Candidate Tim Foley Infuses Integrity and Joy Into Volunteering

Scarsdale resident Tim Foley calls himself a “compulsive volunteer,” and when you read what he has already done you’ll be impressed that he is now stepping up to serve on the Scarsdale Village Board of Trustees. See why he believes that collaboration and civic engagement will lead to even greater community spirit and what he hopes to accomplish in the next few years.

How long have you lived in Scarsdale and what do you most value about the community?

My family moved to Scarsdale almost 13 years ago. My son was two years old at the time, and now he’s a 10th grader at Scarsdale High. My daughter is a 5th grader at Fox Meadow, and she’s never lived anywhere else. The time has certainly flown, but our whole family considers ourselves so very blessed and grateful for terrific education both kids have received through the schools. We also love the quintessential Scarsdale traditions like summertime at the pool, the Halloween window painting in the fall, the tree lighting in the winter, and the return of the farmer’s market and bicycle Sundays on the Bronx River Parkway in the spring.

But when I talk to other people about what it’s like to live in Scarsdale, I can’t say enough about the kindness that is front and center, the generosity of spirit, and the dedication of so many residents filled with “Non Sibi” zeal that give so freely of their time to volunteer and to engage deeply in the life of the village. We talk all the time about declining participation in clubs, civic institutions, and volunteerism over the decades. There are a lot of reasons for that. The hours we’re working to provide for our families are never-ending and ever-expanding, parents feel even more peer pressure than in previous generations to be deeply involved in their children’s learning, development, and interests, and there’s the bombardments of distraction coming in steady supply from our phones, to say nothing of virtually instantaneous access to nearly every TV show and movie ever made, wherever you are.

It is really remarkable in the face of all of that Scarsdale can boast such deeply involved volunteers who regularly contribute to the PTA, to Friends of the Library, to little league, to the Scarsdale Historical Society, to the Forum or the League of Women Voters, to SVAC, to their church or temple, and dozens of other opportunities. This is the true strength of our village, and I’m so grateful to have so many extraordinary, thoughtful, and dedicated people in my and my family’s lives.

Tell us about your career in public service and your volunteer positions.

I myself am a compulsive volunteer, always looking for ways that I can plug in and help. I was President of the Scarsdale Forum in 2019-2020, where I was focused on bringing in new members, starting up a new Climate Resilience Committee, and still making sure the Forum put together the programs our community expects while also publishing a number of thoughtful and well-researched reports on local issues. This year, I’m serving as Secretary of the Scarsdale Bowl Committee, First Vice President of the Scarsdale Democratic Town Committee, and Chair of the County Fiscal Affairs Committee for the Scarsdale Forum. I’ve also served on the Planning Board, the Advisory Council of Human Relations, the Procedure Committee, the Citizens Nominating Committee, and even as a basketball coach for Fox Meadow Elementary School -- which is hysterical to anyone who saw what little game I had in middle school and high school.

As most folks know, I had the good fortune to work for a few years for our own Assemblymember Amy Paulin. I had the privilege to not only watch her in action as quite literally the most prolific and successful bill-passer in the Assembly but also someone who is always grounded in the needs of her constituents. While there, I got to work with her on an amazingly diverse array of projects initiatives, including coordinating the work of 33 local governments and school districts in Westchester, Suffolk, and Nassau Counties to challenge the IRS regulations disallowing the use of charitable funds to offer relief for taxpayers straining with the new cap on the State and Local Tax (SALT) deduction at the federal level; supporting local community efforts to respond to the problematic response by Con Edison to the March 2018 nor’easters; and advocating for adequate funding for the Metro-North Railroad in the MTA capital plan. Prior to working for Amy, I had spent the better part of a decade working in labor politics in seven states and the District Columbia, with a deep background on policies related to healthcare, preventing gun violence, and climate sustainability.

