CROTON-ON-HUDSON — Village Prosecutor Casey Raskob came to the Board of Trustees work session with a gap in the village code and a request to close it: when someone ignores an appearance ticket for an unlicensed dog, an unfiled alarm permit or an uncut yard, Croton has essentially nowhere left to go. The only remaining tool is an arrest warrant, and Raskob said nobody is going to use it. "Now practically speaking, I feel really stupid asking for a warrant for arrest for a dog ticket," Read 4:45▶ Raskob said, adding that a judge would not sign one anyway — no one, he said, is sending Croton police to handcuff a resident over a dog license. That leaves what Raskob called a dead letter file — "some cases that we can't do anything with, that they just fall into this hole." Read 6:24▶ The gap is worse with businesses. "If we serve fire violations on a company, a corporate defendant, we can't arrest them. We can't put them in jail," Read 6:35▶ Raskob said. Raskob framed the problem as one of tone as much as enforcement. "You know, unlike many towns and cities, we don't want your money. We want your compliance," Read 3:18▶ he said, describing a court that adjourns cases to give violators a chance to comply. Deputy Mayor Len Simon, who said he sat in on court sessions a couple of years ago, called it "compassionate justice." Read 29:34▶ The ask: a default judgment What Raskob wants is a mechanism the code does not contain. He proposed that on a no-show, "upon good cause shown, either by testimony or a sworn document, a default judgment entered for money only be levied upon the violator, individual, or corporation" Read 6:48▶ — with unpaid judgments eventually reaching a property tax bill or a lien. He was blunt about why he came: "It's like I need a wrench of a certain size and I can't find it." Read 24:02▶ Village Attorney Joshua Subin was interested but cautious. "it's an interesting question whether a criminal court can issue a default judgment," Read 14:20▶ Subin said, noting that he had a judge in another river community raise the same question over residents who never shoveled their sidewalks, and that he would ask him. Subin also drew a hard line around zoning: those provisions have to follow state criminal procedure, so "those you couldn't get a default on because they have to follow criminal procedure law." Read 18:06▶ How many missed appearances would it take? Simon asked; Raskob said the court already gives people a second chance and that a second-shot rule seemed reasonable. Village Manager Bryan Healy said the village already relevies unpaid alarm permits, water and sewer charges, snow removal and property cleanups onto tax bills through a resolution adopted with the budget, but that the same mechanism does not obviously fit a dog license — the village cannot be sure the dog, or the resident, is still there. Penalties: $250, and everyone else's $250 Croton's catchall penalty is a maximum of $250 per day, according to the prosecutor's memo in the packet. Healy said essentially every Westchester municipality he checked sits at the same number, and that he is not proposing to change the general penalty. The zoning chapter is where he sees room. Healy walked the board through a 2024 Scarsdale law included in the packet, which sets escalating penalties for first, second and third offenses, separate and higher tiers for corporate offenders, a civil-penalty option, and the ability to revoke a permit or certificate of occupancy until violations are cured. Healy said a first offense in the $500-to-$1,000 range would not be unreasonable for a building or zoning violation; Simon said the approach was sound and the numbers adjustable. The village's own tree code already runs from $500 to $7,500 — a scale Raskob said he wished he had a few years ago, when a contractor who cut beyond his permit on Piney Point settled for about $1,200. "If you could make it a thousand dollars a day or $2,000 a day, that'd be wonderful," Read 16:53▶ Raskob said, adding that a maximum is a ceiling, not a fee schedule, and the judge still sets the number. Parking is where the money already is Compliance on parking tickets is good. "There were almost 7,500 tickets issued in 2025, and 93% of them were adjudicated," Read 34:25▶ Healy said. The backlog behind that is not small: more than 3,600 tickets dating to Jan. 1, 2018 remain outstanding, Healy said, representing "over $400,000 owed in fines and penalties." Read 34:25▶ Subin's packet memo sets the limits: a parking ticket must be converted to a default judgment within two years. Older ones would need an amnesty. "A program where you notify these individuals that you're gonna waive penalties and just go for the original fine, nine times out of 10, they go, oh, that's a good deal, and they send you the fine," Read 35:45▶ Subin said, adding that the board would have to adopt a resolution authorizing it. Healy said he would first make sure the court is applying the state's scofflaw procedure — which suspends a registration after four unanswered tickets — before taking on default judgments. "even if we got half of that, that's an extra $200,000 that would be very helpful," Read 38:11▶ Healy said. Project MOVER: the numbers, and a bigger ask Simon, the board's liaison on the program, recapped the bike share's first season, which ran from July 9 to Dec. 19 across six river communities and 45 hubs. "Croton's Metro North Hub was number five overall among those 45 hubs," Read 39:44▶ Simon said, with 505 trips starting there and 455 ending there. Croton accounted for 1,374 of the system's 9,419 rides, about 14.5 percent, and 85 trips ran between Croton and Ossining. Nineteen of the program's 123 $1,000 e-bike vouchers went to Croton — 18 to residents and one to someone who works in