In the recent past, Dobbs Ferry was notorious for its vicious local elections. Arrayed on either side of the aisle, Democrats and Republicans , though their surrogate, the Dobbs Ferry Party, would hurtle barbs at each other. Generally, the Republican championed the ‘greed is good’ efficient market theory, even as it resulted in eyesores and empty stores, while the Democrats pursued a NIMBY strategy through bureaucracy and environment regulations.
This year, the Village is strangely silent. The Democrats have fielded a slate of three Trustee candidates: Laurence D. Dengler, David A. Koenigsberg and Edward T. Manley. There is no opposition.
Curious as to how this complacency came about I decided to attend the Village Board meeting on September 9, 2008. It started punctually at 7:30 PM and ended in exhaustion at 11:30 PM. During those long four hours, the audience was treated to a cast of characters right out of a Bob Newhart sitcom. There was the angry neighbor, the aggrieved property owner, the dapper developer, the haggard business manager, the cheerful restaurateur, the concerned environmentalist, the hyperactive community organizer and the technically expert fire officials
I must admit that I had more belly laughs than a John Stewart show, especially when the regulars seized the microphone and delivered their stand-up.
As Mayor Seskin told me after the meeting, his goal is to achieve open government even if it means sitting for hours and hours until everyone feels that they have been heard. Apparently, if everybody gets to say everything that is on their mind all the time to everyone, people stop fighting and actually get things done.
Except when it comes to money.
The maelstrom swirling under the surface in Dobbs Ferry is the fate of the police force which represents 30% of the entire Village budget. Last week, the Police Benevolent Association mass mailed a letter to the Village residents accusing the Mayor and Trustees of planning to eliminate the Police Department. Aside from the legality of the letter – didn’t it turn the Benevolent Association into a Political Action Committee – Detective Brian Hennessey who authored the letter is also involved with the union and appears to be most interested in protecting jobs, pay, overtime and benefits. So the letter is not really about the culture war of Village identity versus Greenburgh encroachment. It is about protecting well paying jobs with excellent benefits. For those just getting embroiled in the controversy, the letter was in reaction to a Shared Services study between the Village of Dobbs Ferry and the Town of Greenburgh to identify cost savings. This study is funded by the State of New York that is trying to reduce political complexity by combining some of the functions of the 1,300 local jurisdictions in the State.
The bottom line in Dobbs Ferry is that we have 28 police officers. We can probably only afford 25, so three need to be replaced by either shared services or new technology like surveillance cameras. The Police Benevolent Association is therefore preemptively putting the Mayor and the Trustees in a ‘box’. Their goal is to get them to say something like ‘we don’t intend to cut the police force’ so they can accuse them of perfidy later on when they reverse that position reacting to the economic pressures of the credit crisis.
I, for one, will not be sending my $100 contribution to the Police Benevolent Association this year. First because contributions to Political Action Committees are not tax deductible and, second, because their mission appears to have morphed from serving the community to self-interest.