Current Issues
Issues actively being debated in board meetings and local coverage, drawn from local news coverage and official meeting records. Last updated September 2026.
November 2026 — First Contested Village Race Since 2019
Results reported by the Pelham Examiner, November 5, 2026 (unofficial totals from the Westchester County Board of Elections; not certified): Totals as of Nov 5, 2026, updated throughout the day, per the Pelham Examiner. Town Supervisor: Theresa Mohan 3,549, Scott Wolfgang 1,406. Town Clerk: Eileen Miller 3,436, Maureen Borsella 1,526. Village of Pelham trustees (three seats): Kristen Burke 1,765, Krystal Howell 1,718, Russell Solomon 1,677, Paul Anzilotti 850, Arthur Long 822, Everitt Speros 813. Pelham Manor trustees (two seats): Ryan Kurtz 1,450, Chris Dlutowski 1,436, Breda Bennett 1,331, Joe Liberatore 1,264. The Examiner reported that Mohan and Miller defeated Wolfgang and Borsella, winning reelection as Town Supervisor and Town Clerk; that Burke, Howell and Solomon defeated challengers Anzilotti, Long and Speros in the Village of Pelham; and that Kurtz and Dlutowski defeated incumbent Deputy Mayor Breda Bennett and her running mate, Joe Liberatore, in Pelham Manor. According to the Examiner, not all of the outstanding absentee ballots have arrived, but there don’t appear to be enough remaining to alter the final result. The Examiner also reported that Burke’s election will create a vacancy on the Town Council, where she currently sits. All results are unofficial until the Board of Elections certifies them. (Pelham Examiner, November 5, 2026)
Election Day ballot-scanning failure (November 3, 2026): The Examiner reported that, because of an error by the Westchester County Board of Elections, the printed paper ballots issued this year could not be scanned by voting machines at polling places across the county, and voters were directed to slide completed ballots into orange emergency ballot bags. County Executive Ken Jenkins called it a “debacle.” At an afternoon press conference, the Examiner reported, he described a “printer problem” at some 350 polling locations, said the machines were not hacked and said all votes would be counted. The County Board of Elections said it was aware of “an issue involving the thickness of paper ballots” and that the bagged ballots would be counted. Jenkins said county software engineers had begun reprogramming back-up voting machines in northern Westchester, and that ballots in the orange bags would eventually be scanned rather than hand-counted. In Pelham, the Examiner reported long lines early in the morning at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church in Pelham Manor, citing social media posts. Arthur Long, a candidate for Village of Pelham Trustee, wrote to the Examiner that he arrived at Daronco Townhouse at 6 AM and “not a single machine at Daronco was accepting ballots”; he said he put his ballot in one of the bags. The Examiner reported that by midday voting appeared to be moving smoothly at Daronco and OLPH, but the orange bags were filling up, and that results were likely to be delayed by days, possibly weeks. (Pelham Examiner, November 3, 2026)
Election night, November 3–4: A later Examiner report described the cause differently, saying election workers grappled with a software problem that rendered the town’s voting machines inoperable; the two reports’ accounts of the cause have not been reconciled. The Examiner reported that voting then proceeded calmly until polls closed at 9 PM, after which Town of Pelham Deputy Clerk Molly Girolamo supervised the collection and sealing of ballots at Daronco Town House. According to the Examiner, two Village of Pelham police officers and a constable kept watch at the Town House, and another constable at the Our Lady of Perpetual Help gymnasium, the Pelham Manor polling site, and the county directed that all Pelham Manor ballots be transferred to police at the Town House before delivery to Ardsley. Just after 9:30 PM, the Examiner reported, the constable from OLPH arrived at Daronco with a Democratic and a Republican observer, and the Manor ballots were loaded into a Village police vehicle with the rest of the town’s ballots; a police officer drove them to a site controlled by the Westchester County Board of Elections in Ardsley just before 10 PM. The Board of Elections said counting would begin by 11 AM Wednesday; the Examiner reported that preliminary results could come as soon as Wednesday afternoon if counting began on time. The Examiner noted that it was the first time the Village, Pelham Manor and the Town all had contested elections on the same day. (Pelham Examiner, November 4, 2026)