For the past six years, I’ve been the CEO of the Building and Realty Institute, a non-profit trade association 80 years young with dues paying members including homebuilders, developers, remodelers, landlords, co-op and condo boards, property managing agents, and a host of other small businesses in Westchester and the Hudson Valley, coming together for networking, advocacy, education, and training. With my time at the BRI, I’ve developed subject matter expertise on housing policy, infrastructure needs in Westchester, economic development, and clean energy.

Why do you want to join the Scarsdale Village Board at this time?

I’ve obviously had a professional and personal interest in public service throughout most of my career, but I think there are a few factors that make now an ideal time for me to step up and make a stronger commitment to serve this village I call home.

First, I have a compulsion to always be asking “What can I do to help?” and there are no shortage of issues that we’re currently dealing with in our village governance that could use a thoughtful, helping hand.

Second, many of those same issues relate to infrastructure, planning, capital projects, and trying to maximize the amount of outside funding from the state, the federal government, and other sources to ensure we’re being fiscally responsible and sustainable with the property taxes we pay. These are the same topics I’ve both observed and worked on in other cities, towns, and villages around Westchester, especially over the last 5 to 7 years, so I would bring some perspective as to how other communities have successfully or not so successfully dealt with the same topics.

Finally, I have a strong admiration for Mayor Arest, Deputy Mayor Gruenberg and the Trustees currently serving on the board, to say nothing of the terrific service my running mates Ron and Scott provided our community during their tenures on the School Board. I am incredibly excited to potentially work with this specific group of unbelievably talented, dedicated, and thoughtful people, and even more excited about what we can deliver for our friends and neighbors throughout Scarsdale by working together.

What skills and experience will you bring to enhance the Board?

I am something of a nerd’s nerd when it comes to attention to detail around budgets and policy. As Chair of the County Fiscal Affairs Forum for many years, I have spent a lot of time going line by line through the county budget and finding ways to distill what was happening under the hood, the economic context, and what some of the policy choices laid out in the document were in a way that helped the committee both make thoughtful recommendations and lay out our analysis in a clear, concise, accessible way in the Forum’s reports. I bring that focus on the details into everything I do, and would hope to do the same on the Board of Trustees.

Second, as mentioned, I have also spent a lot of time working with municipal governments across Westchester -- sometimes as an advocate, sometimes as a resource with subject matter expertise -- and could help bring the perspective of what’s worked where and why on some of the issues that are likely to come up for our village during the next couple of years.

Third, wherever I’ve gone and whatever I’ve done, my inclination has been to invite people into the process and encourage them to take ownership of the questions and solutions in a way that yields better results. Time and again, my instinct has been to form multi-stakeholder coalitions, campaigns, and discussions to bring in the perspectives of lots of different people and create a space for dialogue. I’ve usually found that the trickier or more controversial the problem is, the more important it is to create a process where many voices have been heard and feel ownership in the solution. Sometimes consensus isn’t possible, and a choice must be made even if not everyone is 100% sold on the idea, but I don’t think I’ve ever found it to be anything but rewarding to take the time to really listen and understand where people are coming from.

Finally, I think I bring a lot of integrity and even joy into whatever volunteer endeavor I’ve thrown myself into. I really get energized by learning from and interacting with new neighbors and volunteers, and that makes me even more dedicated to putting in the time to connect with people across the village to communicate about what we’re doing in the village and to strongly encourage them to engage in the process.

The Board has approved a major project to replace and enhance the Scarsdale Pool complex. Please share your thoughts on this.

The Scarsdale Pool is a true gem of a community institution. My family and I are regulars there throughout the summer months, including for the theme days and the fireworks and concert around the 4th of July. But it’s no secret that the decline of the physical conditions was getting both more rapid and more noticeable each year. There was also the related problem that the summer-only operating model was so limited as to become increasingly financially unsustainable in the long-term. There were a lot of different opinions as to what we should do next, and I think the volunteers of the Pool Committee conducted a lengthy, thorough and painstakingly fair process to arrive at a solution. Honestly, the plan they’ve come up with really blew me away, not just from the thoughtfulness of the redesign, but that the expansion of the facility into an indoor/outdoor pool is the option that was most likely to solve both the capital needs of today and the operating needs of tomorrow at the same time. I was particularly taken by Trustee Kofman’s point that, “For an additional 35% investment, the Village gains a 350% increase in use (50 vs. 14 weeks) for a facility that will serve the community for many decades.”

