MAYOR'S UPDATE
From the desk of Mayor Rika Levin

Happy New Year! On behalf of the Village Board of Trustees and Village staff, we wish you all a happy, safe, and healthy 2023. I truly believe that for Ossining, for the County of Westchester and for the State of New York, the best is yet to come.

On January 1st at 12 Noon, I was joined by my colleagues in local, state, and federal government, as well as nearly 150 community members, at the Joseph G. Caputo Community Center for the official start of a new term as Mayor, as well as the start of new terms for many other local leaders:

Congressman Mike Lawler was welcomed and sworn in to office.

As Ossining joins New York’s 40th Senate District, Senator Pete Harckham was sworn in here for the very first time!
Our very own Dana Levenberg was sworn in as Assemblywoman for District 95.
Liz Feldman was sworn in as our appointed Ossining Town Supervisor after (6) years as an elected member of the Town Board, and formerly appointed Town Board member Jennifer Fields-Tawil was sworn in for her first elected term as Town Councilwoman.
Finally, my dear Village Board colleagues Manuel Quezada and Dana White were sworn in for additional two-year terms as Village Trustees.

We have an exceptional team leading the way for this exciting time in Ossining—I am grateful to my fellow elected officials for answering the call to serve our wonderful community, and I am grateful to have been elected Mayor of our beautiful Village for a second time. Thank you for your trust in me as we take this journey together, again!

I also had the honor to swear in the three fire department chiefs as they each start their two-year terms. I was joined by over one hundred community and family members, as well as Supervisor Feldman, Councilman Manicchio, Village Trustees Fritsche and White, Village Manager Karen D'Attore and Assistant Village Manager Maddi Zachacz for this wonderful event.

Lots of exciting news at Village Hall this week—in my last Mayor’s Message on December 20th, I shared with you that New York State had formally designated six (6) DRI (Downtown Revitalization Initiative) projects that will receive shares of the Village’s $10Million award. However, since then, we have received more good news on the grants front.

Thanks to outgoing Congressman Mondaire Jones, the Village of Ossining has secured $4Million in Community Project Funding from the Federal government to design and implement the Road Diet on NYS Route 9, which has been discussed among boards and community members in Ossining as far back as the early 1990s. Using traffic calming measures along a one-mile stretch of Route 9 as it winds through our Village will bring safety benefits for pedestrians and motorists alike, while also opening up opportunities for parking and economic development benefits that naturally come from more controlled traffic flow. Further, part of the plan includes accommodations that will aid first responders coming from Downtown Ossining to get onto Route 9, which makes this an all-around homerun for our community. We are excited to get started on this project which has been a long time in the making, and are appreciative to our former Congressman for pushing this transformative project forward throughout the final days of the 117th Congress, as well as our Senators Schumer and Gillibrand, without whom this also would not have been possible. We look forward to working with the state government to implement this initiative.

Finally, last week we were notified that the Village of Ossining secured an additional $106,250 from the NYS Department of State for an updated LWRP (Local Waterfront Revitalization Program), which will incorporate our other recent planning initiatives such as the DRI and 2021 Comprehensive Plan, and will address community resilience, climate adaptation and smart growth along our waterfront. We are thrilled to have secured funding that will help us continue to synthesize the community feedback we have received over past years to create a more sustainable (in every sense of the word) Village.

The strategic and practical importance of these grants is threefold: 1) It allows us to make significant infrastructure improvements that we could not afford to even consider, let alone implement, at our small local level.

2) These grants (almost $30million in the past two years), give us for the first time the opportunity to add budgets and support that do not burden Ossining Village taxpayers directly, as they are additive and come with support from bigger entities adjacent to ours.

3) Our purposeful strategy is to put Ossining on the map and actively build bridges with persons and entities outside Ossining at various government levels so that we are kept top of mind when opportunities arise. This community is now seeing the result of building meaningful and productive relationships across organizations, governments, and individuals who can be helpful to us.

Lastly, as we move into a new calendar year, a few reminders—

Our 2023 Sanitation Calendar is live! You can also download the RecycleRight app, which will send reminders to you via auto dialer, email or text, so you never miss a pickup!

The Village Board of Trustees will hold our annual Re-Organizational Meeting tomorrow (Wednesday, January 4th) at 7:30PM at Village/ Town Hall (you can also join over Zoom).  This meeting, which generally covers our Board appointments, liaisons, policies and procedures for the coming year, will begin with a special presentation—Police Officer William Gallagher will be appointed Detective in the Ossining Police Department. It is so exciting to see young folks who were born and raised in Ossining, like Officer Gallagher, working hard and giving back to our community. I hope you will join us for this happy occasion on Wednesday evening.

As of the writing of this Mayor Message… As you may has seen on the news, the rookie NYPD police officer who was brutally attacked and hurt by a machete-wielding assailant on New Year’s Eve, is Ossining resident Officer Paul Cozzolino. The Board and staff send their well wishes and prayers for a speedy recovery to Officer Cozzolino and his family. We thank him for his service.

Get free at-?home COVID-?19 tests this winter. Every U.S. household is eligible to order 4 free at-home COVID-?19 tests.

Order Free At-Home Tests here: https://www.covid.gov/tests 

Need help placing an order for your at-home tests?

Call 1-800-232-0233 (TTY 1-888-720-7489).