Why I am Voting No on the $18M Irvington Village Referendum.
On November 7th, residents in Irvington NY will be asked to vote on a bond authorizing $18.2 million in borrowing for a new Town Hall, including upgrades to the Fire Station. If you consider interest payments, the true cost to taxpayers over 25 years will be $32.5 million.
I attended both recent Open House information sessions on the project. After talking both to proponents and concerned citizens, I am going to vote no and encourage others to vote no, for three primary reasons:
- A rushed process with lack of community involvement and stakeholder consultation: This has been handled very differently than the 2019 Schools Bond Referendum, which used a model process and won over community support.
- The cost-benefit: The $18.2M project mainly goes to build new village offices and expand the Fire Station, prioritizing this project over many other Village needs. This is a time when everyone’s budgets are under economic pressures. The plan offers no offsetting cost cuts or revenue, nor any substantial new benefits for residents. The average family’s tax increase will be $765 EXTRA per YEAR … for 25 years. That’s $19,131 per family over the 25 year life of the bond. (Note this number runs higher than in the town brochure, but comes from the latest revision as interest rates rose, as posted on the official village website.)
- Most importantly, the opportunity cost of the project in diverting resources from a TRUE VISION we can all invest behind: An inspiring revitalization for Irvington’s historic downtown. This project is completely at odds with the bold parts of the Irvington 2018 Comprehensive Plan, which called for relocating the fire house and the DPW outside the historic downtown to less valuable land, funding this by sale of the real estate involved. This would enable exciting “mixed use” development to create a thriving downtown. Even if we will need a new firehouse at some point soon, we should take a little more time to do this process right instead of locking in the village to poor use of Main Street and the waterfront area for decades to come.
In a town as small as Irvington, we only get one or two chances a decade to change the potential of the town. We had a well-developed process to prioritize what we should do. This giant project in the middle of Main Street ignores the results of that broadly-inclusive process in 2018 to build a real vision for Irvington’s future.
It has to be said, before proceeding, that everyone in Irvington should be grateful to the men and women who work for the town, keep us safe in the Fire Department as volunteers and the Police Force as professionals, and provide truly excellent town services from sanitation and plowing to recreation and more.
There are legitimate asks from those departments that deserve to be taken seriously, and in my view some of them should be prioritized (in a redesign of this proposal, worth taking time to get right).
In our village democracy, citizens have to make choices and trade-offs as there are many good things to do competing for scarce funds and attention. We should have real debate, and not expect citizens to say yes to every request… Being grateful does not require that taxpayers be complacent.
Let me go on to discuss each of these three points above in detail. Forgive me if this gets long.
And remember, VOTING DAY IS TUESDAY NOV 7TH. Whichever side turns out the most voters wins. There is also early voting starting Oct 28th at the Hastings Library and other locations in Greenburgh. Times and locations listed here.
Reason One: A Failure of Process.
The process for this project has been the complete opposite of the 2019 School Bond for IHS/IMS school safety and field improvements, where the town in the end voted strongly yes (and my wife and I voted yes).
In that process, the Board of Education spent 18 months conducting listening & information sessions, explaining the need for school security upgrades in particular, and truly took feedback and made adjustments to the proposal. This made the end result better and won community support.
The contrast with this new Municipal Hall process is striking. The PR firm hired by the Village to promote the Bond just sent out mailers claiming this $18.2M project was many years in the making. That may be true in a limited sense. Yet I’ve spoken to a lot of friends active in town political causes, and almost none of us had heard of this project until July or August. In September I asked some 50 residents if they had heard of the project, and NONE of them had. Many questioned if this were the same as the prior Theater Redesign project (Answer: No, this is completely different).
The truth is this was an “insider baseball” process where Village Administrator Larry Schopfer, his town department leads, and the Trustees had conversations in their Trustee meetings and less visible forums and with their hired consultants.
A factor to consider is that our very popular Mayor Brian Smith is handing over the reins to a new mayor. Jonathan Siegel is running unopposed on November 7. Jonathan has not been involved in this project, as confirmed to me by the Town Administrator at the Open House.
For me at least, it seems better governance that we should take a pause and let the new mayor get up to speed and formulate their own views and stamp on the decision, since it’s the biggest capital project in the HISTORY of the village, as confirmed by the Town Administrator.
