Feiner is holding a meeting tomorrow night at 5:00pm to weaken our ability to vote on incorporation. Please attend.

We need Edgemonters to show up tomorrow night, May 17th, at Greenburgh Town Hall at 5:00pm for a special meeting of the Town Board.

When we last emailed, Greenburgh Town Supervisor Paul Feiner had hastily scheduled a meeting for the Town Board to pass a resolution requesting that the state legislature suspend our current right to file an incorporation petition. However, because so many residents asked for meeting details (including its agenda), the Town has postponed it until tomorrow. (We suspect the Town realized that the original meeting failed the basic standards of the New York Open Meetings Law.)

Edgemont is familiar with the Town’s deceptive and clandestine attempts to weaken our incorporation rights. In 2017, the Town held a special meeting on Father’s Day at which hundreds protested (and no one spoke in support of) proposed changes to village incorporation laws that were squarely aimed at Edgemont. The Town passed the resolution anyway.

At the 2017 meeting, one Hartsdale resident addressed the Town Board:

“I am a resident of Hartsdale…I am also a Democrat, I voted for all of you numerous times. I am fervently against the Edgemont incorporation. However, after watching the past few months, I must say that I am embarrassed, I am angry, and I don’t understand how you, my elected officials, can stoop to this level.”

A few months earlier in 2017, the Town employed private investigators to deceive Edgemont residents into rescinding their petition signatures. This deplorable maneuver, caught on video, prompted many Edgemonters to engage in the incorporation effort. 

Ideally, Edgemonters could address these shortcomings of governance at the ballot box, but we represent a mere 8% of the Town-wide vote. As such, our 30-year Supervisor and his supportive Board know they can act in their best interests with electoral impunity (and keeping Edgemont unincorporated is clearly what’s best for them).

That leaves village incorporation as the only leverage available to small hamlets, like Edgemont, to get the attention of large municipalities like the Town of Greenburgh.

We therefore ask you to please attend the Town Board meeting tomorrow at 5pm to show your support for the preservation of our existing incorporation rights. While the Town Board will likely pass the resolution anyway, State legislators need to understand how this government continues to thwart, at every turn, Edgemont’s effort to vote on its preferred form of self-governance.

IN PERSON

Greenburgh Town Hall

177 Hillside Avenue 

White Plains, NY 10607

VIA ZOOM

As of the publishing of this post, the information and agenda is still unavailable.