The board also heard from Ed Riley, who used his five minutes to blast the village's legislative priorities list, calling New York State "one of the worst legislatures in the United States" and arguing that the school district's $2.5 million investme…

Good evening. My name is Ed Riley from Drive. On the agenda, I noticed in a previous meeting under nine b, consider adopting a resolution for support of the village of legislative programs and project priorities. Most of these are directed to the sta…

Before the courtroom drama, the evening had a softer open. Croton 100 unveiled its third climate action quilt, this one spotlighting the school district's solar installations, electric school buses, and 30 household sustainability actions. Patty Buch…

Thank you so much. So, yeah, I'm Patty Buchanan from Croton one hundred. I want to introduce, the team that created this quilt. First, Audrey Supple, who was really the lead crafter, this fabric artist that has done tremendous work on this quilt, and…

Yep. Mhmm. Yeah. And we and we have, for the past two or three years now, we've had a program called AudioEye, which is, if you look at the website and you see that it's like a little bull's eye that's at the bottom right corner of the website. Mhmm.…

there's a deadline in I think in a this April for school districts of a certain size to make sure that there are not any PDFs that aren't readable. There's, like, that extra level of ADA compliance about some of the things that are and I wondered if …

you know, a good example of that is the TAP grant that we're getting ready to submit. Right? Because we, you know, that that for those who may not have been watching the meeting last week, that is we're seeking money to install sidewalks on Cleveland…

letters of support. K. So, you know, we've this is this is our second time applying for this grant. We tried it in 2024. We were unsuccessful at that point. You know, we did get support letters from, you know, a swath of the community, but more lette…

I I have to go while ago. I have to go back and look. I think I did send a memo to doctor Becker and, the assessor k. And and let them know what we had what we had adopted. I don't know if they took any action based off of that. I do know that, the s…

Yeah. I mean, I think there's some I think committees, any members of any committees, especially ones who are requesting funds, should be residents of the village. I think it's kind of awkward. You know, I know in in the past, we've made exceptions f…

they have specific guidelines for school districts. They can only have 4%, unassigned, fund balance. But for municipalities, the controller's office has always said, what is deemed as reasonable? Yeah. What do you deem as reasonable? You know, you're…

Go ahead, trustee Simon. Oh, well, with respect to the BlackRock dog park, I just wanted to clarify. You you were saying both the hours of operation and the school districts are within administrative,

Well so no. No. The the, the hours of operation are under my purview. But but you have already authorized in the law, school district residents. I don't think the laws I don't think the dog park is I don't think the law specifically says school distr…

Well, I'm I'm at Bocce every day. And so part of my, we selected parks to go and interview people to see if there were issues at all the parks. And one of the issues that came up well, there were two. One was we heard from people who are not village …

school residents as a possibility and breaking out the hours for the Yeah. And I'm and, you know, if we can I'm I didn't mean to stifle discussion there. I mean, I'm more than happy to continue the conversation on the hours if we wanna do that. But w…

has a tag? Or do we think that people are going who do not have tags? I think people are going who do not have rangers tell us they check regularly. Oh, and they do. They absolutely do. I mean, they're, you know, they're there on a regular basis, but…

I don't I don't know if anyone on the board has any thoughts on the addition of the school district residents,

The only other thing I'm thinking is, you know, we don't really have we don't really have any idea because we don't there's no way to count. It's not like the park ranger goes I I don't know. Actually, I have no idea how the park rang when the park r…

I I think the piece of data that we do have are people that number of people that have registered, families that have registered. And that seems like from 2023, we've seen a pretty significant decrease in the amount of families that are registered do…

Okay. So we'll schedule this for for the next meeting. Thank you. Yep. I am. Thank you. I'm just happy it's not an extra person. Yeah. That's Oh, no. Yeah. No. I was like, oh. Yeah. Because I mean, that's in a lot of school districts, you might know …

The bench discussion came alongside an update from Karen Pecora and John Sasso, who recently attended a Village Board work session focused on Black Rock Park. Among the items discussed: extending weekend dog park hours from 4:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m., in…

Meanwhile, Vanessa, Romy, and Faith are coordinating a Black History Month celebration with the family resource center and the school district, exploring potential speakers including Jamia Wilson, Samino Makapadai, and Felicia Villanueva.

In administrative news, the committee established a formal public comment protocol for future meetings, granting non-members three minutes to speak on agenda items. The committee is also exploring restarting ESL classes through the school district an…

Dog park access drew considerable public comment. Residents Judy Rayer and John Sasso praised the proposed extension of park hours to 6:00 p.m., but Rayer asked if guests or out-of-town dog sitters could use the facility. Healy clarified that current…

As as the rules are right now, if they if you don't have the ID card, you're not able to to use the park. So if if whoever was watching your what whoever the dog walker was or the dog sitter, if they weren't a resident Right. Of the village or the sc…

School district residents have

would be there, you know, because there were a lot of complaints at that time about noise from the dog park. Yeah. I I don't think we've ever allowed school district residents. I think it's always been village residents only because the as at least a…

The committee voted to recommend extending Dog Park weekend and holiday hours to 6:00 p.m., up from the current closing time. The panel also backed a plan to allow 12 additional households from the Hendrick Hudson school district—outside village limi…

In other business, the committee is partnering with the Croton-Harmon School District. Board of Education liaison Anamika reached out regarding a proposed "Walk, Ride, and Roll to School" day slated for Spring 2026 at CET and PVC, alongside a CET Bik…

Looking at local partnerships, Village Manager Bryan Healy led a discussion on existing shared services and the potential for a new intermunicipal agreement with the Croton-Harmon Union-Free School District. The board also continued its ongoing revie…

Entertainment will feature a Lotería game led by Cristian Opazo and Pistu McGuire. To spread the word, flyers have been distributed to 20 retail locations, the Croton Free Library, and Croton Caring, while digital outreach is being handled through th…