Bronxville Insider: Mayor's Column.

Mayor’s Column: April 3, 2023.

I am honestly working as hard as I can to share how the Governor’s “Housing Compact” would not only affect Bronxville but all small communities especially in Nassau, Suffolk and Westchester Counties that have rail lines in their municipalities.

In the interest of full disclosure, the following, in speech like form, is what I have been sharing with other communities as well as organizations that have sought my input.

By necessity, the remarks to follow have been edited based on speaking time limits and the tone and tenor of the audience.

“Thank you for giving me this opportunity. I will just give you facts, not my view, how this Housing Compact affects a small Village such as mine, which is Bronxville, just under one square mile.

A little background:

In the Governor’s budget, school-aid will increase by 10% to $34.5 billion. Aid to municipalities will increase by zero in all categories of local assistance. It remains flat at $750 million, even though the Governor’s budget has an increase of $7 billion.

Some Food for Thought Re: the Housing Compact

In a New York Times article titled, Hochul’s Massive Campaign Fortune: Here’s Who It Came From, “Governor Hochul received the legal limit in campaign donations of $69,700 from dozens of New York City’s biggest real estate firms, including Vornado Realty Trust. Douglas Durst, who chairs the influential Real Estate Board, personally gave $55,000; members of the Rudin, Tishman and Speyer families collectively contributed more than $400,000.  All of the top executives at Related Companies maxed out in contributions.”

As stated in the Times, “Few industries gave more than real estate and frequently in large amounts and large developers are keenly watching how Hochul will not only approach large state funded capital projects, but the future of the state’s affordable housing law.”

So this is where we are.

Caveat: My community completely understands the need for affordable/workforce housing and wants to be part of a cooperative, collaborative solution. As Martin Luther King said, “A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus." 

I have been in contact so far with over two dozen Mayors, all of whom are from Westchester, Nassau and Suffolk Counties. Not one of us has been contacted by the Governor’s office as to how this law might actually play out especially in small communities.

Bronxville: Part One of the program requires a community such as Bronxville to increase housing by 3% every 3 years, which translates into 75 units per cycle. The Governor has stated that, “This legislation is to build housing for employees, this is for families; this is for senior citizens.” Given how the legislation is written, every community could meet their requirement by a developer building above market co-ops or condos, clearly not meeting the affordable objective. Given our density, which is the highest in Westchester along with Pelham and Tuckahoe, even to do that would require us to tear down existing structures and/or violate our own local zoning. But important: no affordable housing is required in Part One.

Should we miss this deadline, a mechanism will be triggered by the state for mixed income, multifamily projects, notwithstanding any local zoning, planning or land-use regulations to the contrary for the developer who steps in. This includes no height, parking, historical or environmental concerns.

We are also part of the Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) compulsory new zoning law requiring the Village to pass a density law allowing 50 units per acre in the half-mile radius surrounding our train station. As written, 2/3 of Bronxville would be a transit oriented development site.

A Village of 6600 people and 2650 homes and a school capacity near 1500, the new law would allow the building of 10,000 potential new housing units. The cost of this TOD mandate would include the Village’s expenses for water and sewer service, police coverage, fire protection, road construction, parking and the education of students.

The Governor has offered $250 million statewide to help cover these costs. As example, our neighbors in Mount Vernon need this amount just to fix their current aging water/sewer infrastructure.

To be conservative, this amount of money could probably assist one medium sized city in the State, resulting in the largest unfunded mandate in State history.

As the flooding is so constant in Bronxville, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation designated our area their next to study and assist. While we are fighting hard for flood monies on the one hand, the lack of any environmental reviews would allow high-rises to be built on these same floodplains.

Like many other communities in Westchester, our infrastructure is over 125 years old and we live in a Town that’s over 350 years old. We are going to be bonding millions of dollars just to give the current residents the water and sewer services that are needed for a healthy environment.

A community with 2650 housing units expected to absorb 10,000 more units by legislation is incomprehensible.

I will end with the words of Nelson Mandela who said, “Lead from the back and let others believe they are in the front”, and less gently, the words of Dwight D. Eisenhower, “You do not lead by hitting people over the head; that is assault, not leadership.”