For example, the new Mayor could add public listening sessions and also integrate in decisions about the fate of the EMS service and building. EMS is a separate private organization down from the fire station. EMS is rumored to face financial difficulties, in a way soon to fall on the Village’s lap to solve, which town administrators acknowledged during the Open House. A slow-down would let the EMS be considered as part of this.
As a last quibble on process, the “Open House” was a mill-about, “ask questions privately while looking at promotional posters” style event. No one gets to hear questions raised by other citizens, and no suggestions are taken since this is already baked, so everything remains very controlled and turns out to minimize true debate. Even the town promotional website links to long YouTube videos of dry Trustee Meetings. Is this public involvement?
Reason Two: The Cost-Benefit
Very few residents have likely had time to dive into what’s actually in this project, so let me highlight where the big costs are going, as $18.2 million sounds like a lot of money… And it IS… especially for the limited (almost none, as you shall hear) new services that residents would gain.
A quick summary before the details: The main expense centers on $17M to build a state-of-the-art brand-new Village Hall across the street from the current Village Hall.
This is accomplished by adding on to the existing core of the 1965 Fire Station at 90 Main Street. The bones of the current fire station remain intact, while the new building is added on around it, taking over 2 adjacent lots by buying and tearing down two houses that stand next door today (one of which is already purchased). The fire station facade will be replaced allowing for wider doors and a wider footprint, and new rooms added on to the back of the current fire station for better decontamination and proper storage of contaminated gear.
The project ends up with nice new co-located offices for all town administrators so they can be in the same building for face to face communication, including Parks & Rec, DPW, Buildings, the Clerk, the Town Administrator, and the like. The Police Department remains mostly in the bottom of the current Village Hall but gets expanded space.
Some people are under the impression that this project is about revitalizing the Village Hall Theater. There is a lot of interest in a revitalized community theater, which is admirable, but please don’t be fooled. $17M of the $18M budget goes to the new consolidated town offices and expanded fire station, and about $1M (the LAST leg of the project) towards the theater. This is a fig leaf, and let me explain why. Odds are, this project budget delivers ZERO difference for our theater. Let’s dig in.
First, the moribund Village Theater can reopen as soon as the disastrous HVAC project is complete. That project is ALREADY funded by the town and has NO DEPENDENCE on this bond. The sad situation with the unused Village Theater is a complex tale involving Covid-19, the HVAC project that has stumbled and is being rebid to a new contractor, turnover in leadership at the Clocktower Players, and other factors. There was a $6M alternative Theater Redesign project promoted a few years ago which was going to raise mostly private funds to build a new side entrance towards the back of Village Hall, but that lost steam during the pandemic. Now we see a completely different approach, which is basically to move almost everything out of the current Village Hall (which we just spent a lot of money to re-facade) and leave almost the whole building to the theater.
Still, having an entrance to the theater via the front steps off Main Street, stairs to the upstairs theater from the lobby, a nice concession stand and box office, plus ADA improvements (although we do have accessibility via an elevator already)… all that will appeal to many residents who long for Irvington as a cultural center.
Yet this aspiration leads to a second issue. This $18.2M total budget will run out of money before the theater redesign portion (“the last $1M”) arrives. By its nature, and confirmed with Larry at the Open House, the main theater staircase work CANNOT begin until the new building is complete and town employees can move across the street. That means it is years away. Likely 3 years. So the big benefit for residents comes last, sequentially.
Let’s now look at the odds this project comes in on time and on budget. The last two major Village projects are as follows:
— The 2014 Refacade Bond for Village Hall. This repointing ended up taking a LOT more money and many years longer than originally budgeted.
— The HVAC project for the Village Hall theater, which is over 2 years delayed and vastly over budget. As Larry confirmed during the Open House, the town underestimated the complexity of work on an old historic building.
Now we are told the $17 million project across the street, to demolish existing buildings, and build a new structure around the current 1965 firehouse without knocking it down… all this will go perfectly on time and on budget.
I am not alleging any corrupt intent or incompetence in the least. Construction is messy and complicated post-pandemic for all kinds of entities. This is our sad new reality. If you believe this will go perfectly, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.
When this new project runs over budget, what part do you think gets cut first? The Trustees will have to make decisions. Oh wait, there will be no choice but to either cut the last piece of the project, the only part not begun yet (the Theater portion), or raise another bond for the extra cost. (The town can also seek state or federal grants, but they have not secured any yet before putting this cost entirely on local voters, with hope to get lucky later.)