The challenge now will be making sure that the village successfully manages the project to remain on-time, on-budget, environmentally-friendly, and set our facility up for success for the families of Scarsdale for many generations to come.

At the same time, the School District is close to proposing a $98.6 mm bond. What are your views on the proposal, the timing and how it will impact Scarsdale taxpayers?

I have not yet finished my own research and review on the school bond; I learned a lot during the most recent Scarsdale Forum membership meeting on the topic and look forward to further analysis from the PT Council, the League, and the Forum on the latest iteration.

But I think the underlying trend prompting this bond proposal is one I’m very focused on. For both the schools and the village (and the county too, for that matter), we are dealing with an ongoing challenge of buildings and infrastructure that in many cases are decades if not a hundred years old that must now deal with circumstances that they simply weren’t designed for. Village roads, sewer, and other facilities need investment and in some cases modernization to deal with fifty- and hundred-year storms that now seem to come twice a year, just as the school district must grapple with surging heat that now regularly overlaps with the beginning and end of the school year in a way that would have seemed far-fetched twenty-five years ago. Clearly we’re going to need to spend a lot of time, concern, and investment over the next few years to ensure our infrastructure is up to the job, and we can continue to deliver the services and necessities our residents rely on.

I believe we can mitigate some of the effect on our taxpayers through careful planning, but I’m also aware the timing is not always in our control. As any homeowner can tell you, if the pipes are going to leak or burst, they’re generally not going to wait for the best time in your family budget cycle. It’s certainly also true that delayed and deferred repair and investments are likely to bring their own additional costs and eventually reach a crisis point if delayed for too long.

In addition to being careful and considerate with our property taxes and debt burden -- and the village currently has a sterling reputation on both which will provide us some flexibility in the future -- I think the answer will be in focusing on more revenue diversification, including aggressively pursuing state and federal grants, and leveraging economic growth to grow the tax base beyond the property taxes our current residents pay. As a non-profit executive who has to watch every dollar, I've always found the only thing better than having a great idea that leads to a high-performing program to make real progress, is having that same idea while also finding outside funding to pay for it.

In the spring of 2025, the Village proposed the purchase of new police equipment including cameras, LPR’s and drones to improve surveillance and tracking. What are your views on the need for the equipment and the reaction from residents?

As I understand it, that initiative was put on pause when it became clear the village would not be getting a federal grant to fund that technology. I personally think this was for the best, as it was clear that many in the village felt that we needed a much larger community discussion around privacy, data protection and promises made by the technology provider that they might not be able to be keep. We clearly needed more time to discuss the inherent tradeoffs. There is always a delicate balance between community security and individual privacy even in the best of times. These are not the best of times--I think there is a lot of justifiable concern about the intrusion of technology, surveillance, and data-gathering into our personal lives across the board at this moment.

Thankfully, the available data bears out that Scarsdale continues to be incredibly safe, with burglaries, larcenies, and other property crime modestly declining from already low levels in the past year. Moreover, the men and women of the Scarsdale Police Department continue to achieve recognition for their professionalism and the quality of the service they provide, which suggests we have plenty of time to have those conversations in the future, if we find it necessary.

The Mayor recently announced that the Village will move forward with exploration of the development of the Freightway site. Please share your thoughts on this.
The Freightway garage is another example of public property that is showing its age, is operating at reduced capacity because of disrepair, costs the taxpayers quite a lot just to stave off the further degradation of the property, and clearly does not come close to providing the tax benefits that other villages like Pelham and Pleasantville have been able to achieve through their conversion of underutilized and declining parking structures into mixed-use transit-oriented development. Other communities have found that these types of projects, if well-designed, bring in surplus property tax revenue, even accounting for the services provided to those new residents, that can help fund all the other needs of the village including capital investments without that cost being born only by existing residents. There’s really no sustainable status quo for the Freightway as it exists today; it’s just a question of whether we can come up with something better and more responsive to our finances and community needs.