the village — all redeemed at a local e-bike shop on Riverside, with roughly 300 more to come. The system relaunches April 6. Simon said Senasqua Park and the North Riverside business district are the two Croton expansion candidates, and that he, the manager and Bicycle and Pedestrian Committee chair Matt Arnold would walk the sites with the project team. The larger prize is infrastructure money. There is "about $600,000 left set aside for infrastructure funding" Read 48:05▶ across the six communities, Simon said, available for striping, signage, bike racks and similar work at a 30 percent local match — but only if Croton brings forward good projects. Asked by a trustee how much is available and how the process works, Simon said the village would submit a letter request, and that he wanted one in within weeks. Of a combined South Riverside Avenue and Municipal Place project, Mayor Brian Pugh said it was "a strong candidate, especially because it's probably one of the furthest along." Read 53:45▶ What happens if state support recedes? Trustee Stacey Nachtaler asked, citing reported cuts to the state energy authority that funds the program. Simon said the roughly $7 million multiyear NYSERDA grant behind the program is obligated money, with some underspending rolling into 2027, and that the project team will come to the board's May 27 work session to discuss what follows. Nachtaler asked for operating-cost figures then: "just start maybe running some numbers just to understand," Read 56:56▶ Nachtaler said. Rewriting the sign law Healy introduced Local Law Introductory No. 7 of 2026, a rewrite of the sign regulations aimed at removing content-based rules. Out goes the specific allowance for a "for lease" sign in a vacant storefront and the exception for time-and-temperature signs; in comes a structure organized around placement, size and attachment rather than what a sign says. The draft caps signs at 48 square feet, holds freestanding signs to 10 feet above the ground except at shopping centers and gas stations, where 20 feet is allowed, bars signs on trees and utility poles, permits one temporary commercial sign of up to six square feet for 45 days, and leaves the 25 percent storefront-window limit in place. That 48-square-foot cap drew the most attention. Nachtaler pointed out that "based on this, somebody could put a six by eight sign on their lawn," Read 73:16▶ and said multiples of them on a residential street could become a problem. Healy said the old three-sign-per-property limit did not survive legal research, but that size may still be regulable, and agreed to look at whether commercial and noncommercial signs can carry different limits. Another trustee raised the opposite worry — that the draft should not accidentally authorize a 20-foot sign where the existing ones are 10. Pugh raised a different worry, citing a metal highway sign that blew over on Route 9 near the Senasqua exit. "when does the sign become a safety issue?" Read 80:51▶ Pugh asked, and suggested a setback requirement for larger signs in residential districts rather than a construction standard, on the grounds that a property line is something a homeowner and a code officer can both measure. Healy said the draft would go on next week's agenda so the board could refer it to the Planning Board, the Waterfront Advisory Committee and the Visual Environment Board, with recommendations expected back by May. The legislative package Simon, who is also the board's intergovernmental affairs liaison, presented the 2026 draft legislative package, assembled from the priorities of the state conference of mayors, Westchester County and the county's municipal officials association alongside Croton's own asks. Four requests arrived from the Croton fire department this week, all of them state-level. One would raise the weekly rate under the Volunteer Firemen's Benefit Law, which Healy described as "basically workers compensation but for volunteer firefighters" Read 112:14▶ and said has not changed in 30 years. A second would raise the state income tax credit for volunteers from $200 to $800 and let them take it alongside the 10 percent property tax exemption rather than choosing; Croton already grants the maximum exemption. The others would let 15 years of volunteer service buy three years of pension credit and authorize reimbursement of volunteer expenses up to the roughly $600 federal reporting threshold. Nachtaler, who said she is new to the board, asked how the fire department's requests interact with the village budget and argued the village needs to "dial up our volunteerism." Read 111:12▶ The one local lever already pulled, Simon noted, is the length-of-service award program, which had to go to a referendum. The package drops Croton's Brook Street residential parking request. Healy said Friday's capital budget will instead propose developing a village-owned parcel there into public parking, which "will probably triple the number of spaces that are available off street there." Read 118:11▶ Speed cameras stay on the list, unacted on beyond a conversation with a vendor. At a trustee's request, the federal community-project asks will be named explicitly — police radio replacement and water main work on Harrison Street and Sunset Trail — and environmental and quality-of-life language will be added to the item on collaboration with the MTA, with which Simon said the village has only recently managed to make contact. What to watch: the sign law goes to next week's board agenda for referral; the capital budget is out Friday; Project MOVER relaunches April 6, with the program's future on the May 27 work session agenda; and the village attorneys report back on whether higher zoning penalties and default judgments are legally available at all.