Thirdly, the belief this is the right project to “revitalize” the Theater is a “build it and they will come” kind of plan based on general hopes, not the same as a rigorous strategic plan / business plan. We are not offered any written plan for a true thriving entertainment and repertory center.
How is a proper theater plan normally done? From Lincoln Center to the Westport Playhouse to the moderately successful Tarrytown Music Hall? It starts with private fundraising, done in conjunction with an anchor private sector tenant making a commitment to commercial programming. Putting the whole cost on Village taxpayers is debatable. Unlike say the Westport Playhouse, our relatively small seat count theater, combined with our sloping Main Street, and reliance on limited off-hour parking at the Main Street School, does not seem conducive to bringing in really “top tier” renowned artists to make this a commercially-viable attraction… Without that plan, the Trustees are proposing to turn over full control of the town’s most visible and historic building just to the theater, along with occasional use of empty former offices for generic Parks & Rec classes.
At the least, you’d want to see a full strategic plan, bringing together donations, a commercial anchor making a big financial commitment for programming, and taxpayer funds added LAST as a sweetener to make it work. I would be for that. The closest to a plan we hear from the trustees is that magically being able to put the Box Office behind the front steps and enter from the front steps will greatly increase theater awareness and walk-up purchasers. Even though there used to be signs everywhere about shows and online purchase was long available. The issues are deeper.
This “build it and they will come” theory serves as substitute for a strategic plan. I might vote for $1M for a nicer theater space as a taxpayer, but not $18M.
And it bears repeating — odds are we do not get a single dollar from this $18M for the theater anyway (see above on cost overruns). And the theater can reopen without this $18M, and we can see if it is gaining steam and building momentum to sustain a bigger project at that point.
Now turning to the main $17M for the new Village Hall, you may be surprised all the items included in the project, so let me list some of them:
— A complete new Judiciary Wing with judge’s quarters, room to hold jury trials, and the like. Do we need jury trials in Irvington? No one so far can tell me how many jury trials a year we hold. Oh, and when rarely we do, we just obtain space at Greenburgh’s facilities. Is this a “critical need” at the top of the priorities for residents, above say affordable housing, traffic problems, struggling downtown small businesses, inflation, and many other issues?
— Co-located offices for all town administrators so they can be in the same building for face to face communication. This would certainly be useful but seems a “nice to have” in the era when most communication is electronic or by phone. Nothing stops the administrators from walking to be in person for key meetings. See the part about $17 million dollars in cost for saving the walking up the street.
It is understandable that those working in the Village Hall would like newer offices as they work in an old 1902 building. Why not spend a modest sum of money to make more comfortable the work spaces in our existing Village Hall? Also, the town now owns a 3-story building at 86 Main Street across the street, which could be cheaply repurposed with small renovations as storage or work space in the near term. One tenant has already been relocated, with two more in some stage of being asked to relocate, the Town Administrator said.
— Upgrades to the Fire House: This is the first part of the whole plan that has an aspect with an ACTUAL “critical need.” But the details matter here.
There are some legitimate problems with the current firehouse, and the whole town is properly grateful and appreciative for the dedicated volunteers who keep us all safe from fires and disasters.
The part that seems most time-sensitive is the Decontamination and Safe Storage rooms, which should be separate from the main day-to-day fire crew spaces. I discussed this with Assistant Chief Tarricone at the Open House, who is very approachable, knowledgeable and thoughtful on all these topics. The firefighters are exposed to terrible toxins and carcinogens both from their gear and from petrochemical substances burning in fires akin to “burn pits” in the Gulf War. Tarricone shared with me that the number one cause of death nationally for firefighters is now cancer due to these exposures, which is tragic and scary.
Now it seems to me that no one has considered funding a much smaller ($1M?) project to build a decontamination room and a separate secure gear storage room on to the back of the existing firehouse to get right to this problem quickly and affordably, even to buy a few years as an interim solution while a relocated firehouse can be properly considered, as called for in the 2018 Master Plan.
To be sure, the $18.2M architectural plan actually does exactly this — adds the decontamination and storage rooms as two new rooms in the space available now behind the main bays, which remain intact. Can we invest in those new rooms without the rest of this giant project? There may even be pre-fab options that could be brought in to expedite a solution. This seems urgent and shouldn’t wait through this construction’s 3 year timeline.
