A Guest Column by Jann Mirchandani, submitted to Yorktown News
This week, Cait Conley, Candidate for Congressional District 17, and I hosted a community discussion about Yorktown’s infrastructure and housing challenges. What became clear is that our town is stuck in a costly cycle of crisis management when we should be investing in proactive solutions.
The Real Cost of Waiting
Take our sewer issues. We’ve been talking about this problem for decades. Money was allocated years ago, but no action was taken. Now costs have skyrocketed, and we’re still talking. Research shows that every dollar spent on preventive maintenance saves five dollars later—yet we continue to defer essential upgrades until they become emergencies.
Meanwhile, our current leadership celebrates paving the high school commuter parking lot as a major “infrastructure improvement” and “beautifying our parks.” While maintaining parking lots is certainly necessary, calling routine pavement repair a significant infrastructure achievement highlights exactly what’s wrong with our approach. When parking lot repaving gets social media posts with exclamation points, but our sewer system gets years of inaction, our priorities are clearly misaligned.
This reactive approach isn’t just inefficient; it’s expensive. According to a study completed by Utah State University in December 2023, every water main break costs us approximately $10,000 in emergency repairs when you factor in labor, materials, traffic management, and emergency response. And with utility rate hikes looming—NYSEG is seeking 35% increases for delivery rates starting in 2026—the fact that we’re not investing in renewable energy sources for our municipal buildings is particularly short-sighted.
Other communities are doing better. Croton-on-Hudson partnered with Columbia University and private developers to install a solar canopy at their train station—at no cost to taxpayers. The village now receives annual lease payments totalling $500,000 a year, while residents can subscribe to community solar and save on their electric bills.
Housing: The Hidden Infrastructure Crisis
With average home prices in Westchester at $833,161 and over 41% of households paying more than half their income on housing, we’re facing a workforce crisis. Our teachers, police officers, and nurses can’t afford to live here. This isn’t just a housing problem—it’s an economic development problem.
Federal programs like Low-Income Housing Tax Credits and HUD grants can help private developers build affordable housing locally without requiring large municipal investments. But accessing these programs requires proactive planning and coordination.
Our current leadership’s response to the housing crisis has been to approve high-density developments under the banner of addressing housing costs. But when these projects—like the proposed Navajo Fields development in a wetland area—include no affordability requirements whatsoever, they’re not solving the problem for working families.
Building luxury units in environmentally sensitive areas doesn’t make housing more affordable—it just makes developers richer while potentially damaging our natural resources and exacerbating flooding concerns.
What Yorktown Needs Now
We need leaders who understand that investing in infrastructure isn’t just about fixing what’s broken—it’s about building systems that work for the future. We need to:
- Pursue federal resilience grants for proactive infrastructure upgrades
- Coordinate with Westchester County on regional solutions like our sewer system
- Leverage programs that help developers build housing that is affordable at a variety of price points
- Implement community solar projects that benefit renters and homeowners alike
Time to Lead
Ten years is a significant tenure in local government—long enough to implement meaningful change, complete major projects, and move a community forward. Instead, Yorktown has been stuck in crisis management mode, celebrating parking lot repairs while real infrastructure challenges go unaddressed.
The question isn’t whether we can afford to invest in our infrastructure and housing—it’s whether we can afford not to.