Irvington Officials Put Brakes on Expanding EV Charger Stations

By Rick Pezzullo—

Irvington officials have decided not to move forward with installing additional EV charger stations.

The announcement by Mayor Arlene Burgos Friday came a few days after the majority of residents who packed Village Hall urged the Board of Trustees to pull the plug on the project.

“This wasn’t a simple or easy decision. We genuinely believe in expanding access to EV infrastructure, and we know that for some residents, particularly those in multi-family housing without private charging options, access matters greatly,” Burgos stated. “When we looked at the full picture, including the community opposition, the siting concerns, the funding constraints that would have shifted prohibitive costs to taxpayers if we modified or relocated the installations, and the uncertainty around future grant availability, it became clear that moving forward was not the right path at this time.”

Armed with funding from Con Edison and Westchester County, the village was looking at placing EV charger installations at the East Sunnyside Avenue lot, the Ardsley-on-Hudson Train Station lot, and the Half Moon North Co-Op development on South Buckhout Street.

EV chargers have been installed at Scenic Hudson Park and will soon appear at the Field Point parking lot at the intersection of Main Street and Broadway, the Irvington Library parking lot and the O’Hara Nature Center.

However, at the May 18 public hearing, many residents criticized village officials for haphazardly planning for the new chargers and not adequately informing residents or seeking public input.

“We’re not against chargers. It’s just the way it was rolled out,” said South Buckhout Street resident Kevin O’Halloran, who also expressed another frequent concern of speakers about the detrimental effect of the chargers on mature trees in the area.

“Those EV stations are wrong for this location. It’s just not right,” a resident of Half Moon North remarked. “You’re pitting the community against each other in a beautiful neighborhood. This is not going to end well.”

Burgos conceded village officials could have done a better job keeping residents in the loop.

“We agree that we should have communicated earlier, more directly, and more transparently, especially with residents closest to the proposed sites. That failure was ours, and I want to be direct about that. While it was unintentional, we acknowledge that we should have focused on community outreach and provided residents with more specific details about the overall project well ahead of its commencement,” Burgos stated.

“It’s also worth clearly explaining some of the constraints we were working within, because they shaped our options more than many residents may have realized. The grant funding behind this project required that chargers be installed exclusively in Village-owned parking spaces that are publicly accessible to all residents. Installing them in private parking lots, including the private parking spaces at Half Moon North, was never an option,” she noted. “Funding a future installation using only village resources will be a genuine challenge given our budget constraints, and it will fall to current and future boards to weigh the real benefits of expanding EV access against our responsibility to manage village funds carefully.”

Read or leave a comment on this story...

---

[recent_post_slider design="design-4" show_author="false"]