To the editor:

One of my favorite ad slogans growing up was the Syms’ clothing stores’ “An educated consumer is our best customer.”  Unfortunately, when it comes to Sustainable Westchester, that is not the position of the Village of Pelham.

Those who move to the Village, but not Pelham Manor, are automatically enrolled in Sustainable Westchester’s renewable energy program.  I think most new arrivals are, as I was, unaware of this.  The result is that they tend to pay higher energy bills than necessary until they manage to figure out that they can opt out of the program.  For me, figuring it out was not easy.  In the over six and a half years since February 2019, moreover, Sustainable Westchester’s rates appear to have been higher than Con Edison’s except for the period between February 2021 and June 2022, at some times, materially higher.

A lack of disclosure about the cost of this government-imposed program is not the case for every Westchester community.  The Town of Greenburgh has an easy to read consumer disclosure that it posts regularly on its website.  Looking at the disclosure for July 2025, one can see that  Con Edison’s electricity rate averaged 10.96 cents and the 100% renewable rate (the default in the Village of Pelham) was 13.29 cents.  At 1000 kWh a month, this difference between the Con Edison rate and the Village’s default rate comes to approximately $280 a year, effectively an undisclosed Village of Pelham tax on new residents.  Welcome to Pelham!

It would be very easy for the Village of Pelham to do what Greenburgh does.  (It would assuredly take far less time than must have been spent by Mayor Mullen and Trustees Carpenter and Mohan to gain acknowledgments in the 41-page single-spaced “Local Government Operations Climate Action Plan” of the Pelham Sustainability Advisory Board that appeared when I was vainly searching the Village’s website for a Sustainable Westchester disclosure.)  The real question is why the Village does not follow Greenburgh’s approach, particularly when it has been clear for some time that the mandated program only costs Village taxpayers.  One cannot know for sure, but it is at least possible that it is a government version of the dinnertime admonition of my parents, who grew up in the Depression, that “you’ll eat your liver because it’s good for you.”  That is, Justice Brandeis’ “sunlight” of disclosure would undermine a cherished policy goal.  Although I have sympathy for old-fashioned parenting, such paternalism has no place with respect to adult taxpayers, who should be able to decide more easily whether they want to pay more for energy at a time of sky-high utility bills.  The Village should adopt Greenburgh’s disclosures immediately and post them on its website at least quarterly. 

Arthur S. Long

165 Boulevard

Village of Pelham, NY  

10803