Greenburgh fails to stymie Edgemont incorporation in Albany

Tax Watch columnist David McKay Wilson continues to delve into the highly charged issue of Edgemont attempting to become Greenburgh's seventh village.

The town of Greenburgh has failed in its last-gasp move in Albany to halt efforts by residents to create the town’s seventh village in Edgemont.

Filed without fanfare on June 14, the bill evoked strong opposition from Edgemont incorporation supporters as well as others outside the proposed village. They cranked up a fierce lobbying campaign that left the bill pending in both houses when the state Legislature adjourned Wednesday night.

Private Eyes: Greenburgh supervisor Paul Feiner hires private eyes in Edgemont.

Edgemont: Residents seek village status.

Map: See the proposed Edgemont boundaries

“We are very grateful that we were able to make in-roads with the state Legislature, which recognized here are serious problems with the bill,” said Edgemont Community Council President Bob Bernstein. “We dodged a bullet, but we still have a town supervisor, Paul Feiner, who is determined to fight us rather than work with us.”

Feiner said he was disappointed that the Town Board wouldn't be given the power to veto the incorporation effort because Edgemont voters could approve the referendum without knowing the implications of their vote.

"People could be voting on emotion, creating a government and don’t know what they are getting into,"said Feiner. "Their taxes are going to go up,and their services will go down. It's will be a lose-lose for everyone." 

Assemblyman Tom Abinanti, D-Mount Pleasant, the bill’s Assembly sponsor, vowed to revive the issue in the 2018 session. He maintained that New York’s laws regarding the incorporation of villages need to be updated, to make it more difficult for residents to petition to create a new government.

Abinanti wants to incorporate the bill into a statewide measure, which would give town governments new tools to prevent its residents from forming a new village within town limits.

Abinanti said the bill would align with Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s campaign to consolidate local governments.

“Forming a village in a place that already has full services is an anachronism,” said Abinanti. “We shouldn’t be creating any more governments unless there is a really strong reason to do so. You don’t change your local government, just for political convenience.”

As things stand

Under current law, voters in the proposed village would decide whether to create their own new government in a referendum. First, though, the town supervisor must certify a petition signed by at least 20 percent of the proposed village’s registered voters.

Feiner rejected a petition in May, citing unclear boundaries, and an inadequate number of signatures. That rejection is on appeal in state Supreme Court.

The proposed bill would have given the Greenburgh Town Board veto power over the incorporation effort if it found that the proposed village would have an “adverse impact” on the town. The bill would require “community impact statements” to explore how the incorporation would affect those living within the proposed village as well as the rest of the town.

It would also have to prepared five-year projections on village spending.

The Town Board would then have the power to rule on whether the incorporation would have an adverse impact on the town. The all-Democratic Greenburgh Town Board typically votes with Feiner.

The town of Greenburgh, which has a population of about 90,000, includes six villages where about half of its residents live. The remainder live in what’s known as unincorporated Greenburgh in areas called Edgemont, Hartsdale, Fairview and Mayfair-Knollwood.

Sponsoring the bill were Assemblyman Tom Abinanti, D-Mount Pleasant, and state Sen. Andrea Stewart-Cousins, D-Yonkers. The Greenburgh Town Board unanimously backed the measure at a raucous Town Board meeting Sunday night, at which proponents of Edgemont incorporation and other Greenburgh residents railed against the proposal.

Not one resident spoke in favor of the legislation, said Jeff Sherwin, who heads up the Edgemont Incorporation Committee. Also opposing the bill were the Council of Greenburgh Civic Associations and the Hartsdale Neighborhood Association.

“Nobody wants their rights taken away,” said Sherwin in a telephone interview from Albany, where he was meeting with Westchester legislators. “It’s clear that the people of Greenburgh don’t want this bill.”

Feiner has said such a bill could prevent what he sees as a “devastating fiscal blow” to the town government, with the loss of an estimated $17 million to the town budget. He’s circulating nomination petitions for his 14th term. No opponent has so far emerged.

Edgemont proponents insist they want to contract with the town for certain services, such as police coverage, at the cost they currently pay. The town, however, has shown little interest in engaging in such a dialogue because the village has yet to be formed.

While Feiner’s rejection of the petition is pending in state Supreme Court, Edgemont leaders are garnering signatures on a second petition which would have come under the new law if approved by the Legislature and signed by Cuomo.

The last-minute flurry of activity in Albany marked the latest attempt by Feiner to stymie the incorporation of Westchester’s newest village since Rye Brook was incorporated in 1982. When the petition was submitted in February, Feiner's office refused to accept it for a week because the town supervisor was on vacation.

Then the town hired private investigators to go door-to-door, posing as supporters of incorporation, to get those who signed the petition to sign an affidavit that would invalidate their signature. The town also hired a surveyor to provide evidence for the incorporation opponents.

Sherwin and Bernstein said they made the rounds in Albany, meeting with Stewart-Cousins, state Sen. George Latimer, D-Rye, and counsel to the Senate Republicans. They failed to meet with Abinanti.

Stewart-Cousins, who leads the Senate Democrats, issued a statement in which she said she introduced the bill out of respect for the Greenburgh Town Board. But Stewart-Cousins was not enthusiastic about her support — a crucial element to win passage of a bill in the session’s final days.

“The Assembly speaker’s office was concerned on some technical points,” said Abinanti. “I don’t know whether Andrea wanted the bill or not. That wasn’t clear. But it was clear that the bill wasn’t going anywhere in the Senate.”

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