Democratic Candidates for Greenburgh File Lawsuit Alleging Invalid Petitions- Attempt to Deny Candidates Petition to Appear on the Ballot
Drama in Greenburgh?? It couldn't be but this one is certainly interesting. I haven't seen any other reporting on this from any blog or local newspaper. This is why you subscribe to my blog!!
On 4/19 a case was filed in the Supreme Court of the State of New York by Town Council Candidates Gina Jackson and Joy Haber along with Town Clerk Candidate Lisa Maria Nero in an attempt to disqualify the petitions of their competitors and deny them a spot on the ballot in the upcoming June Primary Election. They allege numerous instances of fraud and disqualifying behavior.
Background
At the Feb 2023 Greenburgh Democrats Convention, District Leaders gathered to endorse candidates for elected office. The endorsement means among other support, that the local party District Leaders will help gather the signatures required to be placed on the ballot. Lisa Maria Nero was endorsed as the candidate for Town Clerk and Gina Jackson and Joy Haber were endorsed for Town Council. The three of them, along with other endorsed candidates circulated a petition to gather signatures of eligible voters. 1000 signatures was required.
Anyone else who wishes to run for these positions is eligible to do so and must gather the required signatures. This is what I did when I ran in 2019 as a non endorsed candidate. Anyone is able to do this who wishes to run. Judith Beville (incumbent candidate for Town Clerk), Manny Areces and Wilburt Preston (candidates for Town Council) teamed up to combine their names on a second petition and circulated that petition to gather signatures to get a spot on the ballot and have a contested primary election. They filed their petition with a total of 2185 signatures.
Allegations
I have linked the full case below but the long and short of it is that they allege that an insufficient number of the 2185 signatures were valid either because they were invalid signatures, because proper procedure for witnessing the signatures was not followed, and/or because signatures were fraudulent. The filing shows the candidates went line by line and objected to any signatures they felt were legally invalid and listed the reasons why. They also identified instances where petitions were left out in open places, where the person signing as witnessing the signature, could not have actually done so. Most egregiously, they also allege that pages of signatures were filled out fraudulently, not by the actual voter. I'll quote from the case;
The subject designating petition included a total of 2185 signatures. The respondent candidates were required to submit 1,000 valid signatures for their names to be placed on the primary ballet. The attached particularized objections allege that 1167 signatures are invalid and if all objections are sustained, the respondent candidates would have a total of 1018 valid signatures, only 18 signatures above the 1000 signature threshold..
However, in addition to the particularized objections set forth in Exhibit 7, petitioners allege that there are additional bases which, in combination with this cause of action or standing on their own, are sufficient to invalidate additional signatures, entire sheets, or the entirety of the BEVILLE-ARECES-PRESTON designating petition, which are set forth below in further detail
The witness statement information at the bottom of sheet No. 72 of the respondent-candidates’ designating petition was completed and signed by respondent WILBERT PRESTON. However, as the petitioners will show, PRESTON did not witness all of the signatures on Sheet No. 72, and at least eight signatures were falsely dated March 29, 2023. As demonstrated by the affidavit of Rodney Lederer-Plaskett (Exhibit 1 to this petition), the affidavit of Mary Colon (Exhibit 2 to this petition), and the affidavit of petitioner LISA MARIA NERO (Exhibit 3 to this petition), a petition sheet was left unattended and available for members of the general public to sign at a drugstore known as Valuable Drugs, located at 417 Tarrytown Road, White Plains, NY for a period from March 21, 2023 (and perhaps earlier) to at least March 30, 2023 (and perhaps later). 13. While said petition sheet was left on the pharmacy counter for an unknown period, multiple signatures were placed on the petition, which were not personally witnessed, and yet the witness information statement was completed and signed by respondent-candidate WILBERT PRESTON and included with the volume filed with the Board of Elections.
The name of Gerald Jones, an enrolled member of the Democratic party, appears on four separate petition sheets involved in this Town of Greenburgh election............................... The only rational conclusion that can be drawn from the foregoing is that Gerald Jones’ signature was forged on Sheet No. 85 of the BEVILLE-ARECES-PRESTON and, therefore, the witness identification information on that sheet was fraudulently completed and signed by the respondent candidate MANUEL E. ARECES..................The petitioners herein submit that the conclusion that Gerald Jones’ signature was forged will be further reinforced by the line by line review of signatures purportedly witnessed by MANUEL E. ARECES, which contain numerous similarly printed names and other irregularities.
In the event that the Court’s rulings on the petitioners’ line-by-line challenges and/or the invalidation of signatures based upon fraud by WILBERT PRESTON and/or MANUEL E. ARECES leave any the respondent candidates with 1,000 or more otherwise valid signatures, the entire designating petition should be invalidated because it is permeated by fraud.
Information on the Case can be found here.
Main Case Document
Additional Documents Click Here- If it doesn't take you straight to the case fill out the "Captcha" and then then go to Show E Filed Documents for Affidavits and Other Material. If it asks you to search, you can search by defendant "Beville"
Comments on Proposed Condo Taxation Law
The proposal before us tonight I fear has many unintended consequences, consequences that will hurt Greenburgh as a whole. It is important to note tonight that the proposal is only for Greenburgh and it's villages. The statewide bill was vetoed by Gov Hochul. I hope that the Town Board considers all the impacts of the decision and if it decides to go forward with this, does so with eyes wide open and fully aware of some of the negative impacts.