The other improvements to the Fire House seem worthwhile but, at the risk of making hard choices at a time of enormous inflation and financial pressure, it seems like things could soldier through as done today until a long-term new firehouse is built… relocated off Main Street (we’ll get to this in Section Three).
Yes the squeeze with the mirrors in the garage doors is very tight, and the bays are narrow so only one fire truck can have open doors at a time, but the fire volunteers admirably make it work for now, and we’ve had to their credit no burned-down buildings nor any major accidents or injuries. As Larry admitted, one would not spend $18M on the basis of ideal national fire station guidelines which are not legally binding, moreover. Each ask has to be evaluated against other uses of the funds across many competing good asks.
Some residents are under the impression we need a new Fire Station to enable purchase of larger fire trucks. Assistant Chief Tarricone confirmed at the Open House that they will keep the existing trucks. Our village historic center is too narrow for larger vehicles, and these modified vehicles are well suited now.
If the Fire Department or town needs interim storage or office space meanwhile, the town just bought the 3 story building at 86 Main Street and has plans already to relocate its residential and one commercial tenant, preparing to tear down the structure if this Bond passes.
It would be cheap presumably to use that building in the interim, renovate an existing bathroom and an apartment in 86 Main… for use as an interim locker room, storage room, office space, or what have you. Did anyone look at a bargain way to make do for a few years?
— An expanded police department with its own indoor firing range to replace the current outdoor one by the reservoir, an evidence closet, and separate male and female officer locker rooms. Now we have I believe one female officer, and the current restroom at the Police Department is a gender-neutral single bathroom, so do we really need this and a new indoor range for a small village of under 1800 families? Twice a year officers have to qualify on firearms by law, but there is access to a range in Valhalla, in addition to the functioning outdoor range up Cyrus Field Road (admittedly a noise and environmental hazard a few days a year, but workable until we sort out a better solution). Ardsley and Hastings police do not have their own ranges. It costs overtime to go to Valhalla, but not $18M. Anyway, the whole facility should be elsewhere than Main Street.
— An equipped gym for firefighters and police force members. It’s about 40 feet by 18 feet in the plan schematic, so decent sized. This again seems useful and I’m sure many fire stations have something like that, but surely in the “nice to have” category.
— Relocation of the Parks & Rec department from their current building at 71 Main Street to the new building, and then a planned sale of that site, a former historic church on Main Street. There is zero discussion offered of what would replace that old church, which is concerning. I learned the building has no legal protections, so any purchaser would not be bound to keep the historic building, so it could be demolished. It would require Zoning and ARB approvals which would be very controversial. The uncertainty over obtaining any approval would make it difficult to get a top price for the Rec building, another reason why the firehouse or DPW would be a better sale property. Many townspeople would presumably love to see that historic building preserved… and the not-so-historically-charming 1965 firehouse relocated, with the latter land redeveloped instead.
As a final note on the poor Cost-Benefit that residents are being offered, as a taxpayer I am disappointed that there are no offsetting cost or future revenue proposals specified to fund this, only tax increases of $765 a year per family.
We all moved to Irvington or stayed here knowing it was a high-tax community, with the attraction being excellent schools, good town services, and safe neighborhoods. But the tax levels just keep going up and up, forcing many parents to fear the need to move away after the kids go off to college, which is sad as this is a special community with wonderful people.
We rightly offer competitive pay and benefits to our town employees, including police officers and retirees, and generous retirement benefits. Those costs are skyrocketing with inflation and medical cost rises and longer retiree lifespans.
We have to deal with those rising structural costs, so where can we find savings and efficiencies or expand the tax base, so as to offset them?
How about cost-sharing on services with other small villages in the Rivertowns or Greenburgh? How about reducing town government headcount over time, with retirements? How about raising money by selling valuable land down by the Waterfront? None of that has been proposed in this Bond referendum. Because it’s Westchester, so towns assume taxpayers will just keep paying more and more with no limit. Is it time to send a message?
Now let’s move to the last and (in my view) the top reason to vote against this misguided project.
I would actually be willing to pay more taxes for a really inspiring vision or widely-desired new services. But this is not that… I might pay up to see a truly-revitalized village center, a town pool, a thriving retail and restaurant scene, or solutions to our many town problems, from affordable housing, to struggling small businesses, traffic congestion, and more. Upgrades could pay off in higher town tax revenues and higher property values. But that is NOT what we get in this Bond. In fact, we get a wrong choice that will crowd out and complicate any hope of bringing the 2018 Master Plan to life.
