CANDIDATE FOR VILLAGE TRUSTEE:

JIM MILLSTEIN - Reasons for Running

(March 16, 2006) I’m running for Village Trustee on the Larchmont Coalition Party line, Row D, with Liz Feld for Mayor and Marlene Kolbert for Trustee in this year’s Village Election, which is being held this coming Tuesday, March 21st, and want to let you know why.

For those of you who don’t know me, I am 50 years old and currently a Managing Director and co-head of the Restructuring Group at Lazard Freres & Co., LLC. I practiced law before this for 18 years at Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton where I specialized in the restructuring of the operations and balance sheets of companies in financial distress. I currently serve as a Trustee of the Larchmont Public Library and am on the Board of Governors and Chair of the Finance Committee of Sound Shore Medical Center where I have helped the Hospital’s management restructure its pension obligations and long-term indebtedness. My wife, Carolyn, and I have lived here for 13 years and have two daughters at Chatsworth.

I decided to join Liz, the current Deputy Mayor of the Village, and Marlene, a two term Trustee, in running as a “Coalition Party” this year (Liz is a Republican, Marlene and I are Democrats) because I believe that the current Mayor is just not getting the job done and, in fact, has made things worse in the Village in a number of material ways.

First, let’s review the fiscal facts:

• Larchmont Village taxes are up 24% in the last three years under Mayor Bialo.
  
  
• Larchmont Village debt is up 57% in the last three years under Mayor Bialo; and
  
  
• Larchmont Village ’s surplus (its rainy day fund) is down 30% in the last three years under Mayor Bialo.

This is not the record of a fiscal conservative, despite the Mayor’s attempt to portray himself as such.

Second, let’s look at how the Village is now being run:

Unlike virtually every other municipality in Westchester, Larchmont is without its own engineer and senior administrative officer. Rather, our part time, volunteer Mayor is running the Village largely by himself, with the aid of a variety of expensive, outside consultants.

It was not always thus. Our long term, de facto, administrator, Carmine DeLuca, retired two years ago and our Village Engineer resigned out of frustration with the Mayor a year and a half ago. In their place, we now have (i) a part time Treasurer (a perfectly amiable and extremely competent professional) who works four hours a day for us and the balance of the day for the Town of Mamaroneck and (ii) an outside engineering consultant available when the Mayor needs him.

In defense of his part time staff/outside consultant approach to management, Mayor Bialo would have you believe that full time managers are a luxury we cannot afford and that his approach is saving the Village money. This is pure campaign spin. In fact, we have paid more than $200,000 in engineering consulting fees this year because the Mayor has failed to fill the $92,000 job in the Village Budget for a full time village engineer.

Not only are consultants more expensive, but also in the absence of full time senior staff, our part time, volunteer Mayor becomes the bottleneck on routine decision-making and project oversight. Take just one of many examples: the Mayor has touted the new street lighting and sidewalks along the Business District on the Boston Post Road as one of his great accomplishments. What he hasn’t told you is that it took three years to complete a block and half of work, that the delay in commencement of construction resulted from the Mayor’s indecision in picking the color of the cement and that, not having a full time engineer to whom to delegate project oversight and routine decisions, the Mayor relied on his outside engineering consultant for both. As a result, we have spent 50% more on “engineering consulting services” than we had budgeted and the project as a whole, three years later, is still incomplete.

Finally, there is the issue of “morale”. The two largest departments at Village Hall are the police and fire departments; we spend well over half our budget dollars on these two departments alone. Now, ask yourself why, for the first time in the 115-year history of the Village, the firefighters and policemen have decided to endorse a mayoral candidate and their choice is Liz Feld and not the incumbent Mayor. The Mayor has insinuated that these historic endorsements are a consequence of his having been a “tough negotiator”, having made “tough decisions” in recent contract negotiations and that this is the price he has to pay for “holding the line”. This is pure bunk. In fact, it is as a result of his contemptuous and disrespectful treatment of the police, their families and Village residents at public hearings held during the eighteen-month period it took him to finally engage and then negotiate a new police contract. You can win the battle and lose the war. That’s where we are now: morale is so low in the two departments that the policemen and firefighters have, for the first time in the history of this Village, stood up in the middle of an election and told us it is time for a change at the top.

Liz, Marlene and I want to restore civility to the conduct of our municipal affairs. We want to take a long term look at our aging infrastructure and employee post retirement obligations and try to plan for them as best we can so as to minimize the pressure they are putting on the Village budget to the greatest extent possible. We want to fill the long unfilled positions at Village Hall so as to eliminate the need to rely on expensive, outside consultants to do the work of the Village.

We have taken on the difficult task of unseating an incumbent Mayor because we firmly believe that a change is in order and in the best interests of our unique Village. We hope you will join us and vote for the Larchmont Coalition Party, Row D, this coming Tuesday, March 21st! If you live north of the Boston Post Road, you vote at Chatsworth School; if you live south of the Post Road, you vote at the Village Center (behind the Library).