Editor’s note: This letter was provided by Village of Pelham Mayor Chance Mullen.

Dear neighbors,

On Tuesday, November 2nd, I will be running for reelection to a second term as Village of Pelham Mayor. Even though I am running unopposed, I’d like to offer my reflections on the last few years and share my priorities for my next term.

When I was sworn in on April 1, 2019, we were facing myriad challenges. Failing infrastructure had been depleting our cash reserves, we were just beginning to negotiate a development deal with Pelham House, and our garbage provider was facing legal battles that would soon become a crisis. What we didn’t know at the time was the historic social upheaval we’d experience after the murder of George Floyd, or that we’d soon be navigating a global pandemic that would threaten our local budget, our downtown businesses, and our families’ lives and livelihoods. Despite these challenges, I’m enormously grateful to have had the opportunity to serve our community during such an extraordinary time, and I’m proud of my tenure.

Because of the work I’ve done with my colleagues on the Board of Trustees, the Village is now stronger than it’s been in many years. We are finally on a path toward fiscal health, closing our deficit, addressing capital repairs that have been deferred for far too long, and setting aside money for future priorities. To support our local businesses through the pandemic, we added outdoor street dining, put picnic tables in the park, organized community events, and launched a new parking app that gives shoppers and diners a safe and easy way to pay their parking meters. We are currently in the process of adding over $40 million in new value to our commercial tax base – equivalent to about a fifth of its current value. Just this week, we awarded a contract to remediate Young Avenue Field. After safety concerns forced its closure three years ago, it will be ready for kids and adults to use next summer. And after a tumultuous journey with our garbage service, we’re moving away from the private carting industry for good. In just 13 months, we’ll launch an in-house sanitation service that will be more reliable, flexible, higher quality and better for our long-term fiscal health.

After the murder of George Floyd, when so many other communities erected barriers to reform, we went beyond what we were required to do by New York State. Village and Police Department leadership worked in solidarity with six BIPOC resident volunteers and as a result of that work, we’ve attracted the most diverse civil service list of local police officer candidates in our history (including two female officers who scored in the top 10 on their civil service exams), we have more transparent protocols for investigating misconduct, we’ve developed new policies to ensure fair treatment of transgender citizens and police department personnel, and our officers will soon be trained on the use of our new body cameras.

Engaging with residents and relying on our community’s collective expertise is a core part of nearly everything we do. We established a Pedestrian Safety and Traffic Calming Committee, who led a walking assessment of Lincoln Avenue with local and county officials to recommend improvements once the bridge is completed, gathered data on school commutes, participated in the county’s Intersection Redesign training program, and will soon be partnering with our traffic consultants to make our downtown roadways and intersections safer and more accessible. We’ve embraced initiatives from the Sustainability Advisory Board and our newly formed Climate Smart Communities Task Force. These groups were instrumental in helping us launch our Food Waste Drop-off site and promote important initiatives like the Heatsmart and the Healthy Yards campaigns. And we’ve recently launched the Village of Pelham Council on the Arts, a group committed to elevating the voices of those who often go unheard and supporting our local arts institutions. The council gave us our first annual Juneteenth celebration, added support for a Mickey Schwerner plaque dedication, brought music and theater to Wolfs Lane Park this summer, and is working right now to install art throughout our downtown and launch our public access TV channel.

While I’m excited by our accomplishments so far, I believe the next two years will be even more successful.

We will soon break ground on our new LEED Gold municipal center, which will provide a new home for our fire department, police department and Village Hall. This project saves us $17.4 million in repairs needed for our existing facilities. The development deal we negotiated also provides funding for a host of other priorities: parking, fleet electrification, traffic safety, and a $400,000 contribution toward the “Fair Share” program we created in 2019, which requires all developers to make cash contributions to support our long-term infrastructure needs.

Speaking of which, if you’re someone who is tired of stormwater backing up through your toilet and flooding your basement every time it rains, you’ll be happy to know that in just a few weeks, we’ll be cleaning every sanitary sewer in the village, dropping in cameras and conducting smoke tests. In January, we’ll have an actual plan to fix that issue for good, and we’re working with our engineers now to start building a similar plan to address storm drain capacity.

After this summer’s flooding, it should be clear that we must prioritize investments in climate resilience and we must also reduce our contribution to climate change in the first place. In just a few months, we will have five public EV charging stations in our downtown, thanks to a $212,000 grant we secured from the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation. And by the end of this next term, the Village of Pelham will have a Climate Action Plan, built in partnership with Westchester County under an agreement we entered into this summer. Our plan will be developed utilizing the expertise of the ICLEI, an international coalition of local governments committed to sustainability. It will include a GHG emissions inventory, a plan to electrify our vehicle fleet, and this year, we’re starting a vehicle fund to ensure that future boards have the funding they’ll need to implement it. This is what it looks like to move Pelham forward.

As proud as I am of my contributions to this work, none of these accomplishments would have been possible without the incredibly smart, dedicated, courageous public servants I’ve been able to work with on the Village Board of Trustees. I’m so excited to be on the ballot again with Deputy Mayor Mike Carpenter and Trustee Lisa Hill-Ries, whose passion for our community is palpable and infectious. Their wisdom has been invaluable during such a challenging time. While I will deeply miss working with my friend and colleague, Ariel Spira-Cohen, I know that we are in good hands with Don Otondi. A Chester Park resident since 2007, with three kids in Pelham’s schools, Don will be an excellent addition to the board. And while we’re all hoping to enjoy a term that does not include the emergence of another global pandemic, you can trust that we will do this job to the best of our abilities, regardless of the challenges we may face.

Thank you for the faith you’ve placed in us.

Best,

Chance