"Every single member of this Town Board has expressed concern at one time or another about the affordable housing crisis facing our communities. Everyone knows that multi family condo and co-ops are a more affordable form of housing than single family homes. These are often starter homes for young families, and places where our seniors go after downsizing in order to stay in the community in which they raised their families. While the bill exempts housing built with federal tax credits, those developments are few and far between. To help address the lack of affordable housing, we need to be attracting multi family housing developments and developers to Greenburgh. This bill would do the exact opposite.
“At a time when New York state is in the midst of a statewide housing crisis, this bill would be an unacceptable outcome.” Those aren't my words, those are the Governors speaking about the statewide bill. She continues;
“The bill would result in an effective tax increase upon newly constructed housing built as condominiums and cooperatives in jurisdictions that change their assessment, which would make this housing less attractive to potential homeowners and ultimately lead to few units of housing being built.
Look, this isn’t rocket science, if you increase the cost of something by 30%, you are going to make it less attractive. I get it, we want to maximize future tax revenues but this change so significantly alters the landscape that it changes the calculations of developers in what types of projects they would move forward.
Those who state otherwise or that we will mitigate this with other actions, have yet to provide any specifics or details as to how we will do that. Just hoping for outcome is not enough
And we are the only community in the area doing this. Why develop in Greenburgh when you can do so in White Plains, New Rochelle, Port Chester, or any of our surrounding communities and create the exact same product just with a much more valuable result.
Now there are some in our community who welcome this, people who don’t want any new and especially any new multi family housing to be built; but I believe Greenburgh needs to increase its assessable base in order to keep up with the ever increasing costs of operating our local governments. In addition to this, Multi family housing is the most environmentally friendly form of housing and again, this bill only serves to make it less attractive and less likely to be built. It generally results in fewer students in the school districts and is less costly to maintain for local governments. The goal of this legislation is to increase tax revenues and assessable but I predict this will actually reduce potential assessable, as developers and projects look elsewhere. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction, the reaction here is going to be that development goes elsewhere.
We need to seriously reconsider moving ahead with this on our own. This has the potential to be one of the most significant laws passed in your entire 30 year history Paul. And as a result, I would also urge you to seek a Board of Ethics decision about this considering your own ownership of a condo. Making new condo developments more expensive, limits their availability and supply, thus increasing the value of your condo. I do not believe that you are pushing this legislation for this reason, but the facts are the facts, and this legislation directly increases the value of your property.
I urge Town Board to at least reconsider the plan as is and target lower hanging fruit, like finally passing an affordable housing mandate for single family home developments.
Budgets
Property taxes in Greenburgh have always been among the highest in the country. In the words of County Executive Lattimer “we have reached a saturation point”. Greenburgh residents need tax relief now. The Trump tax plan which capped SALT deductions at $10k per year was a devastating blow to homeowners in our community.
We need to ensure that our tax dollars are spent wisely and efficiently. That all spending decisions are made via intensive data driven analysis. We cannot be making major decisions on an ad hoc basis. “Because that is the way we’ve always done it” is not a sufficient answer to justify major spending decisions. We need to be planning for the long term and ensuring we are focused on ensuring the long term financial security of our community.
I’m calling for the hiring of a Business Development officer. Growing our tax base is the key to reducing the burden on property owners and providing the revenue that we need for key investments in infrastructure and services.
This role will focus will be attracting business to Greenburgh, helping new and existing businesses navigate our regulatory landscape, and applying for grants to help bring jobs and investment into our Town.
Greenburgh is a difficult place to do business, with special permits and regulation required for almost every type of activity. For example there are 23 pages of regulations governing the use of signs alone.. We need someone who can help recruit business to Greenburgh and help them navigate this difficult landscape in a competitive environment.
We need to be mindful of every tax dollar spent. This past year, the current board created a new position “legislative assistant.” This is a position that the Supervisor himself had previously called “a big waste of taxpayer dollars.” We need someone who will stand up for the taxpayer, and not let our Town Board spend money on what they admit is a waste of money.
I also propose eliminating the Towns TIF District which reroutes $300k per year of general taxpayer funds into a special district for Route 9a improvement. This fund already has $6mm appropriated to it. Taxpayers need relief now and these funds should be returned to the general rolls.
Zoning and Planning
As former President of the Hartsdale Neighbors Association, we have been the leading civic association pushing for a revitalization of the 4 Corners intersection in Hartsdale. None of the work would have happened without HNA efforts. I will continue to address and try and tackle these big large scale issues that require zoning updates. These kind of problems won’t be solved overnight, but we cannot afford to continue ignoring them.
Zoning can’t exist in a vacuum. It needs to be looked at holistically, in the context of the entire community. We have several major projects planned for our community, but no cohesive plan about how to address them. Instead, they are all being looked at individually. We also have several major assisted living facilities planned. We need to ensure that the impact on our community and services will not be negatively impacted. Here is the regulations regarding Assisted Living special permits.
Our zoning rules exist for a reason. It is to protect our communities, and protect the people who live there and choose to make Greenburgh their home. When we issue 6000% variances and don’t enforce the rules we have, we are telling residents that they cannot rely on the Town to ensure they are treated fairly and will be protected.