By Mary Marvin, Mayor of Bronxville

Nov. 18, 2025: I realize I write a great deal about the incredible staff we have at Village Hall, but rarely if ever mention my incredible colleagues who are the backbone of Village government. They are the unsung heroes spending hours behind the scenes conducting Village business. They do the heavy lifting, making sure to dot every I and cross every T so that the Village functions at the highest level of legality and ethical standards.

Thanks to them, extraordinary things have been accomplished. In fact, am the lucky one who gets to give out awards and attend celebrations just this past week, I had the pure joy of welcoming 125 Bronxville School second graders to Village Hall to talk about civics with an emphasis on their hometown.

My colleagues are extraordinary in their passion and love for the village. They are truly a model of volunteer service. They are also the epitome of what a bipartisan government can do when leaving national and state political feelings at the door by just accomplishing the work at hand with a sole focus on what is best for our Village.

Bob Underhilll

As a recap, Bob Underhill is our Deputy Mayor of 20 plus years. Bob’s great grandfather, William van Duzer Lawrence, founded our Village and his grandfather Penrose Stout was one of the extraordinary architects whose homes you see gracing the Village landscape. When it was time to settle down, Bob chose to come back to Bronxville and has lived on Dusenberry Road for the past 32 years.

Helen Knapp

Trustee Knapp was born and raised in Bronxville attending our K through 12 school as did her two daughters and even her Dad was a graduate of the Bronxville schools!

Mary Behrens

Trustee Behrens came to Bronxville in early elementary school and graduated from the high school as the recipient of the first scholarship for a female athlete attending Georgetown University as a track star.

Bill Fredericks

Continuing in this incredible tradition of fealty  to our Village is Trustee Bill Fredericks, who grew up here, moved home to raise his family, and his mom lived in their family home on Oriole Avenue for 55 years only to be outdone by Bill’s grandmother who lived at 28 Greenfield for 70 years!

Not only are my colleagues intelligent, fair and prudent, but they are seeped in the traditions and ethos of what makes our village a special home.

By contrast, I am the clear newbie having only lived here for 38 years.

2025 Accomplishments of Village Board

The following is just a small snapshot of the 2025 accomplishments of this Board beyond doing the very labor-intensive day to day business that must keep a local government going.

We worked together to hire four police officers just in the past year; upgraded the Library staff room and replaced/upgraded the Library walkway and purchased a new boiler for the facility.

Electric vehicle charging stations were made operational for our Village and a solar array will soon be constructed on the roof of the DPW building, which will enable us to power the entire 200 Pondfield Road complex.

We also purchased a new vacuum truck to clean up the proliferation of leaves that often end up in our drains further exacerbating the flooding situation.

The Trustees spent months designing a downtown pedestrian and traffic improvement plan to make our Village the epitome of walkability in Westchester County. They also spent a great deal of the year working on drainage mitigation projects spanning the Village from Paxton Avenue to the Crawford drainage basin up near Siwanoy Country Club to the area near Hamilton, Sussex and Homedale Road. They did all of this while maintaining a small tax increase in the past year. They truly treat your tax contributions with the highest level of stewardship.

Beyond even our Village borders, our relentless efforts in some critical areas affected very positively our neighbors throughout the county and even the stage as both State Senator Shelley Mayer and Assemblymember Amy Paulin, recounted on their recent visits to our Village Board meeting.

As illustration, we had a young female police officer who wanted to advance her career, but due to an administrative glitch in the civil service system, was going to be unable to take a promotional exam that was not going to be offered for four years.

Realizing that a bureaucratic glitch was going to potentially severely diminish her chance of advancement in the department, the Trustees fought relentlessly for a change in the civil service system and thanks to the collaboration with our State Senator and Assemblymember, we were able to get this obstacle removed. It not only helped our police officer but dozens across the state who did not receive the same backing from their colleagues.

As recently mentioned by our State Senator and Assemblymember,  Bronxville was in the forefront of encouraging the state to allow us to lower speed limits from 30 mph to 25 mph Village wide and when the legislation was finally adopted at our urging, we were one of the very first communities to sign on as our police department gave us a great education on the difference in injuries when a car is going 25 versus 30. We were very proud to take the initiative on this issue.

We also worked relentlessly as a team to help defeat what everyone now considers was an ill conceived and poorly executed plan to increase affordable housing throughout the state. If passed, the legislation would have allowed 10,000 new units to be built in our one square mile which currently has 2650 housing units and the third highest housing density in the county. We rallied our peers throughout Westchester, the Hudson Valley and Nassau and Suffolk Counties and together demonstrated the unworkable nature of this plan.