QMC: Quizzing Mary's Claims (Surplus, Avalon Lot, Villas, CIPP)

BRONXVILLE, NY — QMC for Her Honor's column of 19 Sept 2018

Things that go routinely unexamined in Bronxville-Eastchester is our focus today — and all days — here at Bronxville Patch.

Question #1: Is it a good idea for a mayor to have a weekly column in local papers?

Yes. I think so. Having thought about it. Because much is revealed. The argument against is that much is concealed. Also that the column inevitably becomes a soapbox, a permanent air horn and loudspeaker system for the government, with no opportunity for public query or conversation.

Especially when this same mayor actually refuses all questions from the public, as a matter of policy, in the only public venue available to the public for this essential means of civic engagement: the Village of Bronxville Board of Trustees' (Vobbots') next monthly meeting is Tuesday, October 9, starting at 6pm, in Village Hall (please mark your calendar).

Today commences QMC, our own column Quizzing Mary’s Claims. It is only a matter of extracting passages from Mayor Mary Marvin’s most recent column in HTTP NOT SECURE MyHometownBronxville. (The Village's own website is also HTTP NOT SECURE, but Mary says they're working on it. At a staggering cost to taxpayers — the subject of a separate inquiry here at Patch.)

So you ask questions of Mary's statements in MHB, just as you would at the press interviews Her Honor never grants to known or suspected journalists.

Or you might compliment something Mary's written. Let’s start there:

Mary Marvin claims: "Every expenditure increase in the village budget of $80,000 translates into an additional tax point. If villagers had chosen to buy everything online and we had lost the local sales tax revenue source, FY2017 taxes would have been raised 12 points; this reaffirms the truism that shopping local is the bargain in the end."

We compliment: Yes! I still need to scrutinize the math (because one simply must, with Mary), but the main message bears constant repeating. Especially when too many Village-based non-profits are brazenly and unabashedly — you get their regular emails — shooing our money away from Village businesses.

I asked the Bronxville School Foundation, Inc. last November to please not send out an email this holiday shopping season, begging us Bronxville School parents to click over to the Foundation's Amazon Smile "partnership" for the 0.5% they'll get off our purchase of something we didn't need & required shipping or that we might have bought in the Village.

I asked the Bronxville Chamber of Commerce for backup, How can we loosen Amazon's death grip on our shopkeepers?, and received this bizarre email response from Nicole Tuck: "The Chamber has no comment at this time."

Anyway. Thank you, Mayor Marvin, for emphasizing the point on 9/19. But it's a truth, not a truism, that "shopping local is the bargain in the end." It's also more than a bargain: it's an existential choice about where you live and why you live there. Amazon Smile will, if we citizens go along with it, turn our downtowns all to frowns. So be a good neighbor of Bronxville-Eastchester businesses and don't proffer Amazon's link in the first place, okay?

Mayor Marvin claims (in the context of our having just bought what will be a new parking lot): "For a transfer price of $1.6 million, Avalon Corporation will demolish the asbestos-filled, dilapidated former filling station and remove the underground tanks and conduits. The cleanup will be overseen by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation in a manner similar to the process at the Villa BXV condominium site."

We quiz: Similar to or identical to? And as to that — "the process at the Villa BXV condominium site" — what was it, exactly, in the end? What we were told it would be at the start? Because I remember observing (and probably filming), with a neighboring doctor, that very "process." The windows of his reception area had direct views onto the work. We were both astonished by the sight of loose, wind-gusted soil being dumped into ye standard dump truck and rumbled away under a tarp. “I thought all that dirt was terrifyingly toxic.” “Yeah, me too.”

NYS DEC is overseeing the Avalon operation — to what extent? Every hour of every day? Why is Avalon doing the work? What is the motive of AvalonBay Communities, Inc. to hire the best team(s) for this toxic job? Why wouldn’t they cut every possible corner absent constant scrutiny? Just as you, Your Honor, say (elsewhere in this column) that you don’t want private ownership of what could be public land — in this instance (all hail the parking lot!) — why permit a wrecking crew you don’t control?

Mayor Marvin claims: "We also benefitted from an online vehicle auction consortium we have joined, earning $110,000 from the sale of surplus equipment."

We quiz: What consortium? Its name, please? Should you have purchased this “surplus equipment” — define, please — with taxpayer money in the first place? Did you profit $110k or is it a question of how much this "earning" offsets a regrettable buying decision? Because these happen. Snow Dragon.

Mayor Marvin claims: "Our comprehensive improvement plan also addresses our aging (100-year-old-plus) subterranean infrastructure. We are now focusing on our sanitary sewer system. To that end, we recently borrowed $2.8 million at a rate of 3.05% after a Moody’s review that reaffirmed our Aaa [sic] stable bond rating, the highest possible for a municipality such as ours."

We quiz — ourselves: Is this Mary’s first written reference to her government’s scandalous (it ought to be, but — yawn — it won't, short this happening) incursion of cured-in-place piping (CIPP) into Bronxville’s already toxin-overtaxed ecosystem?

Where is the money, by the way — Village Administrator Jim Palmer? You told me last year that New York State would reimburse Bronxville 25%–40% for “focusing on our sanitary sewer system.” We already put up $1.4 million. Why are we doing this CIPP work at all — and borrowing $2.8 million additional while we're at it — if our kids' long-term health is being put at risk as a consequence?

{Your Patch Mayor, Brer Abbott, is always grateful for additional eyes on the tome The Many Columns of Mayor Mary Marvin. Few documents are as important to the historical record of the Village of Bronxville during the Marvin Era. But only if scrutinized — back to the beginning of time. Tips, leads, angles, whole QMC columns of questions to Her Honor (as formatted above), will always be received with delight by me at thebronxville at protonmail dot com. This article was edited for formatting and clarity — and one item of information (the $ Jim Palmer said we'd receive from NYS) — a few hours after posting.}