Mayor’s Message – State of the Village Address (2023 Year in Review)
Posted on: March 8, 2024 - 7:09pm
Dear everyone,
Inspired by President Biden’s State of the Union Address, I decided to provide an update on the State of our Village to all of you. This missive will be a high level summary of our accomplishments in 2023 and our plans for 2024. It will hopefully not take more than 10 minutes to read (unless you click on all the links, in which case no promises!).
People: In 2023, we lost some beloved residents, including our Village Justice the Honorable Joe DiSalvo; he was much loved and will be sorely missed. We are grateful to Peter Kolbert for stepping up as our new Village Justice and to Joe Macaluso who has agreed to serve as Associate Justice. Trustee Lambert stepped down as Trustee – she deserves our thanks for her many years of service, especially on all things environmental – thanks also to Trustee Alligood for choosing to step up and run for elected office. For those of you who don’t know him yet, take a listen to his remarkable keynote address for the 2024 Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Community Breakfast. A big thank you to all our amazing volunteers – from the volunteer Fire Department to each member of our Boards and Committees – for their dedication and service. We also have an incredibly competent and devoted staff – thanks to each of you too! This past year we bade farewell to Linda Loeb our Assistant Village Clerk and Lt. Geoff Major, and we hired Hanna Skaskiv as Assistant Village Clerk, and Adam Aliotta, our newest police officer. Congratulations to our police department, which acquired New York State Public Safety Accreditation after a rigorous review and revision of every policy and procedure on the books. Very special congratulations to Louis Brus, for his Nobel Laureate, the 7th resident of the Village to win this honor – we are honored that you call our Village your home! And thanks to the amazing team who put together our street naming celebration in honor of civil rights activists and former residents Drs. Maime and Kenneth Clark (see HERE for a video of the celebration). And for those of you who are wondering, The Enterprise, our very own local newspaper that has reported on our stories for decades, suspended operations early in 2024. Many of you want to know what you can do to help – please reach out HERE.
Infrastructure: 2023 was an extremely busy and productive year for infrastructure investments in the Village partly due to the amount of grant funding we were able to access. Projects included: finalizing the rehabilitation of the pool which opened in the summer of 2023 (to many parents’ relief!); restoration of Quarry Park (we had several attempts at a Grand Opening but due to the weather it’s been postponed till June of 2024); installation of deer fencing around a 30 acre portion of Hillside woods (the deer drive and installation of the last 100 feet of the exclosure is scheduled for March 16, 2024, for details on how you can help see HERE); improvements to the Historical Society Building and Doll House; installation of a sidewalk along Broadway between Washington and Olinda on the west side of the street and the much-needed repaving of Broadway by the State (we thank all residents who live near by for their patience during the construction phase); the repaving of Chemka Pool Road, Hillside Avenue and S. Clinton and re-curbing of several roads near the Yonkers border (Ronny Circle, Curry Road and Prince Street). The Broadway repaving project also resulted in a “road diet” which has reduced speeds and improved safety. In 2023, we commissioned a traffic study to assess the viability of reducing the speed limit throughout the village, and based on that study we adopted a 25 mph speed limit law. This year are commissioning an additional traffic study to evaluate our plan to install crosswalks on Warburton at Pinecrest and on Warburton at Division (in front of Antoinette’s). We also commissioned both an updated Roads Assessment Report and a Village Wide Flood Study. We will continue to invest in other needed improvements including ongoing work at the Village Hall and the Library. The installation of additional sidewalks in the Downtown is planned in 2024 as well as a sidewalk along Broadway adjacent to the Burke Estate. We are participating with sister municipalities in an ongoing effort to reimagine Route 9 (see HERE for more). Installation of WiFi in the downtown is nearly complete and should be available to the public soon. Special thanks to Trustee Lopez for her work on Safe Routes to School (especially on sidewalks), and to Trustee Fleisig for serving on the Route 9 Committee.
Downtown: This past year several new businesses opened, including innovative and arts oriented businesses such as The Maker Hive, Ted and Nune Studio and Gallery, Casa Oga, Caitlin K Photography and the River’s Edge Theatre. Don't forget that you can always keep updated on local events at Destination Hastings. Thanks to our merchants, our Downtown Advocate, the Rivertowns Chamber of Commerce, and each of you for all the efforts to keep our Downtown vibrant and to “shop local” as often as you can. And thanks to our DPW and Parks & Recreation team for the lovely decorations at various points in the year and especially during the holiday season.
