QMC: Bronxville's Mayor Is Talking Environment (Really?)

BRONXVILLE, NY — 11 October 2018

A dear friend's data tragedy (don't trust "the iCloud," ok?) kept me from Tuesday night's meeting of the Village of Bronxville Board of Trustees, or Vobbots, as I call them (pronounced like hobbits, but not as cute). So I have nothing to report, yet, about October 9. Or possibly ever. The data tragedy for Bronxville is that Tuesday's meeting went unrecorded from its actual start of 6 or 6:30pm.

Normally I am there to audio- or, when appropriate, video-record the evening's proceedings — e.g., Chief of Police Chris Satriale dodging a reporter's questions, which is the Chief's mode with me these days: Bronxville PD's budget was $64,430 over the $221,048 budgeted OT for Fiscal 2017–18 — $21,930 went for detective work on "Verizon Store Robbery" alone. Chief Satriale presented these overtime "Highlights" to the Board back in June:

Here is a perfect example of what you miss when you miss a Vobbots meeting — this astonishing handout from the Chief of Police. What wasn't "highlighted," and why? Where is the Chief's handout now? It is not available to you from Village Hall, that's for certain. The Vobbots daren't risk taxpayers' questions about additional public costs that the Vobbots vote for always unanimously. As they did in June. While also unanimously failing to ask the obvious question of the Chief of Police: "For all this money you've spent on detectives, Chris, did you catch the bad guys?"

How the above was described in the official minutes signed by Village Administrator Jim Palmer goes like this: "Chief Satriale was present to update the Village Board on his department’s activities including the ongoing investigation with the Bronxville Post Office."

Nothing about the money. You would never know.

As for "Active Shooter Training," Chief — could you please instead spend $10k, additional, to teach your guys (there are only two women at VOB PD) how to not shoot actively unarmed civilians? Because this is also a well-established epidemic in America, and Bronxville kids do binge drink and act out, especially around events like Homecoming. (Tonight's activities were cancelled in anticipation of another school flood.)

It would be excellent if Village Hall, itself, were forthcoming about bad news like this blown police budget. It's your tax money the Vobbots are spending so liberally, without demanding any observable accountancy. And your money is going unaccounted for in so many embarrassing ways — I refer often to the example of our hapless Snow Dragon because it is so representative: Of the excitement and certainty, by Mayor Mary Marvin and the Vobbots, that always surrounds their purchase of some new-fangled solution to the Village's old-fashioned woes.

The solution, whatever it is, typically comes in the form of a sealed bid, to be opened in executive session. Meaning: You, Citizen, must pay for whatever it is, but you may never ever know what fully informed the Vobbots' decision to spend your money like this. Are you comforted by the fact the Vobbots always vote unanimously? Is that as much as you need to know about your own tax bill?

The record doesn't need to be erased if it was never made. Governments like it like this. The Marvin Administration is no different. The Vobbots want you to know as little as possible about what is going on at 200 Pondfield Road. Here's how it's done:

The monthly Vobbots meeting begins at 6:30pm (sometimes it's 6) with the "working session." This is open to the public and you well ought attend. Because it's at 6 or 6:30 that public decisions are made about how to spend public money — unless the Vobbots bunker themselves in executive session, which they rarely fail to do. (This is always considered bad governance, by the way, because anti-democratic. Executive session creates an instant black hole in the public record, to the extent any record is kept.)

Then, at 8pm, it's showtime: the largely ceremonial and for-broadcast portion of the proceedings.

By "broadcast" of course I mean Channel 47 (if your TV "provider" is Verizon) or Channel 74 (if Optimum). You have a month to tune in at various times — I prefer 2 o'clock in the morning. Seven a.m. is also a fine time to catch up on Trustees Room news. Then the record is gone for good.

Peter C. North, the official videographer who costs taxpayers $20,200 annually, has never heard of YouTube? Of course he has. Has he? Because I do put the question to Peter often enough, and he refuses to answer it. Nor will Jim Palmer instruct Mr North to open a YouTube account for the Village. Why not? And why not roll video starting at 6 or 6:30, when the meeting actually starts? (Roll it even if Her Honor is late, which Mary too often is, in my observation.)

"If you stop and think about it for a little while" — to crib one of Village Trustee Randolph Mayer's classic condescensions — the Vobbots are the most important elected officials currently active in your life. (Well, barely elected — Bronxville doesn't vote.) What are these people doing with all your tax money? Spending it always wisely? They are if you only get your news directly from Mayor Mary Marvin — don't let the Odessa, Texas byline here at Bronxville Patch fool you.

But they are not, the Vobbots. Spending your money wisely. Too much is going wrong in Bronxville for us to continue along in our traditional mode of Pleasantries Only. Why do we have so many cops? To keep our "Justice Court" stuffed with black and brown people twice a month? It sure seems that way, if you visit BJC even once: You are guaranteed to see more non-whites than you have ever observed assembled in one room in Bronxville.

