Commuters would pay more to park at the Croton-Harmon lot for the first time in sixteen years under the draft 2026-27 village budget that Village Manager Bryan Healy previewed for the Board of Trustees on Feb. 25. The hourly rate would rise from a dollar to a dollar fifty, a full calendar day from $12 to $15, and a weekend day from $7 to $9. The draft counts on $88,000 more from parking permits and $154,000 more from daily parking revenue. "The last time the hourly rate was increased was 2010 when it went from 50¢ to a dollar" Read 141:34▶, Healy said. He had held the increase off for years because the lot's machines do not give change, he told the board, but the five pay machines together take in less than a thousand dollars in cash over a month, and most drivers in the daily section buy the whole-day rate anyway. The closest comparison, Healy said, is Tarrytown, similar to Croton in size and usage: "Tarrytown is a dollar 50 an hour" Read 144:10▶. Forty-three former permit spaces have already been converted to daily parking; when the sale of Lot A closes, the overflow spaces will shift to Section G, most of whose 300 spaces sit empty. The lot is also expensive to hold onto. The village is "in a continuous contest with mother nature and old man river for holding back the coastline" Read 148:38▶, Mayor Brian Pugh said, picking up a labor-cost point Deputy Mayor Len Simon had made a moment earlier.

A draft budget inside the cap

As of Feb. 20, the draft would raise the tax levy 3.47% and the tax rate 3.59%. That is inside the state tax cap, which allows Croton a fiscal 2027 levy of as much as $13,904,547, or 4.3% above last year's, because the village banked the room it did not use in this year's flat budget. Expenditures are rising by a little over $1,000,000 against $644,000 in new revenue. Healy said the figures will move: "These numbers are still in draft form and will fluctuate between now and March 20" Read 149:03▶. The budget is filed that day. Outstanding debt has fallen from $37,981,000 in fiscal 2017 to $27,368,630 at the start of fiscal 2027. Appropriated fund balance, which holds the tax rate down, has come down from $725,000 in fiscal 2024 to $650,000 in fiscal 2026; the financial adviser would like to see $200,000 to $300,000, and Healy said he hopes to file near $600,000. Asked by Trustee Stacey Nachtaler where the unassigned fund balance will land, Healy said policy allows between 17% and 25% of total appropriations. Water and sewer rates would stay flat. A budget priority survey that closed Monday drew 305 responses. Healy said 78% were satisfied or very satisfied with village services and 63% rated the value of their village tax dollar good or very good. Infrastructure was the top choice for additional funding for 63%; 40% said existing user fees should be increased, 43% said the village should borrow for major infrastructure rather than defer maintenance, and a quarter said arts and culture should be cut. Trustee Maria Slippen said the appetite for higher fees was worth passing along to the recreation department and the Recreation Advisory Committee, which in her experience have been "so incredibly conservative" Read 154:57▶ about their annual increases.

The court study drew the sharpest questions

The board spent its longest stretch of the night on a proposed operational study of the village court. A senior associate at the Center for Governmental Research laid out a four-month review — roughly 180 staff hours for an all-inclusive $37,500 — covering staffing, budgets, three years of caseload and fine revenue, records storage and technology, with interviews ranging from the village justices and court clerk to Cortlandt's town justice and a focus group of defense attorneys. The options at the end would run from leaving the court exactly as it is to consolidating it with the town court. Nachtaler put the value question directly: Croton is a village of 8,200 people, she said, and the court accounts for less than 1% of its budget appropriations. "I would like for you to help convince me why this is a good investment" Read 84:37▶, Nachtaler said, adding that in her view the court currently makes money for the village. The consultant did not try. "I don't know that I can convince you it's a good investment. That's something for you to make up your own mind on" Read 85:48▶, he said, promising numbers rather than a verdict and allowing that the study might turn up little to save. Slippen pressed on cost and sequencing, asking whether the same money might buy more insight into a department with a larger budget ask. "$40,000 is a lot of money. Is this the best use of it for our decision making process?" Read 100:46▶, Slippen said. Simon asked whether the scope could reach residents as well as the officials and lawyers who use the court: "the public are are stakeholders as well" Read 68:59▶, Simon said. A representative survey, the consultant answered, is costly and tends to be filled out by those with the strongest opinions. Healy pushed back on the idea that the board was being marched toward a November ballot question. "There is nothing that is requiring you to make a decision by July 2 so that you have it on the ballot in November" Read 80:24▶, Healy said, noting that petitions and a special election later in the year exist in state law if the board wants more time. Trustee Nora Nicholson, recalling how a records overhaul had paid off when the village studied its engineering department, asked how the court keeps its files. The court clerk, called up from the audience, said the files downstairs go back to about 1973. Asked whether current cases are kept digitally: "Absolutely not. It's all hard copy" Read 89:16▶, the court clerk said. Healy said the village spends over $30,000 a year on stenographic and interpreter services for the court and wants the study to look at whether technology could bring that down. Pugh said he would put the question of retaining the firm on a regular meeting agenda for a discussion and a vote. The board's next regular meeting was March 11.

