CREEPY Acts of Briarcliff's Village Manager!!!

The morning of November 1st, 2013 was misty and gray. Our middle-school daughter was waiting patiently in front of the house for her school bus pickup at about 7:20am. As usual, the bus first stopped next door to pick up our neighbor before starting and stopping again some 25 yards later. Our daughter started crossing the street, but jumped quickly back to avoid being run down by a car leap-frogging the bus, despite its flashing lights and engaged stop-sign.  The Briarcliff School Bus Company filed a police report.  There were many witnesses to the event: the bus driver, the driver of a car behind the bus, our neighbor in the habit of waiting with his middle-schooler who was still at the end of his driveway, and ourselves. Due to the weather and briskness of the incident, there was uncertainty about the license plate of the vehicle – which was only resolved one week ago.

Because we spent much of last summer – our first as village residents, addressing with our village board the dangers we had already experienced on our street due to speeding and reckless drivers, we also reported the incident to the Village Manager and the new District Superintendent.  A policeman came over within an hour or two to get the details, and the superintendent returned our call and scheduled a visit during the week to get a first-hand sense of what had happened. Both of them listened, asked questions, and patiently discussed what might be done.

We didn’t hear back from the Village Manager, Mr Zegarelli.

Two and a half weeks later, on November 20 around 8:15 AM on the third Wednesday of the month, my wife and I became a little concerned when we noticed a black SUV with tinted windows parked across the street from our home where there is only woodland and the bike trail. At the time, our younger daughter was out front waiting for the Todd School bus. As soon as the bus picked her up, the black SUV pulled away, and we recognized the driver to be Mr Zegarelli, our village manager.

This was the first we had heard from or seen him since the week before we messaged him by phone and email.  Later that evening at the village Board of Trustees meeting we expressed concern about the unannounced visit and unsettling behavior. Neither he nor the mayor seemed to understand our reaction while stating, "he was only doing his job,” and there was a “misunderstanding” on our part.

We reached out to the village manager more than two weeks before, reporting a dangerous and potentially deadly traffic violation and requesting additional assistance with a chronic problem we had been reporting for six months. The police responded to the same alert in less than two hours, and the school superintendent in only two days. However, Mr Zegarelli waited until the morning of the next biweekly board meeting to give his suspicious, creepy, “black ops” response.
 

Mr Zegarelli did not have to reply immediately to our messages, but he could have called us any time during those two weeks, or the night before, or even knocked on our door that very morning to express his concern or inform us of his plans.  We know our police and our school superintendent understand responsiveness, courtesy and common sense. If there is any “misunderstanding,” is there any question where it really is?

It is simply creepy for anyone, especially the village manager to observe another’s child waiting and then getting on the bus without having the courtesy to inform or wave at us or come to the door and let us know his business in front of our home...