To the Editor:
On March 16, Mayor Chance Mullen began the opening of budget season with an update on the Village of Pelham’s flood mitigation project. Although characteristically lengthy, it has two real headlines: the estimated cost of the project has increased materially in just 2 years, and New York State has no interest in lending a hand to Pelham. The result is not only a tax-cap busting budget, but also the certainty that spending for this one project will crowd out other priorities for years to come.
As to cost: in November 2023, the cost of the project was estimated at a fairly staggering $39 million. Under two-and-a-half years later, it has risen to an estimated $48.5 million – an increase of just over 24 percent. And this is before any ground is broken: project costs frequently increase once a project is started. The Mayor’s update does not discuss the reasons for the increase, although he does note new discoveries with respect to utilities and the needed relocation of water and sewer mains. And of course, underground infrastructure aside, this part of Westchester is very rocky. It’s not unreasonable to expect an ultimate project cost of over $50 million.
The Mayor also states optimistically that the Village will receive at least 50 percent of project costs in grants. This is based on an “earmark” of $16 million from Westchester County, which has not yet been legislated and is not legally enforceable. An application will go in for another $8.25 million. How about New York State? Our Village electeds’ efforts seem to have yielded only a $500,000 yet-to-be-legislated “earmark” from State Senator Nathalia Fernandez – or 1/300th of the $150 million that New York State has allocated to neighboring Mount Vernon for its sewers. So much for working with the state government, as Governor Hochul effectively says to Pelham: “Drop Dead.” Given its financial stress, can Westchester County be reasonably expected to follow through with its earmarks, or will this be another example of the “promised” Covid-era grant for pedestrian safety at Sparks and Wolf’s Lane, which was cancelled, resulting in the Village financing the over $300,000 in improvements alone.
The Mayor thus proposes an increase in the Village’s tax levy of 8.7 percent. Due to the recent appreciation in home values, the Mayor states that the rate increase is 3.8 percent, but this is a red herring – home prices fall as well as rise over time. Moreover, since “roughly half” of the 8.7 percent increase is attributable to flood mitigation, the Village would likely have needed to bust the tax cap without those expenses, due to higher pension and health insurance costs for Village employees. Because such costs are likely to continue to rise, and because the Village needs to increase its “contingency reserves” for floodwater debt service, not to mention debt service on the Village’s existing debt, which has spiraled in recent years, other improvements – such as paving the many pockmarked Village streets – will need to be sacrificed. Village residents are thus assured of seeing repeated future budgets that do not comply with the tax cap while receiving fewer services in return.
As a boy, I read and re-read Walter Lord’s “A Night to Remember,” the best recounting of the hubris that led to an unsinkable ship being rammed into an iceberg despite receiving plenty of messages about ice. The Titanic sank in April (fittingly the same month as the end of budget season in the Village). The Mayor and the Village Board begin their upcoming budget review on March 20th; sad to say, with a fiscal outlook mirroring the North Atlantic in early spring, their attitude is that of Bruce Ismay, the Chairman of the White Star Line: Full Speed Ahead!
Arthur S. Long
165 Boulevard