Mayors Call Summit to Oppose Restrictive County Contracts

Mayor Dennis Pilla will meet with leaders from seven other towns next week to oppose new strings attached to county grants.

The Sept. 13 mayor's summit in Tarrytown is a response to the new requirements, which all towns must agree to in order to get Community Development Block Grant money.

The county gives out the Community Development Block Grants that many local towns and villages use for projects like parks and beautification. In past years, there weren't strict requirements on how to use that money. But since Westchester County settled an affordable housing lawsuit in 2009, a federal court has mandated 750 new affordable housing units in the county.

The county legislature responded by adding new language to grant contracts – towns in Westchester must now agree to zoning laws mandating 10 percent of housing in designated zones must be affordable – or fair – housing. Towns would also have to give Westchester County the first pick of available property within their borders.

But towns like Port Chester, New Rochelle and Peekskill aren't part of the lawsuit, because they're already racially diverse by federal standards. The consent decree dictates that Westchester build the fair housing units in areas with the lowest concentrations of black and Hispanic residents, and the settlement focuses on so-called "A" towns, places like Scarsdale, Rye and Dobbs Ferry, where whites make up the vast majority of the population.

For Port Chester, that means grant money to plant trees on North Main Street has been held up while Pilla and other mayors lobby legislators to amend their resolution. Those mayors want different grant contracts for their towns, with language that doesn't bind them into forfeiting partial zoning control.

At last week's board meeting, Village Manager Christopher Russo noted that the grant for tree planting was only a small part of a larger beautification project, and trustees debated whether to front the money in the meantime.

"It's frustrating to all of us that the work isn't progressing," Trustee Daniel Brakewood said.

A spokeswoman for Westchester said the county wouldn't comment on the lawsuit or the fall-out, but Trustee Sam Terenzi said he'd spoken to County Executive Rob Astorino, and Astorino sympathized with the towns.

"And he said to me, 'If you're not part of the agreement, you're right, you should have a problem with the language,' " Terenzi said.

In Westchester's most recent plan to satisfy the federal consent decree – its third such draft – it recommended excluding towns like Port Chester and Peekskill, said Tom Abinanti, a Democrat and the county legislature's majority leader.

As one of five legislators to vote against settling with the Anti-Discrimination Center in the lawsuit, Abinanti said the county could offer a "carrot on a stick" to towns and developers, but it can't erect buildings itself.

"We're not opposed to fair and affordable housing," he said. " Our problem is with the restrictions imposed by the settlement: the places in which we have to build are the most expensive and the most built-up. Yes, they're also the whitest, but there's no incentive to build in those places."

Abinanti said he believes there isn't incentive for lower-income people to live in places like Chappaqua or Bedford.

"There's no infrastructure, no water systems, no sewer systems, no jobs, and no public transport to places with jobs," he said. "It's difficult to attract lower-income people to these places."

But placing fair and affordable housing in the county's "whitest" neighborhoods is exactly what Westchester should be doing, according to the Anti-Discrimination Center's Craig Gurian.

If the county doesn't encourage developers to build affordable housing outside of a handful of minority-dominated towns, the segregation issue at the heart of the lawsuit could grow more severe, not less, he said.

"Depending on where it is, it could either be segregation perpetuating, or segregation reducing," he said. "Location of affordable housing matters."