The underlying problem is not new, but the approach signaled by the Board of Trustees is. The most successful of these public-private adaptive reuse projects that have happened in the last 7-10 years in Westchester have all had community planning take place well before a developer or architect ever puts pen to paper on a concept. The Generic Environmental Impact Statement (GEIS) process that the Mayor announced is a much better way of approaching the questions that so many have raised with regard to potential impacts to traffic, roads, school population, environmental impact, and property taxes. Importantly, that process will allow Scarsdale to decide for ourselves what the answers ought to be, and then make it clear that any development proposal will have to match what we’ve asked for to even be considered. Having worked with a number of developers, that approach is very likely going to be preferable to them as well -- what they lose in terms of autonomy and control, they’ll gain back in terms of costs and efficiency, particularly in determining whether they think they can provide what we want at the outset, rather than after they’ve already sunk time, money, and frustration into a proposal that never moves forward.

I’m very encouraged by the leadership and vision demonstrated by the Mayor and Trustees on choosing this path forward that centers the community’s needs and hopes for the future. These conversations won’t always be easy, but I’m very optimistic that they will set us on a path that will increasingly feel like progress for current and future residents of Scarsdale.

What challenges do you anticipate the Village might encounter during your term?

There’s no question that each year brings its own challenges to our financial picture. I think you could talk to five different economists and come away with five different answers as to what our regional and national economic picture will look like at the end of 2026. Come what may, the job of the Board of Trustees is to make the best informed decisions it can when it comes to funding the services our residents rely on and deserve in a balanced and fiscally responsible way, while making the investments we need to improve our infrastructure and our capability. As I’ve said, I think it’s only prudent to look at how we’re diversifying our revenue, including through state and federal sources, economic activity, and ensuring anything that does happen on the Freightway site in the future is net-positive to the village finances.

I also think not just protecting but fostering the spirit of civic engagement is a critical challenge for this moment -- and also a huge opportunity through the events of America 250 / Scarsdale 325. Scarsdale has always done a remarkable job through our nonpartisan system of governance in encouraging our residents to come together to tackle our problems throughout the years. But when we’re at our best, we’re also encouraging our young people to begin to see the role that they can play in making their community a better place, and to believe in the “non sibi” values that we profess. I think it’s important for the Trustees to take this moment, when our national politics has become so nasty, divisive, counter-productive, and regressive, to demonstrate there is a better way to pragmatically solve problems and make life better for our friends, family, and neighbors, and to invite the next generation in to be part of that work.

I’ve talked a lot already about our infrastructure challenges. I’d also like to see us focused not just on the challenges of now but on the long-term planning to preserve our sense of community and quality of life well into the future, and that includes continuing to show real leadership in experimenting with programs that will make us even more energy-efficient, environmentally sustainable, and responsible stewards of our village in a park for the enjoyment of all who call it home, in this generation and for many more to come.

Anything you wish to add?

I am really and truly honored to be nominated for the position of Trustee. Having served on the CNC and the Procedure Committee in the past, I know how extensive the efforts are to vet the candidates thoroughly and make sure they’re putting forward candidates with the right temperament, values, experience, and judgement -- and it’s all done by volunteers with a million other demands on their time! I am also honored and humbled to be running on a slate with Ron and Scott -- two men who I have such incredible respect for given their record of leadership and public service.

But the most important thing I want to add is that I love this community and I love the opportunity to help Scarsdale’s residents grow, prosper, and be even more deeply involved in making our home the wonderful place it is. If you see me around town, please flag me down -- I’d love to get to know you better and hear your ideas on how we can keep Scarsdale moving forward.