Note: You can read the village's newsletter "One Square Mile"

By Mary Marvin, Mayor of Bronxville

June 24, 2025: The activity in our building department in the past few months has been robust, and with that in mind, I thought it timely to transmit some facts about our housing stock in the aggregate.

After a year where New York State determined we were only at 95% of full valuation, this year we return to the desired 100% valuation. The increase back to the ideal 100% was based on a multitude of factors derived from New York State sales analysis, our own research as well as local realtor trending and sales.

Median Bronxville House Price is $2.8 million

Last year, Bronxville had the largest median price house increase in the entire county increasing from 2.6 million to 2.8 million dollars. Currently the shortage of available housing stock continues to drive a highly competitive sales market.

As a result of all the above data compilation, roughly 1,300 properties in this past taxing year saw assessment changes of some kind reflected on the 2025 assessment roll.

In a recent column, I answered many of the queries to the building department, and I ask you to refer to my column of March 3, 2025 to refresh your memory on some of the most frequently asked questions. A few new questions have surfaced due to the time of year.

When are Permits Needed?

As examples, residents have asked if permits are needed for walkways, patios, and driveways. Any change in dimension of a walkway, patio or driveway requires a permit and may require a drainage analysis and perhaps a design professional/engineer when drainage calculations are needed.

Minor repairs and basic maintenance to the above surfaces do not require a permit, but a phone call to the Building Department can answer borderline questions in better detail.

Attic insulation does require a permit per the New York State energy code and any type of gas changes also require permits with a follow up inspection. Exterior stairways that have over three steps require a railing to be 36 inches high with space not greater than 4 inches between spindles.

How to Receive Notice of Hearings and Events that Affect Village Properties

Switching gears, residents have asked, especially in conjunction with the recent application of Iona college to upgrade their baseball field, how to receive notice of hearings and events that affect Village properties.

As a small village, we believe in using every avenue we can to share with our residents events that may have a level of community impact. To that end, the current Iona application before our Planning Board and all its supporting documents as well as meeting times and place are posted on the Village website more than 10 days prior to the meeting as is customary.

All applications before the Village are easily accessed by going to the Village website and just clicking on Planning or Zoning Board.

The recent meeting was also mentioned in the Village Administrator’s report at the June Village Board of Trustees’ meeting, and we personally notified the Village of Tuckahoe of the application as well as the Town of Eastchester.

By law, the petitioner was required to notify any resident within 400 feet. Our Building Department actually requested that the applicant perform a much greater outreach and notification of the meeting, which they did though not required, extending well into neighborhoods in Eastchester as a courtesy.

Notices of the meeting last week were mailed back on May 22, a copy of which is available in our Building Department. We also mentioned this meeting in our recent Village newsletter, which is available to any resident who simply calls to request inclusion and if you signed up for our alert system, you received notification as well. As you can glean, we do have far more avenues of notification than the norm and that is by design as living in a small community, anyone who wants to access information that may impact them should be able to do so by the click of a button.

Special Activities that took place in May

I shall pivot further to share some incredibly special activities that took place in May in the Village that may not have made everyone’s radar but are so worthy of mentioning as they are uniformly heartwarming.

Under the tutelage of the PTA, the Bronxville School held a Color Run, which I have learned over the past few years is a Hindu tradition during the HOLI festival and its genesis is to promote unity, diversity and the joy of springtime. The run involved well over 100 students and parents from our school. With incredible cooperation from our Police Department, runners end at a finish line where they are sprayed with literally the colors of the rainbow. If you saw the delight on the faces of young and old, you will want to participate as well next year as the spirit of the whole event is pure celebration.

I have mentioned our incredible Memorial Day Parade which this year, and I give much credit to our Grand Marshal Dr. George Unis, for the regeneration of the whole atmosphere.

For many of us who have lived here for decades, the young people adorning their bikes with patriotic accoutrements brought back incredible memories of parades of old, and we hope this is a turning point to return back to the spirited days when everyone in the Village took part.

Little known is the incredibly poignant ceremony that truly kicks off Memorial Day weekend held on the school front lawn near the flagpole where our Bronxville students not only honor veterans in attendance but also give some of the most articulate and stirring speeches. I encourage everyone to put it on their schedule for next year as it is always at 9 AM on the Friday before Memorial Day. It is a beautiful way to start the weekend.

May also brought some wonderful interaction with our school on so many levels. The Police Department and Village government were honored to be co-sponsors with all of the school organizations for a beautiful evening to commemorate our School Superintendent Dr. Rachel Kelly’s 30 years of exemplary service to the community. The night positively radiated warmth and gratitude.

We also hosted the Bronxville High School Senior Class at Village Hall for their Senior Safety Day, which brings together the entire class to meet with members of our Police Department, Fire Department, Department of Public Works and Emergency Medical Services to learn skills they might need as they go off to unfamiliar territory in college. The students were engaged and simply delightful to have in the building and I know they learned a great deal from the seasoned professionals.

And finally on an afternoon that still evokes a smile, fourth grader Liza Collier made an appointment with me to discuss what she and her classmates could do to enhance the Village. Thanks to the incredible cooperation of the entire fourth grade teaching team, Village Hall staff and the persistence and unbounded enthusiasm of Liza, we outfitted every 4th grader with bags and gloves and headed off into teams, one particularly efficient one headed by Trustee Mary Behrens, and scoured the entire business district. We were uniformly quite appalled at the number of cigarette remnants that we all had to pick up. Thanks to Liza, we all learned a valuable civic engagement lesson and we are committed to making this an annual event. I assure you this next generation and beyond is totally committed to a bright future for all of us.

Happy Summer!