Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie Tours the Rivertowns and Doles Out State Largesse

By Jeff Wil­son–

      Gaz­ing out over the wa­ter­front at the Tar­ry­town Ma­rina, New York State As­sem­bly Speaker Carl Heastie lis­tened as vil­lage of­fi­cials and Heast­ie’s col­league in Al­bany, 92nd As­sem­bly Dis­trict rep­re­sen­ta­tive Mary­Jane Shim­sky (who spear­headed the tour) ex­plained the need to ex­tend the dock into deeper wa­ter to avoid ground­ing Tar­ry­town’s Emer­gency Ser­vices Fire­boat in low tide. This up­grade, which as­sures that the ves­sel can re­spond to emer­gen­cies more safely and ef­fec­tively, will now be­come re­al­ity cour­tesy of a $150,000 grant the vil­lage had al­ready re­ceived from the state.

     Speaker Heastie was in the river­towns on Au­gust 31 for the pur­pose of view­ing and even­tu­ally fund­ing (to the tune of $2.1 mil­lion in ad­di­tion to the dock grant) var­i­ous in­fra­struc­ture pro­jects in Tar­ry­town, Irv­ing­ton and Dobbs Ferry. The in­ter­vil­lage trip would in­clude a stop in Irv­ing­ton, to view “Yes­ter­day,” a new sculp­ture de­pict­ing an en­slaved girl.

Hes­stie’s tour was de­layed for three hours by an ac­ci­dent on the New York State Thruway on the west­ern end of the Mario Cuomo Bridge that backed up traf­fic for 12 miles.

     Once in the river­towns, Heast­ie’s visit was all busi­ness, with none of the cer­e­mony that of­ten ac­com­pa­nies a visit by a high-rank­ing of­fi­cial. This trip was all about in­fra­struc­ture.

     Af­ter dis­cussing the dock and the sea­wall – to be re­in­forced af­ter dredg­ing the ma­rina (an idea that could be re­al­ized down the road but is not yet in the plan­ning stages), the group moved on to the H Bridge. This heav­ily trav­elled over­pass, Tar­ry­town’s only ac­cess to the river­front for both ve­hi­cles and pedes­tri­ans, crosses the tracks just north of Tar­ry­town’s train sta­tion. It is as di­lap­i­dated as it is es­sen­tial. Dan Pan­nella, the vil­lage’s chief en­gi­neer, gave Heastie a laun­dry list of needed re­pairs to the steel, con­crete, I-beams and bear­ing plates needed to in­sure con­tin­ued safe op­er­a­tion. The Speaker was sold, con­fi­dent that the $500,000 ear­marked for the pro­ject was “money well spent.”

     Mayor Karen Brown was elated. “I am thrilled to have se­cured these funds for our Vil­lage and thank As­sem­bly­woman Mary­Jane Shim­sky for go­ing to bat for Tar­ry­town,” she en­thused.

      Then it was on to Main Street in Irv­ing­ton where Mayor Brian Smith joined Heastie, Shim­sky and other of­fi­cials as Sarah Cox, Chair of the Irv­ing­ton Com­mem­o­rate Com­mit­tee, in­tro­duced them to the re­cently in­stalled sculp­ture “Yes­ter­day,” a fig­u­ra­tive rep­re­sen­ta­tion of an African girl once en­slaved by lo­cal farm­ers. Cox stated that com­mu­ni­ties like Irv­ing­ton must “serve as a model to other com­mu­ni­ties to grap­ple with their own his­tory with slav­ery.”

Heastie fol­lowed the pre­sen­ta­tion in­tently, grate­ful for Cox’s gifts of a sou­venir neck­lace (em­bla­zoned with “Yes­ter­day”) which he vowed to give to his daugh­ter, along with an artis­tic pocket-sized brochure and map en­ti­tled “Slav­ery in Irv­ing­ton.” The Speaker also raved about Cox’s sum­mer peach cake (her Ca­jun grand­moth­er’s recipe).

      Along with its past, Irv­ing­ton is also fo­cused on the fu­ture: elec­tric cars. To that end, Heastie and Shim­sky an­nounced a $100,000 grant in sup­port of the vil­lage’s elec­tric ve­hi­cle charg­ing sta­tion ini­tia­tive.

     The Leg­is­la­tors even­tu­ally ar­rived in Dobbs Ferry, where they joined Dobbs of­fi­cials and en­gi­neers in ex­am­in­ing the bridge lead­ing to the train sta­tion and the wa­ter­front (Dobbs’ ver­sion of Tar­ry­town’s H bridge). Salt and wa­ter had dam­aged the un­der­side of the bridge to the point where fur­ther ero­sion could re­sult in its col­lapse. The struc­ture had last been worked on in the 1980’s; en­gi­neers es­ti­mated the pre­sent cost of re­pair at $2 mil­lion. Al­though Heastie com­mit­ted $1.5 mil­lion, Shim­sky went one bet­ter. “Be­tween the Speaker and my­self, we’ll come up with $2 mil­lion [as a cap­i­tal grant],” she promised the Dobbs con­tin­gent.

“We are are ex­tremely grate­ful to Speaker Heastie and As­sem­blyper­son Shim­sky for award­ing us the grant to re­pair the High Street bridge,” said Mayor Vin­cent Rossillo af­ter­wards. “The Vil­lage is al­ready fac­ing a heavy fi­nan­cial bur­den in re­pair­ing/​re­plac­ing key in­fra­struc­ture.  This grant helps al­le­vi­ate some of that bur­den.

 In part­ing, Shim­sky stated her phi­los­o­phy of be­ing proac­tive when it comes to main­te­nance. “We’ve got to keep things as good as we need them to be,” she as­serted. “Of­ten it’s sim­ple fixes in Year One that pre­vent a world of hurt in Years Seven and Eight.”

     While Speaker Heastie ul­ti­mately holds the purse strings, As­sem­bly­woman Shim­sky’s role in tar­get­ing pro­jects is crit­i­cal. “Shim­sky,” said an aide, “had worked with the vil­lage gov­ern­ments to iden­tify ar­eas of need and to make the req­ui­site ap­pli­ca­tions for cap­i­tal fund­ing from the State.”

     Shim­sky, a first-term leg­is­la­tor, has al­ready learned the im­por­tance of clos­ing the deal by tak­ing the Speaker into the field to sell him on the ur­gency of the pro­pos­als. “In ar­rang­ing an itin­er­ary for the Speak­er’s visit to our dis­trict,” the aide con­tin­ued, “it was im­por­tant for us to show him how much the pro­jects will ben­e­fit these com­mu­ni­ties – to main­tain and up­date their in­fra­struc­ture, im­prove re­silience and sus­tain­abil­ity, and help keep our Hud­son River vil­lages thriv­ing.”