy manager during this transformational time. We kicked off a strategic plan, we hired a new village manager, and worked on the pool, placemaking, and transitioned our budget process. Your imprint is on every effort. No one will feel your absence more than I. You are my sounding board and my friend. You will be sorely missed.”

Karen Brew thanked Arest saying, “Justin: I have learned so much from you – both from your questions and answers. You are thoughtful, measured and creative. I admire your willingness to speak your mind even when you know it may not be popular….I have enjoyed getting to know you.”

To Lena Crandall she said, “Marijuana, telecom code and leaf vacuuming. We worked so well together. You approached an issue from a different point of view. You are fair, logical and ready to get to a solution… you approach everything with a seriousness of purpose … you have made every motion that I could second.”

Randy Whitestone remembered the lengthy campaign when the election was delayed from March until September due to COVID. To Lena he said, “You were my running mate during the crazy 2020 election. I remember campaigning together. We walked neighborhoods and prepared for our candidates’ forum. I remember a great discussion about mulching in your front yard. No tree remains unloved. You have been an advocate for seniors and those with disabilities. I thank you for your commitment.”

To Justin Arest he said, “We served as mutual sounding boards. We don’t always agree – but there is a shared interest in doing what is right. You deeply research issues and develop an informed point of view. You have thrown yourself into making Scarsdale a better place
We won’t let you get too far!”

Trustee Lewis showed how the two worked within the non-partisan system. He said, “The non-partisan system has us work collaboratively but not necessarily to agree. You have both sharpened our debate. You have both always taken the long view in an exemplary way.

Our non-partisan system asks us to consider policy for now and for the future. You have both always thought about issues through this lens. You come prepared with careful arguments to support your points of view and are open minded, informed, rigorous, and weigh the facts. You have served this board in ways that will leave an impact in years to come.

Accolades came from the audience as well. Andrew Sereysky said, “Thank you for all the work you do. Justin, I worked on the communications committee with you. I watched the way you work, I listened to your advice – we should all be appreciative of everything you do.”

About Lena he said, “I was pro marijuana reform and I ran into her last summer in the pool. After a conversation with her I thought she would be against it. But she ultimately voted for it. She is a trustee who takes her job seriously and gets into the facts – she is a great asset to the Village.”

Margot Milberg said she was there on behalf of the Library Board of Trustees to thank Justin for his work for the library and the community. She said, “He always supported our programs and events and would share information with the board and the community. He was an engaged member of the committee whose insights always led to a probing conversation.”

Alissa Baum, President of the LWVS extended thanks and to Arest and Crandall for their service. She said, “Both of you are exceptional public servants.” She complimented Arest on his financial and legal acumen that helped the village weather this crisis.” She added, “The League appreciates your accessibility.”

To Crandall she said, “We appreciate your commitment to our village in the park, and your sharp legal mind. We are grateful for all your service.”

Ron Schulhof had a few words of thanks to Lena and Justin for their service on the board. He said, “I worked with both of you for many years. Lena: we worked on many projects on the CAC and on sustainability. You are always available and consider all stakeholders. I am appreciative of everything you have done. Justin and I also worked together for many years. We are fortunate to have someone like you – with your work ethic. You keep your eye on the big picture. Many appreciate your willingness to challenge. It’s amazing to see what you have accomplished in your two terms on the board, most recently as deputy mayor. Thank you so much for all you have done.”

Newly elected Village Trustee Jeremy Gans said, “You have steered the Village through unprecedented times. No matter what you think might happen, you have no idea what might transpire during your term. … When COVID hit in March 2020, most of us did not know what to do except to stay home. The trustees had the same concerns but also had to steer and lead the Village during these times. They made all these decision without a playbook.”

Michelle Sterling thanked Crandall for being an amazing liaison to the CAC for three years. She said, “you came prepared, always with great ideas.”

To Justin she said, “You have given 150%. You are so prepared, so diligent and helpful. You always seem to put the WE above the I, and that is important.”

Bob Harrsion came to the mic to thank both trustees, noting that Lena “always returns my phone calls.” He thanked her for her support of the comfort station at the middle school and thanked Justin for his support of the Youth Tennis tournament.

Marcy Berman Goldstein gave a heartfelt thanks to Arest for his dedication to the Scarsdale Business Alliance. She said he was “Always available and instrumental in the ongoing success of the village reopening task force.” She said, “Thanks for being a mentor, role model and friend.”

Madelaine Eppenstein expressed her personal appreciation for the trustee’s work on behalf of the community. She said, “Best wishes to both of you.”

Lena Crandall then turned to Justin and said, “I always admired your knowledge of the law and your facts. I am grateful for your work on the budget.” She encouraged the public to speak up, saying, “Write down your comments and send them in. We listen to you!” She complimented trustee Whitestone on his ability to communicate and to “turn a phrase.”

Not to be outdone in the praise department, Arest made the following remarks:

I feel extremely fortunate to have represented Scarsdale for the last four years. While I am sad to leave the board, it has truly been an honor working with all of you, Village staff, and the countless volunteers who make Scarsdale such a special place to live.

