Pleasantville Voters to Decide on Shifting Local Elections to November
News Based on facts, either observed and verified directly by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.
By Abby Luby
A referendum to change Pleasantville’s traditional election day from March to November will appear on the November 2025 ballot.
More than 500 petition signatures to place the referendum on the ballot were submitted and formally verified by Village Clerk Alyssa Hochstein last week. The number of signatures required to put the referendum on the ballot is 400.
Whitney Felder, executive assistant to Democratic Commissioner Tajian M. Nelson at the Westchester County Board of Elections, noted how the required certification was received before the Aug. 4 deadline.
“Pleasantville Village Clerk Alyssa Hochstein dropped the certification off to the BOE herself,” Felder said. “We have all the required paperwork to have the referendum on the ballot in November and we’re good to go.”
Proponents of having local elections on the general November ballot raised many issues for the change at a Village Board meeting last spring. Soon after that meeting, longtime village resident and former Mount Pleasant Councilwoman Francesca Hagadus announced her intention of circulating a petition to put the referendum on the November 2025 ballot.
After learning the petition was certified last week, Hagadus said, “There were sufficient signatures to put the referendum on the ballot and I am grateful to the teamwork of village residents and the voters who worked to get it there.”
But Pleasantville Mayor Peter Scherer has been a vocal opponent to changing the March election date. He has argued the change would threaten the village’s nonpartisan tradition and risk burying local issues in November’s political noise.
Learning that the referendum will be on the upcoming November ballot, Scherer said he still maintained serious concerns about the move.
“There will be an ongoing debate about this in the months ahead of election day,” he said. “I do want to have discussions about the pros and cons.”
Yet for Hagadus and other proponents of the change, low voter turnout in March village elections was one of the main arguments for changing the election date, a point underscored in March 2024 when Hagadus ran for Village Board trustee against Yemi Healy. Of the 5,021 registered village voters, only 641 residents voted. Hagadus finished 56 votes behind Healy.
Another factor supporting a November election, for supporters, is that it would offer more time for local candidates to publicly debate local issues.
Arguing against the date change is the prospect of candidates being swallowed up by the larger, more partisan November general elections, prompting voters to cast a party-line vote and overlook the more nonpartisan local candidates. To date, Pleasantville candidates run on such nonpartisan parties as the New Pleasantville Party, the Village Party, the Pleasantville Voice Party, the Good Government Party and Villagers for Pleasantville. Elected positions in Pleasantville include mayor, three Village Board trustee seats and village justice.
If Village Trustees Nicole Asquith and Paul Alvarez decide to run again in 2026, their terms would be extended another seven months if the referendum passes. If they do appear on the November 2026 ballot, it implies an extended time they would have to devote to reaching out to voters.
Village trustees running on a March ballot need to collect 200 signatures to be placed on the ballot. But running on a November ballot requires 400 signatures, which takes much longer.
Potential local candidates with relatively small campaign budgets usually don’t have the funds to run a longer, more costly campaign, and they might opt out of running altogether. It was a point raised by Village Trustee David Vinjamuri in a previous board meeting.
“People like me will probably no longer serve on boards like this,” Vinjamuri said. “The position will require a great deal of time and investment. In the past you’ve had a lot of people who were interested in helping the village in doing the work and who were less interested in the political process itself.”
Abby is a seasoned journalist who has been covering news and feature stories in the region for decades. Since The Examiner’s launch in 2007, she has reported extensively on a broad range of community issues. Read more from Abby’s editor-author bio here. Read Abbys’s archived work here: https://www.theexaminernews.com/author/ab-lub2019/