To the editor:

There is a story about the late Peter Benchley, the Jaws author, when he was about to resign as a speechwriter for Lyndon Johnson.  Johnson liked his speeches on 3X5 index cards, and in his last speech, Benchley filled the first few with statements like, “Many people wonder how we can provide for a strong military defense, carry out our Great Society programs, not raise taxes, and avoid inflation.  But there is a way, and I will tell you that way.”  Then the next card said, “Take it away LBJ, you’re on your own.”  So that Pelham Manor voters aren’t “on their own” as to how their village will be “brought forward” without raising property taxes, experience in the Village of Pelham is telling.

First is debt.  A certain amount of debt in a low-interest-rate environment can be prudent.  To judge properly the claim that substantial infrastructure improvements can be made “without raising taxes,” however, one must consider how quickly debt service can grow even in a low-interest rate environment.  Current Village of Pelham leadership has more than doubled the Village’s debt between 2021 and 2025, to $10.4 million.  Annual debt service is now $1.14 million in an $18.6 million budget.  This is before the estimated $39 million (which likely means at least $45 million when all is said and done) sewer project.  Given that Bronxville’s receipt of a 75% grant for its sewer project was deemed “unprecedented,” and resulted from $28 million in damages to its schools, it’s reasonable to expect that the Village would receive at most 50% in grants, which would result in debt increasing to approximately $33 million.  Extrapolating from current figures results in debt service of about $3.5 million a year, or a little under 20% of budget.  No wonder Mayor Mullen fondly recalled the Pelham Heights/North Pelham merger at the opening of the Village’s new municipal center.

Second is density, i.e., new apartment developments, which has become a second attempted “solution” for the expense of improvements without raising taxes, via developer permitting and other fees.  But traffic safety and flooding have been major issues during the Manor campaign.  Both of these are directly affected by the number of persons living in the local community, and after Village of Pelham elections were moved to November, the priority of development has only grown.  Mayor Mullen’s private-sector biography lists as an accomplishment expanding Pelham’s “housing stock by more than 8% — its most significant growth since the 1920s.”  The results have not been promising.  Attempting to do business on Fifth Avenue, or pick up pizza or sushi on a Friday or Saturday night downtown, has already become an unpleasant experience, given the construction at Fifth and Third, just like trying to do business in overdeveloped New Rochelle, which appears to be the Village of Pelham’s model.  And this is while most of the developments are unfinished.  More cars fitting into the same number of streets will only increase risks to pedestrians even if large-scale so-called “calming” improvements were economically feasible.  And if the current Village of Pelham sewer system is already overburdened, how will it deal with the increased number of residents?    

Voters should look at the Manor budgets, which are publicly available, and, which like the Village’s, demonstrate how little funding is available after salaries and benefits for existing services are paid, when judging whether there are truly alternatives to debt and density if taxes are to be maintained at current levels with unbudgeted new priorities.  And then drive up Fowler Avenue from the Post Road to the intersection of Elderwood and Ancon in the Village of Pelham to see what happens when existing services become neglected.

Debt and density have also come with more than a sprinkle of dogma – not in the religious sense, but rather as “a set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true.”  Going back to 2018, there was a more balanced board in the Village, with a more balanced representation of the Village’s geographies.  Although the Village has two more trustees than the Manor, both now and after the current election only 1 of 7 members of the Village board will be from Pelhamwood or Pelham Heights, whose residents will have grounds for feeling like American colonists at the time of the Townshend Acts.  As a professional matter, on the Village board there are increasing and substantial linkages to the current dogmas of lower Westchester’s Democratic leadership – real estate development, affordable housing (which in today’s economy is inextricably tied to new development and density), and sustainability, in the same manner as Noah Bramson, the former Mayor of New Rochelle, whose administration was responsible for the overbuilding of that town, its pockmarked roads, and lack of parking, has moved on to Sustainable Westchester, which survives due to the costly mandates for renewable energy imposed on new residents in New Rochelle and Pelham, but not in Bronxville, Scarsdale, or (yet) Pelham Manor.  

Now, one may ask, can one attribute these features to the Manor challengers?  This is a fair question, but the answer is an affirmative one.  First, one must assume that the Village of Pelham leadership is reasonable and would resort only to paying bondholders interest rather than receiving more tangible consideration in return and clogging the Village’s streets because no other options are available.  Second, the Manor challengers have been put forward by the same political organization, one that strongly supports the Village of Pelham’s priorities and has as a principal talking point that their connections to other Democratic elected officials is an advantage.  (This claim is belied by the fact that Pelham Manor has actually received more grants for its sewer projects than the Village, Pelham Manor received a grant to make its Village Hall accessible, and the Village never received a pedestrian safety grant promised during Covid for improvements at the Sparks and Wolf’s Lane intersection, where, notwithstanding new beeping pedestrian signals, middle- and high-school students jaywalk or jay-bike-ride directly into traffic turning left to get to the Hutch.)  And, of course, appeals were made to Democratic electeds for intervention after the last trustee’s election results in lieu of a neighborly shaking of hands.

Arthur S. Long

165 Boulevard