Three contested races: Village of Pelham trustees (Democrats vs. Neighborhood Party/Republican challengers), Village of Pelham Manor trustees (two seats), and Town Supervisor and Clerk (Mohan and Miller re-running per new state law). After weeks of negotiations between the candidates, the League of Women Voters has scheduled four candidate debates, October 20–28, 2026: Pelham Manor trustees Tue, Oct 20 · 7 PM; Town Clerk Mon, Oct 26 · 5:30 PM and Town Supervisor Mon, Oct 26 · ~6:30 PM, both at Town Hall; and Village of Pelham trustees Wed, Oct 28 · 5:30 PM on Zoom. Residents can submit questions to the League. Details on the Elections page. Ahead of the election, Mark Cardwell — the Democrats’ candidate for Pelham Manor Mayor in 2025 — submitted affidavits to the Westchester County Board of Elections on October 16 claiming “personal knowledge” that 16 people registered to vote in Pelham Manor, most of them at their parents’ homes, did not “reside in the district” at those addresses. Under Board of Elections policy, the challenges were forwarded to the Pelham Manor Police Department, which sent a detective and an officer to each residence to interview the voter or a parent and report back within six days. Several residents were alarmed when the visits began, and two of the voters named publicly disputed Cardwell’s claims. The Town of Pelham Democratic Committee said that no candidate or Committee member had “any involvement in, or advance notice of” the challenges, and that it and its candidates “firmly support every eligible voter’s right to cast a lawful ballot.” Cardwell did not respond immediately to the Examiner’s request for comment. (Pelham Examiner, October 26, 2026) At the Pelham Manor board’s October 26 meeting, the police chief said state election law required the department to verify the challenged registrations in person once the county Board of Elections asked, in a letter village officials said was signed by both elections commissioners; Village Manager Luft said the county could instead have used its own bipartisan staff, but the choice was the county’s. A trustee asked the chief to report at the next meeting on the investigations’ cost to the department, and Mayor Lapey, speaking personally, said she was surprised the evidence in the affidavit was deemed sufficient. Residents gave emotional testimony at that October 26 meeting, the Examiner reported. One near-lifelong Manor resident described officers arriving at her door at 8:45 a.m. on October 23 to ask whether her adult son lived there, based on Cardwell’s affidavit claiming “personal knowledge,” and asked the sitting trustees and the candidates for the open seats to publicly condemn the practice. Another lifelong resident said officers questioned her about her adult daughter after Cardwell’s affidavit said the daughter’s social media showed she did not live there. Deputy Mayor Bennett, who is running for reelection, said “It happened to me, too” and called it “just awful, awful for all of us as a community”; Trustee Case called it “a targeted intimidation tactic”; and Trustee Owen-Michaane, who is stepping down, called it “voter intimidation and suppression.” Another resident said every person visited was an independent, unaffiliated or Republican voter. The Examiner reported that at least one of Cardwell’s challenges proved accurate — the registrant had died in early September — and that resident called the questioning of his widow “shameful.” Cardwell confirmed to the Examiner that he acted on his own, as the Democrats’ statement had said.
