Candidates face off at North Salem forum

Candidates running for local, state, and federal office took part in a forum in North Salem that at times definitely resembled a debate.

Pitching themselves at the lively Senior Club-sponsored event held on Oct. 13 were Republican Warren Lucas and Democrat Katherine Daniels, for North Salem town supervisor; Democrat Erika L. Pierce and Republican Jozef “Joe” Vala, for county legislator; Democrat Peter Harckham and Republican Sergio Esposito, for state Senate; Democrat Chris Burdick for state Assembly; and Republican U.S. Rep. Michael Lawler and Democrat Cait Conley, for Congress.

(Republican Assembly candidate Braille Diaz was unable to attend.)

Indian Point and energy costs seemed to top the hot topic list.

Other issues the pairs tackled were the affordability crisis, tariffs, immigration, capital planning, road conditions, and public transportation.

There were numerous questions posed to the hopefuls by an audience of about 60 residents gathered at the North Salem Firehouse that Tuesday.

Club president Jinx Remson was the moderator.

LUCAS/DANIELS

Campaigning on a call for “new leadership,” Daniels says her priorities if elected supervisor include long-range planning and environmental protection.

An attorney by profession, she is a EMT and founder/chair of the town’s Climate Smart Leadership Team and the founder/chair of its Capital Planning Committee, among other volunteer positions.

Daniels also served on the school board for 14 years (four as its president) and is co-president of the Bridle Trails Association. She was first elected to the Town Board in 2020.

Lucas, a lifelong resident and retired IBMer who’s been on the Town Board since 1990 and town supervisor since 2009, emphasizes “proven financial leadership” by highlighting his administration’s harvesting of more than $42 million in grants and its ability to keep taxes “to a minimum” and to maintain an AA plus bond rating.

Lucas has served the community in multiple capacities, including on its zoning and library boards, and on other organizations such as the Westchester Municipal Officials Association and East of Hudson Watershed Corp.

Daniels acknowledged that “we all like Warren,” but the race is not about the supervisor personally, “it’s about power being concentrated in one person for too long.”

Besides engaging in more “shared decision-making,” North Salem’s government needs to up its long-term planning game, Daniels asserted, citing the Delancey Hall project as an example of “kicking the can down the road until it turns into a seven-figure emergency.”

Work on the historic building started out as a $22,000 paint job and, after serious structural issues were uncovered, turned into a $1.2 million restoration project, she said.

Daniels claimed that was due to “years of neglect.”

“Our other town buildings are old and rundown too. It’s costly to keep them up. So are our water districts,” she said, claiming that this is evidence of a “pattern” of “wasteful, avoidable emergency spending.”

Lucas pointed out that Delancey Hall, which is used for town offices, has undergone multiple renovations over the past 100 plus years and that the town has always done the best it could considering the building’s advanced age.

“A lot of this is just political theater,” he remarked.

The pair also tussled over a capital plan, with Daniels claiming that the town hasn’t had one “for decades.”

Lucas countered that he had turned over a “spreadsheet” with all the relevant data in 2022 but was told it was “too complex.”

He blamed the Capital Planning Committee for dragging its feet.

“It’s been a five-year process to get the CPC to the point where hopefully we can have a plan,” Lucas said.

Daniels defended the committee’s contributions.

“We did a needs analysis, created the first inventory of capital assets, and did an existing conditions survey that sparked a lot of work that needed to be done for a long time,” she said. “The committee deserves a lot of credit for that.”

Daniels added she thought “decisions are best made when made by more than one person.”

Lucas pointed out that he does not make any financial decisions by himself.

“Everything that has to be discussed, or voted on, goes to the Town Board,” he explained, adding: “Katherine has done a great job. She voted with me 99.9 percent of the time.”

Daniels’ reiterated her stand that the town needs first to determine if every business and resident there understands exactly how much it’s going to cost them and then hold a vote.

She will also pursue grants but thought the town needs to be “less reliant on this notion that we’re spending other people’s money and not taking care of ourselves.”

“That’s where planning comes in. We really need to do a much better job of sketching out where we’re going and laying out a plan that we can afford. If you can get grant money to cover some or all of it, that’s fantastic. But we need to have a plan and we need to be building for that future,” she said.

LAWLER/CONLEY

Just hours before Lawler and Conley’s second debate aired on television -- and 10 days before early voting was to begin for New York’s 17th Congressional District race -- the pair squared off in North Salem over issues such as immigration, tariffs, high living costs, and data centers.

Where Conley actually resides has also provided fodder for a recent Lawler ad trying to paint her as an outsider who “parachuted in” to the area just to run for office, doesn’t “own” a home, and doesn’t pay property taxes.

Conley’s campaign materials tout her as living in the economically diverse town of Ossining, but her physical home, which she leases, is in Millwood, a hamlet in the affluent bordering town of New Castle, according to media reports.

Millwood shares an Ossining postal address. Conley is eligible to vote in the Ossining school district -- and several New Castle – elections, according to local officials. Both towns are located in the 17th.

When Conley talked Tuesday about the high cost of filling up her home’s heating oil tank -- “where I LIVE, in Ossining” – Lawley interjected, “in New Castle.”

