Widespread vacancies on volunteer boards persist

By MARTIN WILBUR

The Mount Kisco Village Board has appointed several residents in recent months to start filling the large number of vacancies on the municipality’s volunteer boards and commissions, but there are still many boards with empty seats.

Since December, the board has filled two of the open positions on the Economic Development Council and has conducted interviews for other vacancies with more scheduled. But the appointment of new members has been slow. A check of the membership of 15 of those boards on the village’s website this week, shows at least 27 openings.

Mayor J. Michael Cindrich conceded that it’s been challenging to fill the vacancies, with citizens needed to help make the government function smoothly. The difficulties that families face today have never been greater, significantly limiting the residents who can volunteer.

“These communities, the driving force is citizen government,” Cindrich said. “So, with the complex issues that we have today, two-income families and the lack of free time, time that they want to spend with the children, people want to spend time traveling, it’s a challenge.”

Most glaringly, the Board of Ethics and the Tree Preservation Board are each listed as having three of five seats vacant, and the Leonard Park Committee has five of its 14 seats unfilled. While the Board of Ethics meets on an as-needed basis, most other boards convene monthly. Cindrich said that the village recently delegated some of the tree board’s responsibilities, which recommends which trees are protected as well as the replacement of others that were removed due to disease or development, to its professional staff.

Despite the shortage of volunteers to fully populate many of the boards and commissions, Cindrich also explained greater time commitment and experience is preferred for some openings.

“Some of the boards require a lot more work than others, and it also requires a certain degree of expertise, and then to compound the challenge also, many of the boards require continuing education components,” Cindrich said. “So, it’s not easy.”

Trustee Tom Luzio said a common theme is families with extremely busy lives, which has made it difficult to fill the slots. While many people find more time once they have finished raising their family or have retired, they have also long postponed other activities that they enjoy, he said.

“I’m very mindful that they get to a point in their life where they’ve been able to retire, they want to stop work and enjoy their life for a while,” Luzio said. “So, I’m very mindful of that, and hopefully there are folks out there that can find a nice balance and can contribute, oftentimes one day a month that it takes to make that kind of impact to help out Mount Kisco to become a little bit better place.”

There has also been criticism and controversy. In December, 21-year Recreation Commission member Kim Terlizzi was denied another seven-year term to continue serving. At the time, Terlizzi accused the new board, which was seated on Dec. 1, of political retribution for her views, including some posted on social media.

She renewed that accusation this week after interviewing more recently for one of the empty Leonard Park Committee slots.

“It’s one thing if there’s no interest to fill those positions. That, obviously, the village has no control over,” said Terlizzi, who suggested the village make greater use of social media to advertise. “But you have to really question when there are people that are looking to be put on these boards and they’re not being put on. In my case, it seems to be political retribution and questioning free speech issues, and that has no place in their consideration for appointing people for these boards.”

Another longtime volunteer, John Rhodes, said the village lost some volunteers with previous administrations, which seemed only to tolerate them rather than treating board and commission members with value and respect. 

“It’s a problem generally. People are kind of disaffected with government generally,” said Rhodes, who serves as a Historical Society trustee and is on the Tree Preservation Board, Conservation Advisory Council and Complete Streets Task Force.

He said the village could also do a better job at not only advertising the vacancies but explain more effectively what each board does.

Trustee Tammy Brown said the village may need to do a better job in informing residents of the volunteer opportunities available on a wide range of boards.

“I think that Mount Kisco has some wonderful residents here and they’re very concerned and interested in how our village is run,” Brown said. “I think we just need to let the residents know that there are openings and share that information on a regular basis so that they could see that there are opportunities for them to be in local government, and I think that will entice some of these residents to apply to these board positions.”

Luzio said the new board has been making a greater effort to fill vacancies. But making sure the village is well-run and having residents aware of that could entice more people.

“We show them good government, they’re going to want to be part of it,” he said.