Petitions Insufficient To Hold Incorporation Referendum For Edgemont: Town Supervisor

GREENBURGH, NY — There will not be a referendum any time soon on the incorporation of the hamlet of Edgemont as a village within the Town of Greenburgh. Supervisor Paul Feiner issued his determination of sufficiency for the petitions requesting a vote on incorporation Tuesday. He said the petitions failed on three of the requirements under the state incorporation statute.

“The first problem with the petition is that it was unclear about which properties would be part of incorporated Edgemont,” Feiner said.

He said the statute requires petitions to describe the proposed new territory with “common certainty,” and that without clarity residents wouldn’t know whether or not they were allowed to vote on incorporation, nor would they know to whom they should pay taxes.

Feiner said the petitions contained two maps and inconsistent wording, according to two real estate title experts.

The second requirement that failed was the number of valid signatures.

Feiner explained that 27 people signed the petition twice, others signed for friends or family members and others signed the petition with names and signatures that differed from what was on file with the board of elections.

“Under New York State law, forged signatures falsely sworn to by a witness in front of a notary is a legal violation that invalidates all the signatures collected by that witness,” Feiner said.

Based on the number of qualified voters residing in the area of the proposed new village, the petition required 1,198 valid signatures, but there were only 1,021 valid signatures — 177 short of the number required.

The third way the petitions fell short was the required list of names referred to as all of Edgemont’s regular inhabitants.

Feiner said the number of names submitted with the petitions was 4,826.

“However, the number of regular inhabitants in the petition did not include children as required by the statute,” he said.

“Since the number of registered voters provided by the board of elections was 5,993 as of the date that the petition was filed, there had to be 5,993 regular inhabitants at a minimum even before including children,” Feiner said.

Feiner said that, while this ends this latest push for incorporation, a referendum in the future isn’t an impossibility.

He said the residents of Edgemont can collect petitions again and “[i]f they comply with the statute, they could have the referendum. The law was not followed, and I have no discretion to look the other way.”

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