An engine ordered now, delivered around 2030

Engine 119, the 2006 pumper housed at the Washington Engine firehouse on North Riverside, hits the 20-year replacement point set by National Fire Protection Association standards this year. Healy asked the fire department's chief and assistant chief to walk the board through the replacement: a Seagrave custom pumper at $1,789,929, bought off the Houston-Galveston Area Consortium cooperative purchasing contract, which spares the village a competitive bid. Nothing is paid until delivery, roughly four years out. Chief Colombo described an industry consolidated into four or five manufacturers drawing on one engine maker and two pump makers. "The cost is doubled and the time to make an apparatus is doubled" Read 118:36▶, Colombo said of the last five years. Signing now also locks in an option to buy a second identical engine at the same price; ordered four years from now, Colombo said, the same truck would run $3,092,995, with next year's 20% escalation alone worth $357,000. Healy recommended buying one engine now and studying where apparatus should be housed as the village's population and housing grow before committing to a second: village debt stands at about $27,000,000, he said, and two engines at once would add almost $4,000,000. The 2006 engine would likely be kept as a spare at the Harmon firehouse. The department answered 495 alarms in 2025, another record year. Pugh said the cooperative contract was a relief: "when the manager told me we could get this off a list, it was like the clouds parted" Read 127:53▶. The village's last ladder truck cost over $2,000,000 through a conventional bid that drew a single response. The engine contract is expected on the March 11 agenda.

The blizzard, and the grant year ahead

The session opened with the storm. Public works crews put in 31 hours, arriving at 4 p.m. Sunday and working until 11 Monday night; for most of that stretch, 9 p.m. Sunday to 6 p.m. Monday, a county travel ban kept the roads clear. The village took about two feet of snow, roughly ten inches more than January's storm, and it is being hauled to an area of Croton Point Park. The winter has already broken the snow budget. Snow overtime had reached roughly $200,000 before this storm against $60,000 budgeted, and the salt budget is spent. "Every community in Westchester is is dealing with the same problem" Read 5:08▶, Healy said. He plans to wait until late March or early April and bring the board a single budget amendment rather than return repeatedly for transfers. Nicholson noted that the adopted snow removal budget was $164,000. Healy said 2,770 residents are signed up for the Everbridge alert system, in a village of 8,300. Valerie Monastra, a principal planner with Nelson Pope Voorhis who handles the village's grant applications, walked the board through the year ahead: the state's consolidated funding application, a New York Forward round expected in October, Greenway planning grants and the projects named in Croton's local waterfront revitalization program. Monastra said New York Forward wants projects that can be shovel-ready inside about two years and that pull in private investment. Pugh said the feedback on the village's unsuccessful application was that Empire State Development wanted more geographic concentration, a hard ask for a village with several small downtowns. Nicholson proposed a standing group to prepare for the next round: "I would propose that we have a New York Forward work group formed" Read 37:06▶, Nicholson said. She also told the board that a Friends of Croton Parks organization, fiscally sponsored by the Westchester Parks Foundation, would supply the nonprofit partner several grant programs require. Nachtaler asked that a youth community center be considered in any North Riverside redevelopment application, "an inspiring space that's walkable" Read 35:04▶ for young people and seniors. The manager's memo in the meeting packet puts the village's grant haul since the start of 2025 at $916,988, including $701,000 from Westchester County's stormwater program for storm drainage along Terrace Place and Brook Street. March 11 carries both the engine contract and, if the board is ready, the court study. The budget itself is filed March 20, when residents will see whether the first hourly parking increase in sixteen years survives the board's review.