An earlier voter-roll challenge (Examiner report, November 2, 2026): The Examiner reported that months before Mark Cardwell’s challenges in Pelham Manor, Steven Shekane — whom the Examiner describes as an outspoken critic of local Democrats at public meetings and on social media — sent property records and maps to the Westchester County Board of Elections this summer, urging it to remove a Democratic district leader and his wife from the Pelham voting rolls. According to the Examiner, the records showed that the couple’s house was almost entirely in New Rochelle, with only a small fraction in the Village of Pelham, and Shekane argued that they should vote in New Rochelle. In his email to the board he also cited, as a comparison, another property on the border whose adult residents are not registered to vote in Pelham. The Board of Elections agreed and notified the couple, and, the Examiner reported, also removed their neighbors from the Pelham rolls, whose house the same maps showed to be mostly on the New Rochelle side. The neighbors were puzzled to receive the board’s letters, the Examiner reported. Contacted by the Examiner, Shekane said he had not known that his request had succeeded or that it had led to the neighbors’ removal, and he declined further comment. According to the Examiner, the district leader has since resigned as a Pelham Democratic district leader and from the executive board of the Pelham Democratic Committee. (Pelham Examiner, November 2, 2026)
EMS Station & Community Church — First Street
Proposed EMS station near Post Office draws opposition over pedestrian safety and green space. Community Church of the Pelhams appeared for sale in April 2026 and was raised at a Town Council meeting. At the October 5 2026 Town Council meeting, residents near the post office spoke against the site next to it, citing stop signs, residential streets and an already hard-to-cross road. The board said no decision has been made: the options remain the current station, whose parking lot floods in rain, or the lot next to the post office if it can be acquired for $50,000 and is feasible to build on. The Master Facilities Plan’s issues at the Daronco Town House come first; a grant for the station was not awarded but can be reapplied for; and neighbors will be consulted before any decision. The board also said it never approved a station budget: a May 2024 consultant estimate, first cited at the meeting as $3.6 million and corrected on the record to $2.6 million, was drafted from a previous board’s information and approved by neither board. No vote taken and no alternative site has been confirmed.
Rising Property Taxes & Village Debt
Village of Pelham adopted $20.5M FY2026-27 budget — 10.1% increase overriding the state tax cap. Village debt grew from $4.26M in 2021 to $17.88M by early 2026. Fiscal management has been a major focus of the November 2026 election, and the cost of the flood mitigation project is now the center of an ongoing debate between the candidates. Neighborhood Party candidates (September 30 statement) project Village debt of about $53.7M: the $48.5M project cost they cite, plus 10% for future overruns, less about $17.6M in expected county, state and FEMA grants, plus roughly $18M of existing debt. They say it could be much higher if the earmarks fall through. Incumbent trustees Russell Solomon and Krystal Howell (October 2 response) say no bond has been authorized to build the project, that the roughly $48.5M figure is an engineering estimate that will keep changing as the design develops, and that the Village is pursuing every source of outside funding to reduce the cost to taxpayers. Both are campaign statements, not Village figures, and neither has been independently verified.
NYS Comptroller fiscal stress score: The New York State Comptroller’s office has published fiscal 2025 fiscal stress scores for New York municipalities. Neighborhood Party candidates Anzilotti, Long and Speros (October 5 statement) report that the Village of Pelham scored 19.2, up from 3.3 in fiscal 2024 — the worst score of any Westchester village and the second worst of all Westchester municipalities, behind only Yonkers — while Pelham Manor, Ardsley, Bronxville, Irvington and Larchmont scored between 1.7 and 3.3. They say the largest component of the Village’s score is the ratio of its general fund to its annual spending, and point to the September 22 purchase of an Avant 640i loader from the contingency budget line, in anticipation of future revenue the Village expected to receive. They also say growth in that contingency line (at most $320,000 in budgets since 2019, over $780,000 for FY2026-27), together with increased debt service — including on almost $1 million in debt for Municipal Center furniture and window treatments — is what made the Village break the tax cap this year. These figures come from a candidate press release, which the Examiner publishes as received; this site has not independently verified them. The Comptroller’s data shows the Village of Pelham’s fiscal 2025 stress score as 19.2 with a designation of ‘No Designation’ — meaning the Village does not meet the threshold for a formal fiscal stress classification despite the elevated score.
Neighborhood Party alternative flood mitigation plan (October 27 press release, Anzilotti, Long and Speros): the candidates project the current plan could raise annual debt service from about $1.6M to over $4M by FY2034-35, and Village taxes by up to 36%. They propose a tank on the New Rochelle side instead of the tank and pumping station at Julianne’s, cost sharing with New Rochelle, a 25-year storm standard, a Glenwood Lake valve, and phasing. All figures and characterizations are the candidates’ own. See the linked source for full details.
