Scarsdale Officials are Ignoring Board of Assessment Review

Remarks Before the Board of Trustees, April 24, 2018

Good evening. I spoke to you two weeks ago on behalf of the three then sitting members of the Town of Scarsdale Board of Assessment Review. Earlier that day, that independent Town Board sent you an urgent letter chiding you for failing to renominate resident volunteer extraordinaire Jane Curley to the Board of Assessment Review.

We pointed out how that, very importantly, New York State law requires that appointees to the Board of Assessment Review must be knowledgeable about real estate values in their municipality, and that Jane, a former NYS licensed real estate appraiser and agent fit that bill, plus she had two years of on the job experience, had decided more than 1,800 cases, and had the full support of her fellow BAR members.

She was unceremoniously dumped however, by the Village Trustees.

We also explained in our letter that the two new proposed appointees failed to meet the statutory qualifications for the job, and we, the three sitting members of the BAR, opposed their appointment to these incredibly important positions. The two new appointees each moved to Scarsdale within the past two years. Neither has any real estate background whatsoever listed on their resumes. They simply don’t qualify as real estate experts knowledgeable about Scarsdale Village real estate values. And that’s what section 523 of the NY Real Property Tax Law, which establishes the Town Board of Assessment Review, requires as qualifications for membership on the Board. By appointing the two new unqualified residents to this key Town Board, you do a great disservice to our residents who are seeking a fair determination of their property grievances. You do a great disservice to the three sitting Board of Assessment Review members who now can’t rely on the non-expert opinions of the new appointees and have to do the enormous work of the Board entirely on our own. And you discredit the new appointees through no fault of their own.

Our BAR letter expressing our objections and concerns was unprecedented in my experience as a scholar of Village affairs. At the end of our letter, we respectfully asked for you to respond to our concerns as an independent Town Board.

When I finished reading the letter from the sitting members of the Board of Assessment Review, you sat there in stony silence. You did not respond as we had asked. You said nothing to me.

Jane Curley herself had sent you a letter asking why she had not been reappointed. You never had the courtesy to respond to her or to ever thank her for her tremendous service on the BAR, even two weeks later. Other members of the public voiced their support for Jane’s reappointment. You ignored them too.

Numerous letters to the editor supporting Jane appeared in the Scarsdale Inquirer, which also ran a page 1 story reporting on your very unusual and strange failure to reappoint Jane.

Radio silence from all of you except for Trustee Ross, who when asked by the Inquirer why Jane was not reappointed, replied that the Board had a “good reason” but wasn’t at liberty to say.

What cowardly innuendo! How could there be a “good reason,” when Trustee Ross never asked the only people who knew Jane’s work, the members of the BAR who worked with her and thought her work was terrific.

So I will ask you again tonight, in public, to respond to the BAR and to our residents – Why was Jane Curley not reappointed as a member of the Town Board of Assessment Review?

Will anyone answer me?

Why were the two new members appointed when they just moved to Scarsdale within the past two years and have no real estate background and clearly don’t have the statutory qualifications for the job – that is, they don’t have the expert knowledge of real estate values in the Village of Scarsdale?

Will anyone answer my questions? If not, why not?

That’s really not good enough. And I have a follow up?

My fellow resident, Mayra Kirkendall-Rodríguez, has been repeatedly asking the Mayor a lot of questions over the past two weeks about the process and procedures the Village follows to appoint residents to the many Village Boards and Councils.

The Mayor responds, but he weaves and bobs and ducks, and in the end, he says he’s not at liberty to discuss personnel matters because it intrudes upon Executive Session privilege. And he says that he’s relying on the advice of the Village Manager and the Village Attorney for his position.

Now, discussion about a particular candidate’s fitness for a particular position might be privileged, but there’s nothing privileged about the criteria the Trustees use or the process they use or the guidelines they use.

In particular, Mayra has been asking very basic questions that every resident is entitled to know the answer to:

• Who chooses residents for appointments to councils, committees, and boards?
• What are the written guidelines used to choose residents?
• Do you interview residents? If so, who interviews them? What questions do you ask residents? Do you ask the same questions of all residents?
• Do you get references from candidates? If so, do you verify them?
• Do you verify candidates’ information on their CVs? Do you verify their stated expertise?

Late this morning, Ms. Kirkendall-Rodríguez finally learned from our Village Attorney that the Village only uses the online application as the sole document in the selection process.

That online application asks for the most rudimentary information from the candidate:

• Name; address; telephone; email.
• Length of residence in Scarsdale.
• Education; degrees.
• Professional experience.
• Civic activities – in Scarsdale and elsewhere.
• What qualifications do you bring to the board or council or committee?
• Reasons you want to serve?
• List your first, second, and third choices.

There are no written guidelines, criteria, or procedures that govern how you select our council, committee, and board members. From a governance perspective, this is exceptionally troubling, though not surprising.

There’s no written anti-nepotism policy. This year, we have Susan Ross, newly appointed member of the Advisory Council on Technology, the wife of sitting trustee Seth Ross, who happened to be the Chair of the Personnel Committee when Susan was selected. We also have Daniel Finger sitting on the very active and very important Board of Architectural Review. Daniel is the younger brother of none other than sitting trustee Carl Finger.

I’m sure that both are very qualified and hard-working volunteers. But this is a Village of thousands of exceptionally talented residents. From an optics perspective, having spouses and siblings of sitting trustees on important boards, councils, and committees smacks of nepotism. It should be avoided, whenever possible.

The situation is exacerbated when the Trustees have absolutely no written policies, guidelines, processes, practices governing appointments.

And then, this year, to top things off, we have the outrageous failure of the Trustees to reappoint Jane Curley to the Board of Assessment Review. Jane has been one of the most qualified and hard-working BAR members we’ve ever had, and the only possible explanation I can come up with for her not being reappointed is that she was an outspoken supporter of my candidacy for Village office.

Since you refuse to comment and have no criteria that you follow, my explanation certainly rings true.

It’s kind of ironic that when you all run for office under the Scarsdale Citizens’ Non-Partisan Party banner, you use the slogan “Experience, not Politics.” From what I see, you’ve got it all turned around. I see “Politics, not Experience.” And we all suffer from that.

The only way our residents can ever have any confidence in how our municipal government operates is if you do so transparently.

Your actions with respect to the appointments to Village boards, councils, and committees are very troubling both in result and complete opacity. And when you couple this with possible nepotism and political patronage and an utter lack of written policies and procedures, we have Tammany Hall in Village Hall, not good and open Village government that we are entitled to in the Village of Scarsdale. And that’s a problem.

Thank you.

Robert Berg is a volunteer member of the Town Board of Review, President of the Crane Berkeley Neighborhood Association, and Co-Chair of the Scarsdale Forum's Assessment Committee.