DAVID MCKAY WILSON

Class allegations invade Edgemont incorporation fight in Greenburgh: Tax Watch

Tax Watch columnist David McKay Wilson explores Edgemont incorporation and the future of the Theodore D. Young Community Center in Greenburgh.

David McKay Wilson
The Journal News

Who pays for a Greenburgh community center has emerged as a contentious issue in the fight over the incorporation of Edgemont.

Greenburgh town Supervisor Paul Feiner has no interest in spreading the cost of the Theodore Young Community Center among all Greenburgh taxpayers.

It arose after a judge’s order that Greenburgh set the date for a referendum on whether the wealthy hamlet will become the seventh village in Westchester County’s biggest town.

Town Supervisor Paul Feiner, the 14-term incumbent, has raised the issue in his latest attempt to derail the Edgemont incorporation drive. He maintains that some Edgemont residents, whom he declines to name, have complained to him for decades about paying property taxes to support the town’s Theodore D. Young Community Center. 

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The Young Center, located in the town’s predominantly African-American hamlet of Fairview, provides social services and has recreational and arts programs geared to the town’s low-income residents. A state law particular to Greenburgh requires that recreational programs located in the town’s unincorporated area — outside of its six villages — get supported solely by property taxes from the town’s unincorporated area and user fees, even though residents from its villages have been allowed to participate in activities there.

“One of the underlying reasons they want to incorporate is that Edgemont doesn’t want to pay what they’ve been paying for the Theodore Young Center,” Feiner told Tax Watch. “I’ve talked to people in Edgemont over the years. It has come up hundreds of times. And I think it’s a class issue."

Edgemont Incorporation Committee leader Jeff Sherwin said Feiner’s allegations were without merit.

Jeff Sherwin, left, with fellow resident Jon Lewis, hope to incorporate Edgemont.
 Peter Carr/The Journal News
Jeff Sherwin at his Edgemont home is part of the movement to incorporate Edgemont into a village.

“He’s making baseless allegations, but referring to unknown people,” said Sherwin. “He did it to cover up a policy of more than 30 years that supports the very allegation he is making against us. It’s deplorable he'd make those allegations against his own residents without any data to support it.”

Even Edgemont incorporation opponent Hugh Schwartz found Feiner’s allegations off base.

“I think Paul misspoke,” said Schwartz. “I wouldn’t characterize it that way. I think they don’t care.”

The Theodore D. Young Community Center is on Manhattan Ave. in unincorporated Greenburgh.

Greenburgh's complexity

Feiner will announce on Friday whether he will appeal Justice Susan Cacace's order to hold the referendum, or set the date for the vote, which Cacace said must take place before March 14. 

Feiner’s assertion has roiled debate in the town of 89,000, located in central Westchester and along the Hudson River. It’s a town with 10 school districts, six villages, three paid fire departments, some of Westchester’s highest-priced real estate, as well as public housing for the town’s low-income residents.

The villages — Irvington, Hastings-on-Hudson, Elmsford, Tarrytown, Ardsley and Dobbs Ferry — comprise 52 percent of the town’s population, but pay little in town taxes because most of their public services are supplied by the village governments. The remaining 48 percent of the town’s population lives in the hamlets of Edgemont, Hartsdale, Fairview and Mayfair-Knollwood.

No one denies that Edgemont’s incorporation will have a major impact on what’s called the town’s “B” budget, which covers such services as police, sanitation, planning and recreation in the town’s unincorporated section. Edgemont taxpayers contribute about 27 percent of Greenburg's $76 million budget, which includes about $4 million for the Young Center and its swimming pool.  

The town also has a recreation department, with a swimming pool located at Anthony F. Veteran Park in Ardsley, which also has a budget of about $4 million. It serves the wealthier part of unincorporated Greenburgh, which has fewer minority residents. 

The Greenburgh recreation department is headquartered at Anthony Veteran Park in Ardsley.

Edgemont incorporation would take an estimated $1 million each from the Young Center and the Veteran Park programs. The losses would be made up by program cuts, or tax hikes on the remaining part of unincorporated Greenburgh.

Stabilized funding

Edgemont incorporation leaders say that the Young Center's financial future could be stabilized if the town were to reclassify it as a social services agency, to better reflect the breadth of the services to residents from the entire town, including its villages.

That would bring it from under control of the Finneran Law, which requires any recreation program in unincorporated Greenburgh to be paid for only by those taxpayers in that part of town. 

Unincorporated Greenburgh’s population is 18 percent black, compared to 7 percent for the villages, according to U.S. Census data.

“It’s wrong to pretend Theodore Young is a recreational agency when it was created to be a social service agency," said Robert Bernstein, president of the Edgemont Community Council.  "It continues to be a pretext to save village taxpayers a few dollars. It seems arbitrary and unnecessarily cruel.”

Villages say no

Bernstein has been fighting this battle for more than a decade. He lost his legal bid to overturn the policy in 2009, after Justice Cacace ruled that the town was justified in classifying the Young Center as a recreational center.

“While there are social, cultural and health-related aspects to many of these programs, it cannot be said that these programs are not recreational,” she wrote.

Now the Edgemont incorporation proponents are seeking a political solution. They want Feiner to reclassify the Young Center so the entire town could support it.

Feiner won’t do it.

“The villages have said they aren’t interested,” Feiner said. “And we work well with the villages.”

The villages, meanwhile, have their own recreational departments. Village officials don’t want their taxpayers to chip in for the Young Center. At the same time, they have not complained that their residents use the facility, even though village taxpayers don't pay for it. 

Photos by Peter Carr/The Journal News
Kelly Murphy is sworn in as Tarrytown Fire Department?s first female chief by Tarrytown Mayor Drew Fixell, on April 8, 2016.

Any move to reclassify the Young Center — and have the villages pay for its budget — would likely bring the issue back to court.

“All of a sudden, Edgemont wants to change the rules so the burden falls on everyone’s shoulders,” said Tarrytown Mayor Drew Fixell. “There’s something very nervy about it.”

But Sherwin says Greenburgh officials need to look beyond the parochial interests of the villages, to embrace a townwide solution to blunt the impact that will be felt by Edgemont’s incorporation.

“We want the same local government that Drew Fixell and the rest of Tarrytown enjoys,” he said. “But we also want to ensure that social services for the entire town are supported, by us all.”

MAP: Edgemont proposed village (in green)

 

David McKay Wilson is an opinion columnist for The Journal News/lohud and writes the weekly Tax Watch column. Twitter: davidmckay415