Age: 52
Family: Husband Mike, daughter Veronica, son Doug
Political affiliation: Democrat
Political experience: Trustee five years
Community affiliations: Volunteer environmental educator at Sheldrake Environmental Center
Number of years in Larchmont: 18
One thing the average resident doesn’t know about you: I tap dance
Q: Why did you decide to run for mayor?
A: As trustee, I really got to see the inner workings of the village and what goes into making this place happen. I find it very intellectually stimulating and challenging. At this point I was ready to increase my involvement, my children—they’re twins—they just left for college, so I knew I was going to have a lot of extra time on my hands. I had to decide what I was going to do with that time at this point in my life, and Anne McAndrews decided not to run for a third term. So with the support of the Democrats and the other trustees, I decided to run.
Q: How do you think that your tenure as mayor might differ from Anne McAndrews’?
A: I think every mayor along the way says pretty much the same thing at the beginning of their tenure: we want to maintain the level of service, watch costs, and keep Larchmont the great place it’s always been, and I’m going to be no different than that. So in many ways it’s no different from one to the next. The differences aren’t that substantial because we all have the same goals. My focus is somewhat similar to Anne’s. I’m focused on the infrastructure and the inner workings of the village government in terms of how we do our accounting, how we do our data maintenance, for utility billing, for tax billing. We’re trying very hard to get to the point where we can automate a lot of the processes here, computerize things in the most current way available so that we can provide quicker service to residents, we can cut down on a lot of the manual operations that happen around here so that it frees up some of our employees to focus on other things that maybe have been neglected due to the amount of time it takes when you’re doing water billing in a manual way.
Q: What are your priorities as mayor?
A: Probably a big focus of these two years is—we have a new administrator—and it’s going to be the first time the village of Larchmont has ever had an administrator. We brought [Justin Datino] on in June, so it’s less than a year yet. I think, these first two years that I’m here, it’s going to be a focus to get that position settled in. We’ve determined the parameters of what that position is and how that functions with the department heads, with the board, and sort of slowly change the traditional role of the board which has been very consumed with day-to-day operations because we didn’t have an administrator. The board should be able to slowly come away from that and focus on bigger policy issues and long range planning…. I think we were the last municipality in the county to not have an administrator.
Q: One of biggest issues that the village is facing right now is an increase in residential development. Do you feel similarly to McAndrews about it? How do you plan to address those issues?
A: Whenever we have a change in the type of development activity in the community, there’s always going to be—and rightfully so—people are going to stop and take a look and say,‘Is this really what we want to be happening here?’ and examine what exactly it is and look at our code to protect us from things we think aren’t good for the village. On the other hand, we have to balance the fact that when people own a piece of property, they have a certain right to be able to develop that property according to what the code allows. So that’s where we’re at right now. We’ve hired a professional to look at our zoning code, to review it with us, and look at different parts of the code that may need to be adjusted based on current circumstances. Where that goes is not going to be determined my preference, it’s going to be determined by advice of the professionals, the consensus of the board, and feedback from the community. That’s where we’re headed. Hopefully we’ll be able to start presenting some preliminary feedback from the planner in the next several weeks and then it will be a big back and forth process. We’ll have to come to a community consensus.
Q: The deadline on the moratorium is closing in—I believe it’s in July—do you think that you will have new zoning laws in place by the time the clock ticks down?
A: There’s more work to do; I would not want to say right now what we think we’ll have by then. We hope we’ll have something with some degree of actionable item, but there’s a lot that’s going to happen between now and then that will determine exactly what we’re able to accomplish in that time period. Nobody went into this moratorium having the intention of having it go on forever. We definitely would prefer not to renew and have some resolution that most people can be comfortable with within the six months.
Q: When you enacted the moratorium, did you envision what has happened so far? You’ve been notified that some people want to sue because of it?
A: Our legal counsel laid out all the potentialities of a moratorium and we certainly could have expected that people who had a vested financial interest would take whatever legal action is provided to them. We had an appeal process written into the moratorium therefore we assumed someone would avail themselves of it.
Q: How has it been transitioning from trustee to mayor?
A: It’s very different. First of all, you’re in Village Hall daily as mayor, and when you’re a trustee you kind of wander in and out and you’re in meetings so that means that, whenever someone wants to get in touch with the village, you’re the point person as mayor. As trustees, people rarely called me or approached me with questions or complaints, maybe neighbors. As mayor, you’re the first point of contact when people want to call with an issue, ask a question if they need some help. From that perspective it’s very different, it’s much more time consuming. It’s that famous saying, “The buck stops here.” When you’re trustee you can make hard decisions at meetings, but you know it’s the mayor who has to implement them—who has to make the phone call. Now I’m the mayor, and I have to make the phone call.
