Town board candidates criticize the handling of municipal space

By NEAL RENTZ

Two town board candidates came to the former Lewisboro Elementary School on June 27 to criticize how the Democratic majority has been handling the town’s facilities needs, as town purchase of $2.2 million building nears completion.

Town Supervisor Tony Gonçalves, who is on the Democratic and Working Families lines, is running unopposed for reelection. Councilwoman Andrea Rendo and Adam Giardina are running for the other two town board seats on the Republican and Conservative lines. Councilwoman Mary Shah is running on the Democratic and Working Families lines, and her running mate is Katonah-Lewisboro Board of Education President Julia Hadlock, who is running only on the Democratic line. 

Rendo and Giardina are serving on a town task force that is exploring options for facilities needs of town employees. 

“The biggest hurdle that is going to be facing us in the upcoming few years is the relocation of our town offices, our town court and our police department,” Rendo said. 

For the past several years the town court, police department and some town offices have been housed in the former elementary school located at 79 Bouton Road, South Salem, through a rental agreement with the Katonah-Lewisboro School District. The building was in disrepair when the school district entered into the agreement with the town, Rendo said. The town’s parks and recreation department uses the building’s gym, she noted.

At the end of 2024, the school district told the town that it would replace the yearly leases with month-to-month leases, Rendo said. The 4-1 Democratic majority and the school district did not share the information with her and the public, Rendo said. The school district has told town officials that its current plan is to end leasing the building altogether.

“Our employees have really been working in not very healthy conditions” in the former school, Rendo said. The building is in disrepair and the cost of repairing the roof alone would cost millions of dollars, Rendo said. “The inside is not in very good shape at all.”  

“Our current school board is leaving us in the lurch at this point,” Rendo said. 

Giardina said he was a contractor who works in Westchester and Dutchess counties, and has built a variety of types of buildings, including schools, courthouses, apartment buildings, office buildings and shopping centers. 

“The town has a ton of projects that need to be looked at, bid outright and followed through to the end,” he said. “With my background I have a lot to offer the town.”

Rendo explained why the task force recommended the purchase of the Route 35 office building, even though it is not able to accommodate the town court and police department. The task force looked at several buildings and properties, she said, adding she wished the school board would have provided the town with more time to find a new home for the town offices, police department and town court.

The task force agreed that the Route 35 office building was the best option for the town, said Rendo, who is the town board’s liaison to the task force. The recently purchased building was “the best option to house the most number of our employees in the shortest period of time,” she said. The Route 35 building will be for not only the town employees who have been working in the former elementary school, but also employees who have been working in the town house, except for town court workers and the police department.

There is not much more time for the town to find new facilities for the police department and town court, Rendo said.

“We continue to explore our options,” she said.  The town should seek an interim solution for housing the police department and town court to give it time to seek a long-term plan for permanent locations for both, she said. 

“We’re limited in properties in town,” Giardina said, adding it would take between two and three years for the town to do the planning and receive approvals to build a new courthouse and police department. 

The police department is currently located in trailers on the former school property.

Giardina and Rendo said their priority if elected would be to create a long-term capital projects plan. 

“The supervisor kind of leaves us in the dark,” Rendo said. “You don’t know things until the last minute.” 

Supervisor responds

Gonçalves this week responded to the comments made by Giardina and Rendo at their press conference. 

“No one was kept in the dark,” Gonçalves said.

The town has multiple agreements with the school district and three of them were discussed at the July 8, 2024, town board meeting, he said. “Missing from that was the renewal of the office lease agreement, it was discussed in that meeting that the district was considering a merger of the office lease agreement and these other three agreements into one single blanket agreement,” Gonçalves said.

Confirmation the lease for the former school was not going to be renewed came later in 2024, Gonçalves said, adding the former superintendent of schools said earlier in the year there was no decision on what to do with the building.

“I am in agreement that to renovate the existing building would be costly,” he said. The town is looking at options for space for its employees that are fiscally responsible, he said.   

Gonçalves said an option could be to use the town house for the police department and create an extension that could be used by the town court and possible space for a community and senior center. 

Another option is to have the police work out of the state police’s Spring Street location, Gonçalves said.

“The police chief has also looked at temporary mobile structures, which if needed can be used as a short-term solution,” he said. 

Extending the month-to-month lease arrangement past the end of the year is being discussed with the school district, Gonçalves said.

As for the Route 35 building the town recently bought, the closing is expected to be completed in mid-July and the town will consider moving the town offices, including those currently located at the town house to the office building, Gonçalves said.

 In response to criticisms about how the Democratic majority on the town board has handled the situation at the former elementary school, Gonçalves said, “I am not politicizing this but since you ask, prior to having a Democratic majority, the town entered into a rental agreement at Orchard Square shopping center in Cross River and then the school district. Additionally, there were multiple design attempts at a central campus but nothing came out of that. The school building, if conveyed to the town, would have offered a blank slate that would allow us to turn it into a town campus, and this was an idea I was pursuing but the school district decided they wanted to keep that parcel.”

“For at least 12-plus years or so the taxpayer has been paying rent, and this is money out the window,” Gonçalves said. “There was even a suggestion by a couple of board members that maybe we should continue renting at yet another Cross River building. This would have required significant costly renovations. I and the majority did not believe that continuing to rent is the fiscally responsible way to continue, to fill a gap for a short term, yes, but not for years.”

Messages left this week for Shah, Hadlock and Katonah-Lewisboro Superintendent of Schools Ray Blanch this week were not returned.