Village Board Says 'No' to Spano Sales Tax,
Considers New Fire Sprinkler Law

by Judy Silberstein

( November 4, 2002 ) The Village of Larchmont Board of Trustees gave five thumbs down to a request by Westchester County Executive Andy Spano to back his plan for boosting village and town sales taxes by 1% as an alternative to a possible 31% hike in county property taxes.

Mayor Ken Bialo called the sales tax “regressive” and imagined local taxpayers would come after the Board with hatchets if they were to consider such a large property tax hike. He was not even swayed by the possibility that Larchmont would receive 25% of the additional tax revenue raised by the new sales tax. Instead, he recommended the county should work harder at prioritizing. Trustee Mike Wiener agreed with the Mayor, suggesting the Board would be “burned at the stake if we came up with a 31% increase.”

Deputy Mayor Chris Verni voiced concern about the “blame game with Albany” and about the impact of political elements on the framing of county budget issues.

According to Trustee Marlene Kolbert, local governments throughout the United States are complaining about tax burdens being shifted from the higher levels of government onto the local levels. Remembering her years on the Mamaroneck School Board, she commented, “We were always struggling with the issue of unfunded mandates.”

The harshest assessment of Spano’s plan came from Trustee Liz Feld who called the County Executive’s approach “blackmail.” She displayed one of his mailers and labeled it absurd and alarmist. She also passed around a letter to the New York Times from Greenburgh Supervisor Paul Feiner who proposes doing away with county government altogether.

The spirited discussion came at 10:45 pm, three hours into the Board’s ambitious agenda.

Leading the evening, after a number of housekeeping items, was the public hearing on a proposal for A Local Law to Require Sprinklers in all New Construction and In Certain Building Alterations.

As proposed by Trustee Wiener, the law would require residential sprinklers to be installed throughout the building in all newly constructed homes and in those undergoing substantial additions or renovations. Increasing a home’s total floor area by 50%, or making changes costing more than 50% of a home’s replacement value would trigger the requirement to add sprinklers throughout the home.

The most difficult part of the new sprinkler law will be shepherding it through the New York State approval process for amendments to the brand new uniform building code that goes into effect at the end of December 2002. Locally, the law has strong support from the Larchmont Fire Department and Fire Chief Brian Payne who was at the meeting (in between responding to his fire pager) to speak on behalf of residential sprinklers. (See Sprinklers for a complete discussion.)

Fellow board members voiced general support. “It’s almost like being for Motherhood and apple pie,” commented Trustee Marlene Kolbert. However, there were some questions needing additional research. There will be further discussion at the next board meeting, slated for November 18.

In other business, the Board provided updates on a number of projects, including progress towards implementing community concerns outlined in "Larchmont 2020" (known more formally as the Village of Larchmont Master Plan Update Prepared by the 2020 Task Force on December 10).

A point of disagreement was whether the 2020 document represented a “blueprint for the future” (Trustee Marlene Kolbert, who served on the Task Force) or merely “a compendium of concerns in one period of time” (Mayor Bialo). Either way, Trustee Kolbert commented, “I am delighted when the issues come before the Board.”

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