To my family, my wife Allison and children, Madeline and Julian, thank you for supporting my desire to serve and for understanding that I could not be home many evenings. I love you and I hope that my passion to give back has been something my kids appreciate and will learn from.

To the residents and volunteers that I have worked with: Thank you for all that you do for Scarsdale, thank you for pushing me; thank you for challenging the board; thank you for helping me to learn and grow both personally and in my role as a member of the Village Board. There are so many people that deserve to be mentioned because without them I would not be here and do not believe I would have been able to achieve many of the accomplishments I am most proud of during my tenure. I hope you all know who you are and how appreciative I am and fortunate I consider myself to know you. I would be remiss however if I did not call a few people out but please know this does not diminish the impact of so many others. Madelaine Eppenstein, thank you for encouraging me to run and always being a supporter. Jon Mark, thank you for always being there to give advice and help run my campaign. Dara Gruenberg, who knew when you mentioned some crazy idea about renovating our library it would be part of a journey that brought me here. Thank you for being such a great friend, supporter, campaign chair and sounding board. I met Ron Schulhof in the peanut gallery of Village meetings. That is where I taught him everything he knows about sustainability. Just kidding of course but thank you Ron for your attention to detail and advice along the way. Diane Greenwald, thank you for all of your counsel and support. Andrew Sereysky is someone I might never have met if it wasn’t for volunteering and I am fortunate to have you as a friend. I am going to stop now because I could go on for a long time and this is still a Board Meeting.

I must thank the Scarsdale Inquirer and Scarsdale 10583. As Walter Conkrite once said, “Journalism is what we need to make democracy work.”

There are too many former staff members and board colleagues to mention but I do want to say that I appreciate all of their work and particularly all of their knowledge and wisdom. I do want to thank the other Mayors that I served under. Dan Hochvert, you did not know what to do with me at first but I think we became great colleagues as well as friends. Marc Samwick, you may still not know what to do with me but I was honored to serve as your deputy and am grateful for your leadership in one of the most challenging times for our Village. I am also fortunate to call you a friend. I would also like to briefly thank former Manager Steve Papalardo and former Village Treasurer, Mary Lou McClure. I learned a tremendous amount about municipal government and finance working with both of you.

To current staff…I have said this before but will happily say it again…I am so optimistic for the future of this government. We have such a great team in place. Donna, I am not sure if you count as current or former but I want to thank you for all of your help with Personnel, your dedication to this community and just being a wonderful person. Aylone, I really think you have grown a lot in your position and expect that to continue. Your enthusiasm and dedication are without question. Thank you for all of your help and I still am expecting to see improvements on parking technology and data collection in the near future. Ingrid, we have always had a great relationship. I think we have worked well together and have never hesitated from giving each other a hard time but all in good fun. Thank you for your commitment to this community. Alex, we have not worked together long but I think you are great and am excited to see you continue to grow in your role and help lead. Dan Pozin, thank you for leading our legal efforts. I appreciate your knowledge but also your willingness to be challenged in the pursuit of finding the best results. There are some other department heads who are not here that I want to mention. Dave and Greg…thank you for all of your help with the village center and everything else that you have worked hard to advance. Jeff and Tyler, thank you for your dedication and professionalism. Frank, we have worked together for almost a decade between my current role and the zoning board. You are a good person and Scarsdale should recognize how hard you work to keep the building department humming and also to keep the community safe. Victoria, I do not think I have heard one negative thing about you. And you are an Assessor! I was watching the board of education meeting last night and smiled when the assistant superintendent for business commented on the incredible job you are doing. We are so fortunate that you chose Scarsdale. Brian, you and Bob do so much to ensure that PRC runs well and is able to successfully provide year-round services to everyone from our littlest learners at the nature center and the pool, to our children on our ball fields, tennis courts and the pool, to our seniors through various offerings including yoga and the pool…and more. Beth, we started working together well before I joined this board. Thank you for leading our Library, especially through a transformative decade. We would not be where we are today without your vision and leadership. Chris, we have been so incredibly fortunate that you chose to give so much of yourself to our community and lead all of our IT efforts. Christine, thank you for all of your help scheduling and other ways you have directly and indirectly supported the board. The custodial team, and particularly Winston, thank you for all of your help over the past four years. So many late nights I always appreciated your smile and wave on my way out. Anne, you have been integral to the change and improvements that have occurred not only in your department but throughout the village. We have just started the process of overhauling our systems and have already accomplished so much. I am excited to see all you and your team will accomplish. We are so lucky to have you as our treasurer.

To the Chiefs. Chief Mytych and I have not done much together but, with a team of such great paid and volunteer firefighters, I am eager to see what he is able to accomplish in making the fire department even better and more efficient. Chief Maturro, my respect and admiration for your abilities and leadership has never waned. Thank you for your dedication to Scarsdale and for keeping my family and all of our families safe. To David Raizen, it would not be a Board meeting if your name or SVAC wasn’t mentioned but that is only because of the incredible work you and SVAC do and we are all grateful.