Reason Three: The Disconnect from the Master Plan or any Strategic Vision
Now let’s get to the heart of the matter. It is stunning that the first large capital project proposed since the 2018 Updated Comprehensive Master Plan is completely disconnected and at odds with that bold vision for village revitalization.
To the credit of Mayor Smith and scores of village residents who spent months in committee work writing that 2018 Plan, we actually had a roadmap. Why is it completely abandoned here?
Yes, that 2018 Plan would take solving some hard problems on relocating things that need to be relocated. That takes leadership and effort. Instead, when it proved complicated, it just seemed easier to give up and raise taxes and simply build bigger administrative buildings in the middle of our precious Main Street. One trustee’s response when I raised this was “Oh that 2018 Plan implementation will be our next big project.”
That is completely backwards. This giant Village Hall project will eat up taxpayer willingness for big capital investments, let us admit, so it has an opportunity cost. More deeply, it will lock in a poor use of space in our scarce Main Street area for decades, making the 2018 Plan almost impossible to enact.
For those not familiar, the core of the 2018 Comprehensive Plan as written (with a lot of citizen involvement) was to revitalize our historic Waterfront and Main Street with some bold moves. These included relocating both the Astor Street DPW facility and the Firehouse off some of the most valuable real estate in the Rivertowns, and using the land proceeds and tax base expansion to fund the project.
The Plan called for many more exciting ideas. It envisioned a thriving set of new and old restaurants, coffee houses, stores, bars and watering holes laid out along the more walkable Astor and River Roads with views of our stunning riverfront. This would be 3-story high, attractive “mixed-use”, with street retail, a mix of affordable and mainstream apartments on 2nd and 3rd floors, and underground parking garages. This could leverage all the unused weekend and evening parking in our commuter lot, as well as easy walkable train access. The Housing Committee is studying a design for this, I learned at the Open House, with Pace University urban design experts, which is exciting.
This bond project will be a turning point for the village as if it passes, it will dominate all attention for the next 3 years, not to mention budgets. The fire house location instead could fetch millions of dollars in a sale (New York State has a program to buy land at full market price upfront if it will expand housing stock), and could go to a developer to build a mixed-use development similar to the waterfront, with attractive apartments and mixed retail and rear parking built-in. 100+ new apartments between the two locations would generate foot traffic for local small business, millions in new tax revenue annually, and life to downtown.
As an optional add-on, the Plan proposed adding an attractive pedestrian footbridge over the train tracks to Scenic Hudson (near Red Barn Bakery) to connect our waterfront to our retail and residential cores. (The latter is expensive, so can be saved for “extra credit,” not a must-have.)
By contrast, this $18.2M Bond project just ignores all that and asks us to lock up a massive stretch of valuable Main Street real estate, and give up on relocating the Firehouse (and likely DPW too, since approval of this project just signals the status quo can continue).
There are absolutely good ways to relocate the firehouse and DPW. I hear from several people closer to the process that we have given up too easily. I have written a separate post on ways to Bring to Life the 2018 Plan.
To sum up, Irvington has a Vision Plan that could make for a beautiful upgrade to Irvington, while keeping all the historic charm and intimacy we love. Why give up so easily? Let’s keep fighting for a future that is worth investing towards. We can do better.
I respect that town employees and trustees serve in good faith and work hard for our village. We all should be grateful for their service. In a democracy, we can respectfully disagree on policy decisions, and here I respectfully disagree. This is the wrong design, in the wrong place, formulated by the wrong process.
I am organizing an informal group to raise awareness on this project, and hopefully a better and less expensive alternative (at least long run) that could come after. I’ve named it “Taxpayers for Irvington’s Future” and I invite anyone interested to reach out to me to get involved. If there are errors here, please drop me a line — I am happy to update this document.
If nothing else, this is a chance for citizens to discuss our hopes and dreams for the village future, for a place we residents love and cherish. That’s one of the sad aspects of this rushed process, losing out on a chance to really debate and discuss and hear each other out… in true engagement.
Please ask your neighbors to study up, raise awareness, and get out the word. Share this with friends and neighbors as much as you are willing.
AND most of all, VOTE. This referendum needs only a simple majority of those who vote November 7 to pass. If only 100 people show up, 51 voters could make the decision for 6600 residents.
For those who wish to get involved, or offer a constructive edit to this post, please reach out to Jeff.Glueck@gmail.com.
— Jeff
