By THANE GRAUEL
The Pound Ridge Town Board on Tuesday night, Sept. 17, voted unanimously to extend the maximum age of new part-time police officers from 55 to 70. The minimum age remains 21.
The town’s police force is part time, mostly with officers who have retired from law-enforcement careers in New York City and thereabouts looking to earn a little extra money or keep busy. But under New York state rules, they are restricted to earning no more than $35,000 a year without impacting their pension income.
That’s been a problem for small towns statewide, in Pound Ridge (population roughly 5,000) and elsewhere in northern Westchester. Many small communities are trying to avoid going to full-time police forces because of the much larger budget requirements and likely impact on local taxpayers.
Before Tuesday, the maximum age for new hires in Pound Ridge was 55. It is now 70.
Town Supervisor Kevin Hansan told those at the town board meeting the change would increase the pool of candidates. Lately the roster has been shallow, and income limits made staffing shifts an ongoing challenge, he said.
Lt. Kieran Murray, who has been with the Pound Ridge Police Department for 12 years and is retired from the New Castle force, recounted some hiring difficulties with those rules.
“Our stance is if we could kind of raise that, and if you’re good and you want to come in and serve the community and be a good asset to the town, why should age be a thing?” Murray said. “Especially, in Connecticut, you can hire somebody 50, full time, 60, whatever.”
Someone in the audience asked if the age increase helped with the state’s pay issue.
“No,” Hansan replied. “This only helps us with the fact that we can physically get more part-time police officers to fill the void of not having enough.”
“Because we continue to lose the part-time police officers we do get to Connecticut, to school resource officers, because they’re not restricted on the $35,000 maximum they can make on top of their retirement benefit that they’re getting,” he continued.
The town has sought to have the limits on part-time officers increased through the state Legislature, but those legislative efforts were unsuccessful. If they were successful, Hansan said at Tuesday’s meeting, the town could have met the staffing needs without more officers.
“This will now give us the opportunity to hire more because, you may have even noticed at some of the Food Truck Friday events, you’ve seen more County Police and sheriffs because we physically don’t have enough officer shifts available to do all the staffing that’s required in the town of Pound Ridge,” the supervisor said.
Hansan told The Recorder after the meeting that the state still needs to address the issues faced by municipalities like his.
“This will help,” he said of the local law tweak, “but it won’t fix the issue.”
Cannabis hearing closed, vote delayed
Also at the meeting the board held a public hearing on a proposed zoning regulation governing new cannabis dispensaries in town. But it held off on a vote because some questions were raised about whether the four-page document clearly addressed potential places where marijuana could be smoked, and hours of operation.
New York state legalized the recreational sale of marijuana products in March 2021. The state offered municipalities an opt-out window, which closed Dec. 31, 2021, but Pound Ridge let the deadline pass without action. The town board later asked the state Legislature to reopen the opt-out window, but the effort was unsuccessful.
The proposed change to zoning regulations would prohibit a new dispensary’s opening within 500 feet of public or private school grounds, within 500 feet of a public youth facility, or within 200 feet of a house of worship.
Also, it states cannabis dispensaries and consumption sites “shall not be located within a 2,000-foot-radius of another cannabis dispensary or consumption site.”
The town has one existing dispensary, Purple Plains, located at 32 Westchester Ave. Given the small size of the town’s business district, the measure’s passage would likely make it the only dispensary in town, and perhaps block any consumption site.
John McCown, who has been outspoken on the cannabis issue and unsuccessfully ran against Hansan in November on this and other matters, spoke at the meeting. He said the latest any retail establishment is open in Pound Ridge is 8 p.m.
“I strongly recommend that we keep that for any cannabis store,” he said.
He also said that keeping those hours would make it less likely a consumption establishment might come to town.
Alex Goldfarb, another speaker, questioned how the proposal would treat marijuana consumption..
“It was unclear if the town is allowing, like, cafés, like in Amsterdam, to set up,” he said.
Goldfarb said anyone who’s been to a Grateful Dead concert might understand the marijuana smell is part of the experience.
“But I don’t think people walking around Scotts Corners want to experience what we experience when we come out of Grand Central [Terminal] every day,” he said.
He said he was unclear whether consumption was allowed or not under the proposed zoning changes. “I read it both ways,” he said.
Malcolm Simpson, a planning consultant who helped draft the ordinance, said any establishment hosting both sales and consumption would need two separate permits from the state.
“Consumption sites statewide have pretty stringent restrictions,” he said. “The special permit language that’s included here prevents any kind of outdoor seating for those consumption sites.”
He said the ordinance states that a retail-only site could not have on-site consumption. However, he also noted that the town cannot ban consumption sites if their owners get licenses from the state for such use.
Town Attorney William Harrington said there was “a phalanx” of state regulations for such establishments, including installing an air-treatment facility to prevent any odor escaping outside.
“And second, our local odor laws would apply,” he said.
The town board voted to close the public hearing but delayed a vote to go over the questions raised.
Hansan said later he expected a vote to be taken at the next town board meeting, Tuesday, Oct. 1, at 7:30 p.m.