A Thanksgiving Message from Scarsdale Mayor Jon Mark

(Here are comments from Mayor Jon Mark delivered at the Board of Trustees meeting on Tuesday November 22, 2016.) Residents looking back on the tumultuous events of 2016—whether on a world, national or Village level -- may be more inclined to ask for mercy and guidance than to offer thanks for our many blessings. However, we here in Scarsdale have much to be thankful for and we should not forget that. We live in a community that through our collective effort gives the highest priority to the education of our children and maintenance of our beautiful Village in the Park. We are far from perfect in achieving the goals we expect of ourselves, but we keep trying and work hard toward doing better. We are able, for the most part to find ways to have community dialogues about matters of importance. While the volume of those discussions is raised from time to time we are willing and able to keep the conversation going and working through our issues though we may not progress at the speed we would like in arriving at solutions.

Next Tuesday, November 29th, we will hold another public meeting at 6:55 pm in Village Hall to hear a presentation by the Library Board of their present proposal for renovating the Library. The Library Board has been working hard on this proposal for several years. The latest iteration of what they propose has been scaled back in response to community feedback and comments from this Board and Village Staff. We will be interested to hear both the presentation and residents' comments on it – both pro and con. It is hoped the meeting will be well attended. Those who do not wish to come to Village Hall on the 29th –or are unable to come – will be able to watch the meeting on the public access cable channel and it will also be streamed live on Scarsdale Public TV's web site. Comments can be emailed to the Board by sending them to clerk@scarsdale.com. One goal of that meeting will be to determine what next steps this Board should take, if any, in moving the project forward. We look forward to seeing many of our fellow residents at the meeting.

In the meantime, Happy Thanksgiving to all and now let us turn to the business of this meeting.