Yorktown Infrastructure An Issue In Supervisor Campaign

YORKTOWN, NY — For a few months, if you subscribed to the Town of Yorktown's email message system, your phone was pinging with notices about water main breaks, seemingly several times a week. Communities all over the Hudson Valley have concerns about infrastructure — not only maintaining the roads, sewers and water mains but paying for that maintenance as well.

Yorktown has more than 380 miles of roads, more than 5,000 catch basins and more than 200 miles of drainage pipes, according to town officials.

There are two water districts that serve about 36,000 people with 10,000 connections and 180 miles of water mains.

Republican Matt Slater, who is challenging incumbent Democratic Supervisor Ilan Gilbert for the top town position Nov. 5, said in his answers to questions for a candidate survey that he was focused on making Yorktown a destination by investing in infrastructure, among other things.

He recommends employing a director of sustainability and an environmentally preferable products program to design environmental procurement standards that will save taxpayer dollars and protect the town's natural resources.

Slater said an asset management system, which he advocates using, would give the town a central hub of data that could drive decision making on vehicle fleets and equipment, roads and bridges and sewers and water distribution.

Slater did not respond to a request for additional comments for this article.

SEE ALSO:

• 2019 Candidate Profile: Ilan D. Gilbert For Supervisor
• 2019 Candidate Profile: Matt Slater For Yorktown Supervisor

Gilbert said that there were 50 water main breaks in 2018. Much needed infrastructure repairs were put off by the prior Republican administration, he said in an email to Patch.

Of the 180 miles of water mains, "[m]any of these mains are reaching or have surpassed their useful life," Gilbert said.

He said he will utilize the anticipated additional $1.9 million from the county sales tax increases scheduled to be shared with local municipalities to address some of the infrastructure issues facing the town, including reducing the time between the repaving of roads.

The caveat, Gilbert said, was that the money has to go into the general fund and cannot legally be used for special districts such as the water or sewer district projects.

He said that he will also look for new sources of non-taxpayer revenue and grants in order to "make the necessary improvements to town infrastructure that the residents and businesses of our town expect and deserve, while limiting the amount of taxpayer money required to be dedicated to town infrastructure."

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