Is there anyone else? Oh, the Village Manager. Rob, it feels like another lifetime that we worked together on the ad hoc communications council. I knew instantly that you were someone who liked to really understand issues and always strived to improve processes. You also put a lot of weight in finding best practices before making decisions. I enjoyed debating with you then but probably not as much as I do now. I could not be happier than to see you in that seat today. You are available to everyone, transparent, and encourage accountability. As manager, you have demonstrated that the council-manager form of government and proper and healthy board oversight are not mutually exclusive. The board can ask a lot of you and staff. And sometimes, the pendulum swings too far one way or the other. But I am confident that under your leadership, that dynamic will continue to be calibrated correctly to foster the best results. And, I am also confident that our conversations about how we can improve our government and our community will continue. I will look forward to them.

To my colleagues on the board:

Sameer: I have really appreciated your perspective over the past year. You had not spent a lot of time in Village Hall before joining the board and getting a fresh perspective from an intelligent and thoughtful person who is always willing to listen and learn was very helpful. Your expertise, calm demeanor, and your practical intellect will continue to serve this Board well as our government continues to evolve.

Karen: You had been a volunteer for many years but we had not really worked together and I had no idea what to expect. The first thing I thought about was, wow she really wants to challenge spending on anything…and I loved it! You have no qualms about pushing back and asking why decisions are being made or monies are being allocated. But, you also understand that if we ignore the needs that we face, we are only kidding ourselves if we think they will just go away. That is never an easy balance, but I think you do it well.

Randy: We have only officially worked together for about 18 months but it feels a lot longer. We got to know each other in what may have been the longest campaign of all time. I have always appreciated our conversations. Particularly because it was likely that I would learn something. Sometimes it was learning substance and other times just talking an issue or idea out with you allowed me to better express myself. You are truly an asset to this Board and I have high expectations for the next two years.

Jonathan: I guess you could say that we brought some debate back to Rutherford Hall! We have different perspectives on many things but in the end I do not think we have been very far apart on any issue. I am sure you will miss my hypotheticals and wish that I had spoken more at times but rest assured that I will only be about 7 rows away. I know that you will continue to push for what you feel is in the community’s best interests.

Lena: Two elections and four years of hard work but what I will remember most is that I finally got you to laugh a few weeks ago in a meeting! You have been a tireless advocate- and I mean that in the best way- always open minded, but eventually willing to support your position on various issues as well as to assist your liaison assignments. You have always made sure that the needs and comments of your liaison assignments have been well presented to the Board and well considered when we have made decisions. Just last week you had arranged to have our assessor meet with our senior council. Normally, this would not be something to mention in this context, but I found it so special because you had scheduled this meeting six months ago. Maybe longer!

You are also a bill champion. I always thought I took our role in auditing the bills seriously. Our job is to ensure that all approvals are present, and that proper procurement protocols have been followed. It is also an opportunity to learn. But, I do not think anyone took the bills more seriously than you. Earlier in our tenure I would get a phone call every time you did the bills to compare notes and you would make lists of items to question in the future. Thank you for all of your hard work.

And Mayor Veron, Jane, I do not even know where to begin. You had known me as someone who sat in on a lot of meetings and asked questions when you recommended that I be added to the ad hoc communications council. I appreciated working with you on that new effort that was both supported and resisted. Soon thereafter, we ran together, me for my first term, you for your second. Working with you- as Trustees and under you as Mayor- has been amazing. I think we both recognized issues in our government early and were always allied in getting them…maybe I shouldn’t say corrected but… improved? And, in many ways, our time together has been building the foundation for this year. Thank you for being the Mayor that you are and being open to making change- not for the sake of change but because we needed it. I will miss my coffees and your teas. Thank you for entrusting me as your deputy and for always hearing me out even when it may not have been what you wanted to hear.

Serving on this Village Board has truly been one of the honors of my life. And while I really am sad to leave, especially with all of the important work ahead, I am happy to pass the baton to Jeremy Gans and Ken Mazer. And, I could not be more proud of what we, and it is a big we, have accomplished.

I am not sure if anyone has heard the Mayor speak of the pillars, but my biggest sense of pride will not be an individual project or improved process, or a specific budget, or a specific search committee…it will be my participation in making those pillars, the government that we need and that will take us into the future, a reality. I will conclude with one very short anecdote from very early in my first term. An issue was coming before the Board and we were presented with a resolution and virtually no backup. I sometimes like to get into the weeds on issues, but this was just a request for additional data to better understand how the decision was made. The answer that I received was, “It is because that is how we have always done it.” I will not continue with my retort or the conversations that ensued but suffice it to say, that encounter helped accelerate what I knew I needed to fight for. And, I am very happy to say that those are not words I have heard together in quite some time. Thank you all for what we have achieved, thank you for what will come next, and above all, thank you for your service.