“Oh, did he just admit that I live in the district?” shot back Conley, who frequently talks about being a fourth-generation Hudson Valley native.

The nearly hour-long scrap was marked by charges of blatant partisanship and pointed asides, forcing Remson at times to remind each to abide by forum rules.

(Not touched on at the local venue was a recent controversy over Conley’s taking campaign funds from Eliot Spitzer, who resigned as New York’s governor in 2008 following a federal investigation that had revealed he was a client of a high-end prostitution ring. He was never criminally prosecuted.)

Conley traced high living costs to the "reckless” war in Iran and to President Donald Trump’s tariffs and policies, which she claimed Lawler, who prides himself on his ability to work across the aisle, also supports the "100 percent” of the time.

Lawler strongly disputed that, reiterating that while he sees tariffs as "tool” for “forcing countries that have engaged in unfair trade practices for decades back to the tables,” he doesn’t support long-term taxes on imported goods and services and is concerned by the “volatility” caused by Trump’s frequent changing or adjusting policies through executive orders, temporary pauses, and legal challenges.

Any claims that he always votes with Trump is, he said several times, "provably false.”

"When I’ve agreed with the president, I’ve said it. When I’ve disagreed with him, I’ve said it,” Lawler said.

HARCKHAM/ESPOSITO

Esposito, Yorktown’s deputy supervisor, and Harckham, who has been a state senator since 2018 and heads the Legislature’s Environmental Committee, went toe to toe on the thorny issue of Indian Point’s closure.

Esposito, who advocates for the 59-year-old Buchanan nuclear plant’s rebuilding and modernizing, blamed Harckham and his “Albany allies,” for its demise and a rise in energy costs.

Harckham emphasized that -- contrary to what some folks are saying -- the state did not close Indian Point.

That was the owner/operator’s (Entergy) because it was offloading its nuclear portfolio, he explained, adding that the company’s president had determined that the “economics of nuclear power did not make sense anymore.”

The condition of state roads also came up.

Harckham pointed to $300 million that’s recently been secured in Albany for road projects.

Esposito called the $300 million “nothing” in light of the fact that state roads have been “neglected for years and years and years.”

Harckham insisted that there’s been “meaningful progress” made and that legislators are continuing to push for more DOT funding.

BURDICK

One of the seniors asked Burdick, who had the audience all to himself, if there was anything the state could do about the skyrocketing cost of home heating oil.

While the state Public Service Commission sets electricity rates, it has no control over oil prices because those are “not regulated,” Burdick explained, adding that “it’s a matter of the open market.”

However, there have been inquiries into whether the state could ask “the oil companies themselves to voluntarily come up with pricing that would be beneficial AND competitive,” he said.

PIERCE/VALA

Calling it a “particularly fraught time” for seniors and others who are living on fixed incomes, Pierce said that it’s important for folks to understand that two-thirds of what the county is charged with doing is mandated by Albany and Washington.

“Things that seem to be happening far away,” such as cuts in federal funding, are “having a real impact on local governments,” the 25-year Katonah resident explained.

Vala, an 11-year resident of Somers, grew up in Queens in a blue-collar family. He said his parents live with him because they can no longer afford their own home.

That’s part of the reason why, he said, he’s focused on lowering taxes and costs, especially for seniors.

Resident Susan Lucas was concerned about the lack of public transportation in northern Westchester, which is particularly hard on seniors who no longer drive.

The only part of District 2 that’s served by the county’s Bee-Line Bus System is Mount Kisco and “a tiny part” of Bedford, said Pierce, explaining that the number of regular users are so low that she has to constantly “fight” the county to keep those routes going.

There are some private providers that cover general areas but don’t have specific routes.  Things are complicated by the lack of good cell reception and a decline in the number of volunteer drivers.

Westchester County provides demand-responsive Bee-Line ParaTransit for disabled people who cannot ride regular fixed-route Bee-Line buses. It’s paid for with federal dollars.

Vala agreed with Esposito about reopening Indian Point.

“Why not?” he asked rhetorically, adding that he was for energy sources such as solar and wind as well.

Indian Point came up again when resident Bob Herzberg expressed concern what would happen if there was an accident there, considering that millions of people live within a 50-mile radius.

Vala asked how many nuclear plant accidents had occurred in the U.S. “in the last 100 years” as opposed to incidents at battery energy storage facilities. (He opposed a BESS project that would have been built in Mahopac near his home.)

“One, Three Mile Island,” he said, answering himself.

(The nuclear facility, located near Harrisburg, Pa., suffered a partial meltdown in 1979.)

What about Japan?, Herzberg persisted, referring to the 2011 disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, swamped when a 9.0 earthquake off the coast triggered a tsunami.

“That was a tidal wave; we don’t have those issues here in New York,” Vala said.

“Not yet,” said Herzberg, pointing out that Indian Point sits within two miles of an active fault line.

Vala further contended that the area hasn’t “had an earthquake.” (In fact, there have been three small ones in the past three years.)

“I think most people would agree that Indian Point was NEVER a great site for a nuclear plant because of the (gas) pipeline, fault line, and evacuation issues,” Pierce said. “Remember, it was one of the targets on 9/11.”