This happens to be the same room wherein the Trustees hold their quasi-public monthly meetings. If you cover the Board and the Court as a reporter, as I do, you realize that your larger story here is race. Bronxville is in America, it turns out.

Money penalties paid in "Justice Court" by impoverished non-residents is Bronxville's second largest source of revenue, after property taxes. And these people do have a way of getting pulled over in our square mile. Most of what I witness at BJC started with a traffic stop.

While it remains possible that VOB's 6,547 residents — 90% white, 5.5% Asian — are especially virtuous, it's highly mathematically unlikely that our "Justice Court" looks so much unlike us.

Banking on poor people is a terrible reason for keeping twenty-one cops on your payroll. Morally unacceptable and financially foolish.

As for Chief Satriale's fascinating "Overtime Highlights" document, why can't we share police detectives with Eastchester? Are we truly employing the best minds in criminal detection by maintaining them locally? This is one question that needs to be answered about VOB PD by its Chief of Police. There are many more.

Here is how VOB PD describes its detecting services on the Village's HTTP NOT SECURE website: "The Bronxville Police Department's Detective Division conducts all follow-up investigations and maintains continual contact with other area police departments and the Westchester County District Attorney's Office. Through such mutual access with other law enforcement agencies, the detective division is able to monitor possible crime trends and suggest preventative measures, while availing the department of the latest developments in investigative techniques. Additionally, the detective division delivers crime prevention lectures to various groups, offers fingerprinting services to villagers and small children for identification purposes and security surveys for residences and businesses."

Interesting. Scary. But also: Unimpressive. And you do know how they do fingerprinting these days, right? On a scanner. Into a computer. From there to a database. Ink is so over. How many fingerprints of how many "small children" are being stored in VOB's creaky computer system? It's not creaky? We are always so certain of our technology.

This column, QMC — Quizzing Mary's Claims, is here only because Bronxville Patch and other "local" publications (Patch is a national outfit headquartered in Manhattan) think it's a fine idea to give a mayor a permanent weekly "column" in which to present, totally unopposed, the official version of often fuzzy facts. Absent paid reporters who practice journalism and not stenography, we are truly on our own here in Small Town America, trying to get reality to match the ballyhoo.

It's absolutely silly (and outright shameful) that a place as sophisticated as Bronxville Village gets its "news" from elected and appointed officials in advertising vectors that aren't even trying to be journalistic enterprises. The not news peddled locally is the most insidious form of fake news. Mayor Marvin and Administrator Palmer will never write about, for example, their reckless insistence on continuing to install highly toxic (per the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) cured-in-place piping, or CIPP, throughout the Village.

In her "column" this week, Mary Marvin is talking environment. Talking water. Talking leaves. Talking coyotes. As headlined by MyHometownBronxville, where Her Honor's soapbox also automatically appears, I thought for a moment I was in for a thrilling read: "From the Mayor: Drainage, Trees, Recycling, and… Coyotes." You sold me with the ellipsis, MyHometownBronxville, but where's the exclamation point? Not there, because… in fact… no coyotes have been sighted in Bronxville. But they could have been, the mayor is saying, so best watch out for that.

Here's what is here, Your Honor, in the Village of Bronxville, and it's of tremendous environmental concern — because it is so toxic, and we are doing it to ourselves, and it's not over yet, according to Jim Palmer.

Mayor Marvin still hasn't acknowledged the horrifying CIPP water report I handed to Chief Satriale at last month's meeting, which the Chief then handed to the Mayor. (Because: security.) Her "column" on "the environment" this week was Mary's opportunity to do so.

I reminded Her Honor at the public meeting that I still have a kid living in the Village. And another one who talks about moving back here — that's how much my family loves the place. I don't want either of my kids exposed to the endocrine disruptors the Marvin Administration is releasing into Bronxville's air and water through CIPP.

Mary promised me — and you might have witnessed Her Honor doing so (last month) on Channels 47 or 74 — that she would read American Water Works Association's thoroughgoing scientific condemnation of her government's insistence on sticking with a terrible decision to pollute her own community. Jim Palmer's talk of the "non-styrene" option is baloney, and he knows it.

When I asked Jim, repeatedly, if he would allow his own young kids to be exposed to CIPP, he repeatedly replied: "I'm familiar with the process." (Mr Palmer lives in Mount Kisco, NY and Chimney Hill, Vermont.) Smart people don't let cured-in-place piping anywhere near their homes, schools, or businesses. They figure out the budget for tried-and-true piping and make adjustments elsewhere.

The Vobbots now keep at least one — but sometimes two — armed cops at their monthly meeting. That's police overtime, unless the Chief is working the beat. But I'd rather Chris work harder on balancing his budget and there be no security detail — a phenomenon that only began when a parent started asking, every month (it will be a year in November), why a government is favoring a low bid for a toxic process over our children's health.

So I am still watching out for Mayor Marvin's "environmental" column. But I'm not watching out for coyotes. Not seeing a coyote is not news. Not news is fake news. We deserve better than this, Your Honor. In next week's "From the Mayor," please defend curing in place. Or stop doing it. Stopping doing it is preferred.