A RECENT LETTER TO THE GAZETTE BY PAUL STENBERG
The Mayor of Croton dismisses those who disagree with him by saying that nobody is being forced to live in Croton, Trustee Ian Murtaugh says that those who call apartment development urbanization are using a “dog whistle” and Croton Housing Network president Nance Shatzkin literally gives residents the finger.
I don’t oppose development of the Finklestein and Lot A parcels—provided they pay their fair share of taxes and don’t look as tacky and oversized as the Katz development. But I do take issue with the arrogance, divisiveness, and lies which those ruling Croton have used to silence people who disagree with them.
The most inexcusable example is Croton Trustee Ian Murtaugh’s use of the race card. He stated that use of the term “urbanization” was “a dog whistle term.” When pressed by a reporter, Mr. Murtaugh gave a coy response which can be read in the July 24 edition of the Croton Chronicle. He says the term “does not connote racism per se, but it certainly can,” that the term is used to “protect the speaker” from “saying that they don’t want anyone else here in our village” and avoid “what the true concern is” including “people unlike we who are already here.”
I have more respect for Ms. Shatzkin who makes no apologies for giving us the finger. We all know what Mr. Murtaugh meant, and yes—he meant to say that if you disagree with him you are a racist: we all know what “a dog whistle term” means. There is an irony in Mr. Murtaugh using a euphemism to accuse his opponents of using a euphemism.
Mr. Murtaugh also revives a distasteful Croton trope which I had thought was long out of fashion. He blames people who moved to Croton from Queens, Brooklyn, Yonkers “or wherever” for using the word “urbanization.” When I moved to Croton, it was common to hear a native-versus-newcomer argument used to exclude or diminish the views of people who did not grow up in Croton. In fact, Mr. Murtaugh used his position as “a lifetime resident of Croton” who remembers the “way Croton used to be” to dismiss my viewpoint when I wrote a letter to this newspaper back in 2019.
Calling those who disagree with you racists is admittedly worse than asserting moral superiority over people who moved to Croton from elsewhere. But both are attempts to divide the community and shut down civic discourse with false ad hominem attacks. Whether you are “a lifetime resident of Croton” or just finished unpacking the moving van, you have a right to express your opinion and to express your concerns about actions taken by your elected officials.
Mr. Murtaugh having grown up in a non-urban Croton now feels that the word “urbanization” is a “dog whistle.” Actually the term has been used for 400 years. Urbanization has been taking place since the beginning of civilization: the word itself originally meant “to make more civil” (in contrast to the social environment of the farm). The United Nations has an annual report titled Revision of World Urbanization Prospects, which relies on the definitions of “urbanization” as set forth by member states. In the United States the term is defined by the US Census Bureau which breaks density down to census tract and census block levels.
Mr. Murtaugh imputes distasteful motives to people who move to Croton. I can’t speak for anyone else, but before I moved to Croton, I looked at a wide range of communities in Westchester including Yonkers. The key factor that put Croton in the final group was the express Metro-North stop and an express Bee Line bus to the station. It is also common for people to move to the suburbs when they have children, and they want to have a house with grass and trees where the kids can play. There is nothing wrong with that, and it certainly is not racist.
As a lifetime resident of Croton, Mr. Murtaugh is better aware than I of the history of lies and deception which goes back to the days of Mayor Bogardus in the 1980s, when the housing debate became a village issue.
The original argument was that Croton is the bees knees, and nobody wants to leave this bucolic paradise. So we needed to build housing for seniors and adult offspring so they could stay in Croton. When Symphony Knoll was being rented in early 2005, we were told there would be priority for “people with a connection to the village.” Now we are told to enter a lottery and compete with millions of people living in the metro NY area.
There was also long-standing resentment of outsiders coming in and driving up prices for the “lifetime” residents, as well as a view that those who were not born in Croton were not true members of the community. The most notorious example was in 2012 when a supporter of then-candidate Kevin Davis said that Davis was the better choice because he had “rounded second base” on the Croton baseball field and primary opponent Andy Levitt was an outsider.
Now in 2024, we learn that Croton is a klavern of rich arrivistes from Queens and Brooklyn (and Yonkers???) who want to pull up the gangplank before the blacks and browns enroll their kids in “our” schools—this is the Murtaugh “dog whistle” argument. The solution is to build hundreds of subsidized apartments for lower income people from across the tri-state area who are lucky enough to win a housing lottery.
Leaving aside the actual racist premise underlying the linkage of racial diversity with subsidized high-density housing, there is nothing wrong with residents wanting to live in a lower-density suburban environment of single-family homes rather than apartments. I have lived in condos, co-ops, rentals and even in a trailer park (which was actually a nice place). I am not opposed to apartment living, but I can understand why people who chose to live in a single-family community object to the push by Mayor Pugh and the trustees to urbanize Croton.
People have raised the matter of Mr. Pugh’s motivation. I think that is worth discussing, but not for the customary reason given. Mr. Pugh stands squarely behind Senator Harckham, much as Kamala stood behind Joe and Brutus stood behind Caesar. In the fullness of time (or when the wine-taster is on vacation) Pete Harckham will be ushered off the stage and Mr. Pugh is nothing if not politically ambitious.
When that happens, packing Croton with high-density apartments is not going to be a winning political position. The whole reason why Gov. Hochul has dangled the carrot is because the stick did not work. The original attempt to force high-density zoning around Metro-North stations was abandoned because suburban residents don’t want their communities to become urbanized. So the plan was re-worked with a pot of hundreds of millions of dollars for communities which volunteer to construct apartments. Even with that incentive, so far 11 mid-Hudson communities have become “Pro-Housing” communities. Of those, only Croton and Kiryas Joel are villages. For a place like White Plains or Yonkers to be in favor of massive apartment construction is not a voter issue because they have the urban districts already. And Kiryas Joel is happy to take taxpayer money to construct a Hasidic metropolis.
So why is Mr. Pugh pushing for something that may be a negative issue when he runs to succeed Mr. Harckham? Because the voters won’t matter in that State Senate election any more than voters matter in Croton elections. The choice of who will take Mr. Harckham’s seat will be made by party bosses, including Governor Hochul. Once selected, the designated successor to Mr. Harckham will face barely enough token opposition from Republicans to preserve the illusion of democracy. Gov. Hochul is determined to build 800,000 apartment units and whichever local politicians can pack their community with apartments will garner a stack of political chips to cash in when needed.
This is a depressing note to end on, but the reality is that we get the community that 51 percent of us vote for. Mr. Pugh can ignore us and tell us that we are not being forced to live in Croton. Mr. Murtaugh can accuse us of being racists. Ms. Shatzkin can flip us the finger and return to her $1.3M Tudor City co-op while lecturing us about how we need to fill Croton with low-income apartments.
We want to be accepted by our tribe. In Croton that means we go in lock-step to the polls and vote “Row A all the way.” We might want to reconsider our unwavering devotion to a group of elites who literally give us the finger and tell us nobody is forcing us to live here.
--Paul Steinberg, Croton-on-Hudson
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