Unite New Castle: The Right Answer for Our Town
I have been a 19-year New Castle resident, having moved here when my oldest daughter was pre-school age, and now remain a resident as my nest is empty with both children having come through the excellent Chappaqua school system. I grew up in White Plains, and embraced the opportunity to return to Westchester and make Chappaqua my home. I have developed a great affection for our community, in particular embracing the manner in which residents co-exist and interact. Indeed, it takes a village.
While all elections are important, the current local election here is by far the most important that I have experienced. I believe the Unite New Castle candidates have the best ability to move our town forward and serve as its governing body. The central issue in this election relates to competing visions regarding the appropriate means to revitalize the otherwise moribund downtown Chappaqua hamlet.
At the forefront is the Form Based Code, a process started some years ago to rewrite the hamlet’s zoning in a manner that focuses on form, codifying the zoning in a manner that addresses years of developer complaints regarding the process to get anything done in the hamlet. The proposed code focuses on form and sets broad criteria, and it allows developers to build “as-of-right,” which is a risky proposition for a small and historic hamlet like Chappaqua.
The mechanism by which a community assesses the impact of something like a Form Based Code is the SEQRA process as mandated by state legislation enacted in the mid-1970s. This process allows for public input and engagement with interested parties such as the school board and library board.
From the beginning the process has been unnecessarily contentious and adversarial. The DGEIS landed in the fall of 2020, during the height of the pandemic while our community was sorting through the uncertainties of getting our children back into classrooms. The initial proposal envisioned a downtown hamlet with buildings of up to five stories and allowed up to nearly 1,000 residential units.
Reaction was swift and severe. Concerns were raised regarding this vision, along with numerous matters raised in the DGEIS. The list of issues is too long to provide here, but some rose to the surface as lightning rods in the often-heated debate.
Among those was a widely disparate view of the financial impact on the school district, with harsh criticism directed at the consultant’s work that made use of generic assumptions not applicable to a community like New Castle. Unfortunately, much of the early efforts by the community were focused on these types of issues, correcting a process that seemed to have its thumb firmly on the scale from the beginning.
As the DGEIS was finalized, provisions were announced to incorporate what seemingly were intended to address the community’s concerns. At the forefront was the “new direction,” which described an intention to limit building height to four stories and limit the initial implementation of the Form Based Code to six acres along North Greeley Avenue.
While helpful, this new direction was somehow weaponized as the tip of the spear to further undermine the already marginalized SEQRA process. Despite the short-term intent to limit the code implementation, the plan continued using the full 72-acre hamlet as basis for the SEQRA process.
While the reduction to four stories is an improvement, the result has little to no impact on the potential number of residential units, and there is no indication that the community was any more enthusiastic about a sea of four-story buildings than they were regarding a sea of four- and five-story buildings. In sum, there is essentially no limit to buildings in our downtown akin to what is in process near Memorial Plaza in Pleasantville. I’ve come across nobody that shares this vision for our hamlet, yet we forge on with this as the basis.
Not surprisingly, the election represents a sharp divide on the Form Based Code. The Democrats 4 New Castle slate is keenly aligned with the majority Town Board opinion in support of the Form Based Code, as well as the governance of the process to date.
In contrast, the Unite New Castle slate is led by the lone dissenting voice on the current Town Board, two-term Councilwoman Lisa Katz, running for town supervisor. The Unite New Castle vision is one of responsible development, not handing the future of our hamlet over to developers in the hope that everything will be OK. It’s an approach that would attempt to repair what is acknowledged to be a flawed process.
Responsible governance would demand exploration of these approaches before resorting to admittedly rarely-used, extreme and risky zoning approaches, characterized earlier this week in The Examiner’s endorsement as being “seen far more often in larger communities than Chappaqua.”
But what will work? Which slate brings an approach that will best position New Castle to actually revitalize the downtown hamlet? The Examiner in its endorsement sets forth some of the issues. The characterization used there is that Unite New Castle wants to negotiate with developers and use overlay districts and special permits, among other toolsets to help the hamlet.
Democrats 4 New Castle? No indication of anything other than being all in on the Form Based Code. But while both slates seem close enough on North Greeley to reach potential solutions, there remains a wide gulf between them with respect to the rest of the hamlet. In the words of The Examiner, “After the reaction of the past year, it will be nearly impossible for a new board to rezone beyond North Greely for a while – at least.” In other words, for a while, nothing happens.
So there we have it, tried and true approaches to governance of communities like New Castle as compared to what appears to be no near-term answer to help revitalize our entire hamlet. I think the choice is obvious.
I support Unite New Castle in this upcoming Town Board Election. The team of Lisa Katz, Tara Kasal, Chris Hildenbrand, and Victoria Tipp bring unmatched qualifications, a return to sound governance that engages with the community and a vision for the hamlet that offers the hope for meaningful and responsible change.
Roger Klepper
Chappaqua
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