Spoiler alert: The Town doesn’t want us to vote on incorporation

Edgemont Residents:

We hope you had a great 4th!

You may have recently received a couple of anti-incorporation political mailers relating to Edgemont.

The first was from Greenburgh Town Supervisor Paul Feiner, who offered strong support for the re-election of State Assemblyman Tom Abinanti based upon Mr. Abinanti’s sponsorship of many unsuccessful anti-incorporation bills. (Abinanti ended up losing to Mary Jane Shimsky.)

The second was a letter entitled “Keep Edgemont” and signed by current and former Town of Greenburgh officials/Feiner appointees.

It’s not at all surprising that a career politician and his appointees prefer the status quo, in which Edgemont residents dutifully pay taxes, but have no ability to influence how the Town is governed because we represent a mere 8% of the Town-wide voting population. We believe it’s time to consider a change.

Greenburgh already has six villages that successfully govern themselves—Ardsley, Hastings, Dobbs Ferry, Elmsford, Tarrytown and Irvington.  They each control their own land use and other local issues, rather than have those decisions made by Town officials.   

Incorporating to become a village means Edgemont would have comparable powers to its neighboring villages, including control of local tax dollars and responsibility for zoning and long-term planning. We envision a Village of Edgemont with more community investment, civic engagement, and quality-of-life focus than is possible as a small hamlet of a large municipality.  Some potential improvements include revamping Central Avenue—–which has been ignored by the Town for a generation—–and expanding local recreational and cultural offerings. 

A self-governing Edgemont would take input from residents to inform its projects, ultimately broadening the community’s appeal to those beyond families with school-aged children.

At the root of this possibility is the principle that residents of Edgemont should govern the affairs of Edgemont, just like we do for our schools. To that end, we continue to work towards a vote on whether to become a village.

For more information, please visit our website at http://edgemont2022.org.

–The EIC