By Mary Marvin, Mayor of Bronxville

June 22, 2022: In a recent column, I updated you on the Village’s operating budget and I wanted to do the same with our capital budget.

As part of our recent comprehensive plan and corresponding survey, the message we received from you, as Villagers, was not to make great changes to the streetscape, rather update, repair, and preserve the infrastructure and streetscape.

We have acted upon the message you sent to the Board of Trustees, and we are in various stages of a very aggressive $3.575 million capital improvement plan.

The following are some of the major initiatives either underway or scheduled and funded:

Our annual extensive road resurfacing plan, encompassing all sectors of the Village, will result in $200,000 worth of road milling, road surfacing and new curbs.  Work will be done this summer with a goal of completion by Labor Day to coincide with the start of school and the return of more traffic after the quieter summer months.

Given the incredible increase in rain events in the Village and the forecast that they will continue in frequency and ferocity, we are committing $250,000 to mitigation efforts.

Our work is underway in various flood prone pockets of the Village.  The process includes manual sewer cleaning by our own DPW staff followed by industrial vacuuming of the sewers, culminating in an inspection by camera of all the pipes to look for possible cracks and obstructions such as tree roots and sediment.

The results of the camera inspection will be reviewed by a professional hydrologist who will aid us in formulating both long and short-term solutions to ease flooding.  We are working very cooperatively with our neighbors in Tuckahoe and Eastchester as flood zones cross community lines.

We continue with our very aggressive Village wide sanitary sewer relining project, now in Phase 3, to deal with the fact that our Village infrastructure is showing its age at 125 years old.  We expect to do a very healthy segment of the Village infrastructure at a cost of $750,000.

As we continue to encourage everyone to walk in the Village and leave cars at home, we are modifying the intersections at both Pondfield Road and Gramatan Avenue and Midland Avenue and Pondfield Road to make them more pedestrian friendly with PED signs and reconfigured signalization.  This extremely comprehensive and coordinated project will cost $1.2 million but will most assuredly make walking to school and walking to town a much more comfortable experience.

In the same theme of walkability, we are spending $175,000 to construct a crosswalk and new sidewalks in the area of Paddington Road and Dusenberry Road so as to encourage extremely safe travel for those residents who live on the other side of our only State Road, Route 22.  This component of our new initiative called Safe Streets has a goal to provide, not only our students but also all residents, the safest possible routes from one side of the Village to the other with an emphasis on getting our youngsters to school.

We will also be spending $75,000 on another prong of our Safe Streets initiative to enlist experts to give us further advice to initiate various walking routes from all sectors of the Village as well as suggestions for possible bike lanes.

Again, to maximize the safety for pedestrians as we encourage walkability, we will be investing in the Westside Traffic Circle with the goal of making it easier for pedestrians to navigate the roundabout.

Recognizing that we have precious little open space, it is imperative that we keep it as updated and pristine as possible to encourage residents to be outdoors and use our facilities.  To that end, we will be upgrading many open spaces this summer including $100,000 directed to the heavily used Sagamore Park where we will be adding more updated, child friendly equipment as well as enhancing the overall look and landscaping of this pocket park.

We will also be focusing on the hidden gem of beautiful open space between Kensington Road and Sagamore Road so named Bacon Woods by adding an irrigation system costing $10,000 so that grass can grow in the open level areas as well as upgrading the staircase used by many villagers on Sagamore Road to head to Kensington Road on their way to the train station or the village business district at a cost of $175,000.

On the other side of town, paddle court upgrading is underway including new screens, court painting, hut upgrades and general improvement of the area at a total cost of $70,000 as we are committed to keeping the program vital and updated.

With a concentration in the business district and the train station area, we will be replacing, adding and upgrading our security camera system with an infusion of $150,000 to have increased surveillance in very strategic areas.

Appreciating the need to be forward thinking and encourage a smaller carbon footprint, we will be adding $150,000 of electric car charging stations in the Garden Avenue Lot and on the same parking front, new parking station kiosk will be installed in the former Avalon Lot, now called the Parkway Road Lot.

Of lesser importance, but equally needed in Village Hall proper are some overdue painting and new flooring needs totaling $65,000.  In addition, we will be buying an electronic fingerprint machine and a system for archiving Village financial data with an aggregate cost of $55,000.

To partner with us in the goal of making Bronxville the most walkable community in Westchester, we are asking you to join us this summer in making improvements adjacent to your property to improve pedestrian transit.

This includes making sure your sidewalk is in good repair and composed of the acceptable materials per our Village Code, trimming all bushes and tree branches abutting the sidewalk as pedestrians often have to walk in the road for safe passage and checking that your plantings and shrubbery are not in the Village’s Right of Way.

On the flood prevention checklist, please make sure no debris is placed near any catch basin and that yard waste is not placed in the road as storms then quickly propel it into the catch basins creating immediate clogging.

Finally, we also ask you to make sure that your sanitary and storm water pipes do not comingle.  As example, if gutter water is directed to the wrong piping system, the sanitary system will be overwhelmed impacting your neighbors downstream in the piping metric causing sewage in their below grade bathrooms.

To improve the Village as well as solve some persistent issues, we need your partnership on most of our initiatives.  Please call Village Hall as we are available for expert guidance and direction.

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