State funding push (October 27 board meeting): the Village of Pelham board voted 7–0 to retain Greenberg Traurig LLP through March 31, 2027 to lobby for state budget funding for the flood mitigation project. Mayor Mullen said the Village has been talking with the governor and state representatives for months about a request for “a large amount of funding,” that the engagement is limited to that purpose with a 30-day termination clause, and that it will end if the effort is not paying off.
Receiver of Taxes Vacancy — Appointment or Referendum Under Discussion
Erica Winter, elected Town Receiver of Taxes in November 2025, stepped down after less than a year citing a new professional opportunity. Deputy Receiver Darlene Paolericio assumed her duties and continues to fulfill them. The Town Board made no appointment at its September 14, 2026 meeting and is weighing whether to appoint a replacement or hold a public referendum to make the position permanently appointed rather than elected. A full discussion had been expected at the October meeting, but the vacancy was not discussed at the October 5 Town Council meeting, according to its recording, and no appointment has been made. The Receiver of Taxes is responsible for collecting property tax payments from all Pelham residents.
Pelham Public Library — $15-20M Transformation Project
What started as maintenance review in 2019 expanded to $15-20M project. Town Council said it's not a top priority (May 2026). Public debate underway via letters to the editor and trustee response in August 2026.
Pelham Picture House — Future Still Uncertain
MOU with PHP Partners terminated. Developer James Smithmeyer working directly with Picture House. No plan approved. Picture House continues to operate and ran a successful summer film series. Candidate Everitt Speros (Neighborhood Party, October 19 campaign statement) says that last winter the Mayor and board tried to force two longstanding local business owners to sell their land so a developer could build a large residential complex next to and including the Picture House, and that community pressure, not the board’s choice, led them to drop the eminent domain threat. He criticizes exclusive developer agreements and secret “blight studies” made without public input. These are the candidate’s own characterizations. Neighborhood Party candidates Anzilotti, Long and Speros (October 20 press release) say the Pelham Green developer also planned what they call a “monstrosity” for the Picture House site on Wolf’s Lane, and cite the Mayor and board’s effort to force local businesses off that site, together with conditions at Pelham Green on Fifth Avenue, as showing the limits of the Mayor’s development approach. These are the candidates’ own characterizations.
Pelham Manor — Tractor-Trailer Ban on Boston Post Road
Manor board voted unanimously in July 2026 to begin process of banning tractor-trailers from Route 1 (Boston Post Road). Request submitted to NYS DOT. Long process ahead.
Con Edison Rate Case — Settlement Cuts the Increase
Con Edison filed for a large rate increase and the Village of Pelham joined a consortium of 40 Westchester municipalities opposing it. A settlement has since cut the electric increase to about 2.8% of the total customer bill, down from the 13.4% originally proposed, and the gas increase to about 2%. The agreement is not final: the Public Service Commission holds an evidentiary hearing before issuing a decision.
Feeney Park — Nightly Illegal Fireworks
Residents reported nightly illegal fireworks from Feeney Park, in New Rochelle, through summer 2026, often past 11pm. At the July 14 2026 Village board meeting a resident described calling New Rochelle police up to six times a night against only 12 calls logged in their records since Memorial Day. Trustee Howell committed to increased Pelham PD patrols on the Harman/Store Avenue corridor between 8 and 11pm. Residents can send videos to [email protected].
Colonial Elementary — AC Interim Fix in Place
After parents Ashley Mills and incoming PTA President Concetta Eudicone spoke at the June 24 Board of Ed meeting demanding action, the Colonial, Siwanoy, and Prospect Hill PTAs pledged to raise funds for window AC units. New units were installed in time for the first day of school on September 8, 2026. Full HVAC conversion for all schools is still coming Summer 2027 as part of the $56.2M capital bond approved in May 2025. On October 7 the Board of Education accepted an $8,000 donation from the PTAs for additional air conditioning in the elementary schools.