Croton-on-Hudson's Planning Board does not think it needs an alternate member — and after a long discussion on Oct. 7, capped by a resident who called the idea "just another method of packing a court" Read 33:34▶, it agreed to tell the Board of Trustees so, while suggesting the Zoning Board of Appeals is the body that could actually use one. The referral was Local Law Introductory No. 14 of 2025, which would let the trustees appoint one alternate to the Planning Board and a different one to the Zoning Board of Appeals, each for a one-year term. Deputy Mayor Len Simon, the board's trustee liaison, brought it to the dais. Most surrounding communities already have alternates, he said, and an alternate here would sit at every meeting but vote only when a regular member was absent, so that "you would always have five votes for for every measure" Read 23:23▶, Simon said. He called it a way of getting more people involved in the planning process. Geoffrey Haynes objected first. "adding another person to sit up here who's asking questions can potentially steer the discussion in any direction" Read 27:23▶, Haynes said, and that person would not, at the end of the day, be answerable for a vote. He said he was happy to have someone sit in and stay informed, but had serious reservations about a non-voting seat at the table. Steve Krisky went further. "It seems to me it's kind of a solution looking for a problem, particularly in our board" Read 28:23▶, Krisky said. He misses two or three meetings a year, he said, and the board generally has all five members; when it does not, "the applicant always retains the right to not have a vote at the end of their application" Read 30:20▶, Krisky said, and can wait for a full board. He questioned whether an alternate would be required to take the continuing education the members do, and said a one-year appointment would not build the institutional memory a three-year term does. Alternate jurors, he noted, sit through a trial without participating. Eva Thaddeus pushed the other way: "a difference between the jury and this position is that the alternate jurors are obligated to be there, whereas this is a voluntary position" Read 26:51▶, Thaddeus said. The village should make the seat as attractive as it can, Thaddeus said, which would mean letting an alternate ask questions. Village Attorney Dan Pozin backed the law. "I can't think of a a village I've worked in or for that doesn't have that provision with alternates" Read 31:46▶, Pozin said, adding that if a member were out for several meetings, an alternate would keep an applicant from waiting. Then Ed Riely of Truesdale Drive was called up, and he was blunt: the absences are on the village board, not this one. "If anybody needed alternatives, it would be the village board because of absenteeism on the village board, which is frequent and chronic" Read 33:34▶, Riely said. He told the board he had been to perhaps three-quarters of its recent meetings and had almost never seen a member absent or recused. "this board, this particular board, has showed tremendous independence and a judicial temperament" Read 33:34▶, he said, which was why he read the alternate seat as an attempt to pack it. Chairman Rob Luntz said he had sat in on the Zoning Board twice recently for an application, that it was short of a full board both times, and that it had not worked to the applicant's benefit. That board needs three votes out of a five-member board to approve anything regardless of how many members are present, Luntz said, while at the Planning Board a simple majority of those present carries. Krisky picked it up: the recommendation might be that "it makes sense for the zoning board based on our discussion, but less so for all these reasons for the planning board" Read 39:44▶, Krisky said. Haynes added that if the goal is getting more residents involved, there are other ways to do it, and Krisky noted there are vacancies on a great many volunteer boards in the village. Luntz said the board would craft a memo back to the trustees covering the points raised. Krisky asked to see it before it goes.

A ramp becomes a lift at 25 South Riverside

Earlier in the evening the board voted 5-0 to approve an amended site plan for Croton Riverside, LLC's three-story apartment building at 25 South Riverside Ave. Ralph Rossi and Phil Spagnoli of Croton Riverside, LLC appeared and told the board nothing had changed since the last meeting. The amendment adjusts the retaining wall geometry and swaps the large concrete ADA ramp at the front of the building for an ADA lift, freeing the frontage for planting. Luntz said the sloped, landscaped frontage "would be an improvement over the big ramp there" Read 9:49▶. Haynes pressed the applicants on how someone in a wheelchair would get from the sidewalk to an entrance six to eight feet above it. Rossi described a walkway at no more than a 2% grade leading to a three-sided steel enclosure with a button-operated platform lift, with stairs alongside for everyone else. The updated landscape plan, dated Sept. 25, memorializes the eight-to-ten-foot arborvitae the developers agreed to after meeting with two neighbors behind the site on Barton Place. Rossi said the graded ground below the arborvitae is being seeded with wild grass. Krisky asked whether the applicants had considered a vine to soften the bare rear retaining wall. Rossi said they were leaning toward it but had not settled how: "We were debating whether they're growing it from the bottom up or from the top down" Read 4:27▶, Rossi said. Krisky asked for it in writing anyway — a condition that something "resembling ivy" Read 19:28▶ be planted "so as to further green the rear wall" Read 19:28▶, with the landscape plan updated to show it. That became the third condition on the approval, alongside updated landscape plans reflecting the neighbor agreement and certification of the new retaining wall before a certificate of occupancy is issued. No one from the audience spoke on the application. Chairman Rob Luntz read into the record an email from neighbor Lauren Davis of 14 Hamilton. "I am skeptical at best that amendments to original plans will lessen the impact on those of us who live above this project" Read 14:32▶, the letter read. It objected to a rooftop party space, described dirt in the house and shaking from construction equipment, and argued that drawings had not been available early enough for neighbors to review. Thaddeus answered that the letter concerns the rear of the property, while the amendments before the board were to the front — except the arborvitae, which the developers had just settled with the two neighbors behind the site. Haynes moved the approval, Thaddeus seconded, and it carried 5-0. Rossi said planting would start within a couple of weeks and residents could be moving in by early December.

Also before the board

John Ghegan moved to approve the September 16 minutes, which carried 4-0 with Krisky abstaining because he had been absent that night. The board sent back a draft memo to the trustees on parkland fees. As written, it asked only for discretion over the recreation fee charged for an accessory cottage — $8,000 for a two-bedroom, with no equivalent fee for an accessory apartment of the same size. The board's view was that a cottage is modest by definition and the fee should simply be waived for accessory dwelling units, to match how accessory apartments are treated, and it asked for the memo to be rewritten that way. The village manager has asked the board to move its meetings from the first and third Tuesdays to the second and fourth, which the village attorney said is preferable for counsel and for the planning consultant. Luntz said the Zoning Board and the Conservation Advisory Council would both have to shift to make it work, and the board was willing on that condition. Karen Stapleton said a new fifteen-day submission deadline probably means there will be no second meeting in December.