All right.

Good evening, everyone.

Looks like you can hear me.

Okay.

I'm trustee Nicole Asquith, and I'm filling in for Mayor Peter Scherr, who is away this evening.

Welcome to the Village of Pleasantville regular board meeting on November 10th, 2025.

A day before Veterans Day.

So we're going to have our quarterly report from our chief of police momentarily.

I'm going to start with just a few announcements before we begin.

First of all, of course, tomorrow is Veterans Day.

So just to remind you that we're having our Veterans Day ceremony, as we traditionally do on the 11th at 11 a.m.

at Memorial Plaza.

Parking will be restricted from 7 a.m.

to noon in the north side of the plaza so that we have space to hold the ceremony.

And also to remind you that the tree lighting ceremony this year will be moved to the new civic space, and that will take place on December 7th at 6 p.m.

So put that in your calendars as well.

So a couple of more updates I wanted to bring to your attention, and then perhaps other board members will have things to share as well.

One is that we recently had an uh a referendum on the election, whether or not to move our village elections from March to November, and the referendum passed.

So that means that Paul and myself, who were going to be up for re-election in March are now going to be up for re-election in November.

So we'll just have to see how that impacts the way that village elections take place.

Obviously, next year is going to be a big year for the election with the midterm election.

So hopefully there will be enough interest in the village election as well for people to pay attention to

that.

Also last week we had a developer present to the village board about a request for a zoning change on property behind Foxwoods condominions.

Just for those of you who are interested, a quick update that we have requested through our consultants that the petitioner provide a number of analyses pertaining to things that people express concerns about.

So in particular having to do with traffic and intersections around the property, impacts on school population, impacts on emergency services such as police and fire and so on.

So we will continue to update you on those matters as we get more information.

Also, something we brought to your attention a while back was that we had participated in a consortium of 40 municipalities that had hired a special counsel to oppose the rate hikes in electricity and gas that had been posed proposed by Conn Edison.

So we've now there's now a proposed settlement that significantly reduces the rate increases that had been proposed.

So the initial proposed rate increase for electricity was 11.4 and 13.2% for gas.

And so the proposed settlement would be an increase of 2.8% for three years to electricity and a 2% increase for gas.

So that's obviously a significant reduction.

And

I

don't know, Eric, do you want to add anything to that?

Sure, the settlement also would require Con Ed to meet annually with Westchester municipal officials to look at the call sharing between New York City and Westchester.

They will be required to develop an analysis on the cost to construct and maintain underground electrical infrastructure versus the overhead infrastructure that's primarily around Westchester.

So the idea being it's way more money to maintain the city's infrastructure and some of the money being generated by Westchester is potentially subsidizing that.

So these annual meetings and this analysis will help us better understand.

And they are going to provide uh analysis on uh what data center construction potentially will look like on the electric grid with uh AI cover.

Certainly a pressing pressing issue.

Um okay, and then I had one more item on our list, which is just to let you know that the community choice aggregation program is ending.

That is the program that um had that we participated in um that had been organized through sustainable Westchester, which gave us residents a fixed rate for electricity.

Um so I'm as I understand it, um uh the rules about how these bids for electricity go out have changed, um that is no longer uh going to continue, um, unfortunately.

Um so um I want to make sure I have everything here.

I want to invite our chief of police, um, Eric Gretzner to come speak to us.

Um

wait before that.

Yes.

Oh, I'm sorry, did you have yeah?

Yeah, uh couple couple things, and I think one person is their hand raised.

Oh, okay, sure.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Thanks for bringing that to my attention.

Yeah, well, first of all, I just want to let people know that um uh for the last three years or so, uh, between the time of the um master plan that I worked with um uh a local architect and um uh Eric Smith at uh Mount Pleasant, the engineer there and our former director of the Mount Plaza Public Library, John Firon on and uh about two months ago I was conflicted because I had done other work with that architect subsequent to finishing that plan.

Um, but then he was re-engaged by our library independently through Mount Pleasant.

Um, and so our village attorney said I'm no longer conflicted on the public library.

Um and I wanted to let people know, first of all, that I will be going to a library board meeting to discuss uh being the village representative to any renovations that are done in the future, which is something we've talked about internally.

Um, but also that you know, the the library is actively looking to try to pursue the plans that were created in 2021 to renovate, um, is obviously complicated for uh everyone by the uh financial situation in the town.

Um, you know, and we may have to figure out interim ways to get where we're gonna