Mamaroneck Village Democrats Flex Majority Muscle

Mamaroneck village’s three major land-use boards will be given new legal counsel, village board Democrats voted Monday, but a panel reviewing the local waterfront’s quality will remain, for now, at its current size.

Lester D. Steinman will become counsel to the planning board and Anna L. Georgiou will hold the same position with the zoning board of appeals and Harbor and Coastal Zone Management Commission (HCZMC). Both are with the Elmsford law firm Wormser, Kiely, Galef & Jacobs L.L.P. and replace lawyers from Silverberg Zalantis LLP of Tarrytown.

Their appointments capped months of infighting and a night of sharp exchanges on the board of trustees, where Democrats regained a majority, 3-2, last November. On Monday, they used that majority in a series of votes to:

REJECT a proposed expansion of the village’s waterfront advisory committee;

FORCE the appointment of land-use counsel onto the trustees’ meeting agenda; VOTE Steinman and Georgiou to their part-time posts. 

Speaking for the majority, Trustee Toni Pergola Ryan said in a statement, “Our goal was to find a way to streamline the application process . . . while at the same time providing our valuable volunteers with a regular resource for direction and guidance and a sense of collegiality with boards working in concert in coordinated reviews.”

 Mayor Norman S. Rosenblum, an independent who ran with Republican backing, charged the Democrats with having a “backroom mentality” after they met with and interviewed potential candidates without the presence of the board’s two GOP members. “I don’t believe this is a legal motion.”

Ryan insisted the Democrats had sought Republican participation in the selection process but said scheduling conflicts and last-minute changes had sometimes forced meetings to be called on short notice. “Unfortunately,” she said, “their schedules did not permit them to attend the meetings we invited them to.”

At the time, Rosenblum dismissed the “emergency meeting” designation as a “sham” and said he had been given less than 24 hours notice of a March 31 meeting at the village offices. In an e-mail, he warned against creating the appearance of a "political coup" in which appointments were, “pushed through in an emergency-meeting scenario, with the exclusion of both participation by the mayor and deputy mayor [Trustee Louis N. Santoro].”

“We did try our best to include the entire board,” Ryan said Monday.

In her statement, Ryan said the nominees, “are committed to helping us meet our goal of streamlining the application process, preparing our land-use volunteers for meetings and training them on their roles and responsibilities in our local government.”

Steinman, the new planning board counsel, had been director of the now-defunct Edwin G. Michaelian Municipal Law Resource Center at Pace University since 1984. The center, beset by financial troubles, closed its doors last month. It had offered legal assistance to local governments, fielding about 300 questions a year on a range of municipal issues, including land use and zoning and planning.

In addition to practicing municipal law, Georgiou was an adjunct law professor and director of research for the Land Use Law Center at Pace Law School.

LWRP expansion denied

A controversial series of appointments, more than doubling the size of the Local Waterfront Revitalization Plan (LWRP) Committee, was rejected in yet another 3-2 party-line vote. “There is absolutely no reason to vote this down,” Rosenblum complained after seeing his nominees defeated.

The Democrats who rejected them said they had been insufficiently involved in the selection process. Ryan said that while she had no specific objection to the nominees, “I think that when we put people on committees we need their resumes.”

Rosenblum said that at least for now the current five-member LWRP will continue with its work at its present size. The village has until year’s end to present a completed LWRP to the state, addressing environmental and other waterfront concerns.