Planning and Land Use: Last year we came close to concluding an important planning period for the Village; our Community Climate Action Plan, our Comprehensive Plan Update and a Local Waterfront Revitalization Program are almost finalized. These documents will outline our community vision for the next decade. In 2023, we addressed several important land use issues (i.e. rezoning requests for development at two gateway sites – 1 Warburton and the Graham-Windham Property). The Warburton site received zoning approval from the Board of Trustees in 2022 and will receive site plan approval from the Planning Board pending ARB approval. We expect work to begin in 2024. The Graham site has been under discussion for two years and, after weighing many thoughtful comments from the public, the Board granted Zoning approval and the project is now before the Planning Board. Towards the end of 2023, we were thrilled (and a little shocked) to find we had made some major progress on the waterfront. We came to an agreement with Atlantic Richfield with several important wins for us: funding in the amount of $3M for the renovation of MacEachron park and relocation of the Water tower on the AR site while the area beneath it is remediated. We also secured agreement to co-design a waterfront park on the site (for more, see the final agreement HERE). Our hopes are that 2024 will bring even better news. Special thanks to Trustees Fleisig and Drake for their work on the CPU/LWRP, and to Trustee Fleisig for his help on both the land use and waterfront initiatives.
Sustainability: On climate change, as many of you know, we are recognized statewide for our leadership (we continue to be the highest-ranking Climate Smart Community in New York State), and other municipalities seek us out for advice and support. Over the past year the key focus has been the Climate Action Plan, but there were several other important sustainability related achievements including a feasibility study for geothermal energy, an update of our Municipal GHG Inventory, preserving more parkland, revising our leaf blower law, using low embodied carbon concrete for our sidewalks, and producing a wonderful set of activities for Earth Month. We also continued our community campaigns on grid rewards, clean heating and cooling and electric vehicles (see HERE for results to date), and we launched a hyper local community solar project in partnership with the school (thanks Barney and Erik!). In 2023, with Village support, a dedicated cadre of volunteers continued to run our Take it or Leave it Shed at Andrus, which has been a huge hit with the community. We held a Repair Café, promoted food scraps recycling and composting, and launched new cloth and book recycling efforts. Other conservation-oriented volunteers have continued their great work on planting trees, vine lopping and planting pollinator gardens around the Village. At the urging of our Pollinator Pathways team, we adopted several resolutions supporting native plants and endangered butterflies. We also urged the Governor to sign the Birds and Bees Act (which she did!). For the second year in a row I signed up for the Mayors’ Monarch Pledge, and by year’s-end we completed enough actions as a community to be recognized as part of the “Leadership Circle” once more. Also in 2023, the Mayor’s Climate Youth Council continued its work to enable younger members of the community to find a way to have their voices heard on this important topic (see HERE for the sign up form) (thanks Aynsley and Mia!). We were selected by NYSERDA to work on education and outreach related to the new All Electric Law adopted by New York State as part of the 2023 NYS Budget. Two exciting developments to look forward to in 2024 are beginning the actual installation of geothermal energy in Village Hall and the Library, and the finalization of our updated Green Building Code. Special thanks to Trustee Lambert for all her help on sustainability issues in general, and to Trustees Fleisig and Alligood for their work on the Green Building Code.
Finances: We’ve continued efforts to improve the fiscal health of the Village resulting in: a leaner budget and a more transparent budgeting process; a “rainy day fund” of over $6.3M as per our latest audit (made up of an unassigned fund balance of $4.3M and assigned funds dedicated to specific purposes of $2M); new income streams with more emphasis on grants; the lowest tax rate in the Rivertowns all while staying under the Governor’s 2% tax cap. In late 2021, our rating with Moody’s was upgraded from Aa3 to Aa2. This allowed us to take advantage of low rates to make investments in needed capital infrastructure that began in 2022 and are ongoing. Grant funding has become an important source of capital for infrastructure and parks projects. In 2023, over $4.5M in new grant funding was committed from various sources including: $3.5M for MacEachron Park; $650K for the Way Coalition (over 5 years); $433K for urban forests rehabilitation (to share with Dobbs and Irvington); $245K for Zinsser drainage/stormwater work; $21.5K for another street tree inventory; $21,962 records retention grant to digitize Board minutes and payroll documents and $107,000 DASNY grant from Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart Cousins for Police motorcycles. We expect several grants early in 2024 for the Clean Energy Communities work we did in 2023. This does not include ARPA funding (which we have used as a match where required for some grants and will be used to install a new roof on Village Hall), nor the funding pledged/solicited from FEMA for work related to the damage caused by extreme weather. Some of these grants were secured due to the efforts of staff, as well as to the efforts of Fiona, our amazing grant writer – they all deserve our gratitude.
Many thanks to everyone who made contributions this past year, especially to our staff and volunteers – you are all amazing! And, special thanks to our Village Manager and the Board of Trustees, for their devoted stewardship of our lovely Village.
In summary, thanks to everyone the State of the Village is strong! We have lots of interesting projects in motion for 2024 and look forward to collaborating with all of you in making this a spectacular year.
My best,
Niki,
Nicola Armacost
Mayor