Almost exactly four years since a proposal to shut down Croton’s Justice Court and move its operations to Cortlandt was shelved after overwhelming public opposition, village officials want to study the idea again. At the upcoming Board of Trustees Work Session (Wednesday February 11), Village Manager Bryan Healy is expected to argue that the possibility of dismantling of our local court should be explored in the next study of village operations, following an operational study of the Engineering Department.
Healy spelled out his reasoning for the study in a February 5 memo to the Board of Trustees, which is part of the background materials for the meeting. Also included in the materials is a 17 page proposal by the consultant group Center for Governmental Research (CGR) to investigate the matter, at a consulting cost of $36,500.
Many readers will recall that this proposal came up in early 2022, when the village was strapped for cash during the pandemic and the arguments were strictly financial. Despite the demonstrable cost savings, many village residents—including Judge Sam Watkins himself, who has been on the Croton bench for some 20 years—argued that there were many benefits to having a local courthouse. They made their arguments in letters to The Gazette and in a very lively public hearing held on February 28, 2022. In the end village officials abandoned the idea, at least for the time being.
Circumstances are very different now, and some villagers may now question why we would need to take such a drastic step—which, as many pointed out the last time around, cannot be undone once it is done—when the financial reasons for doing it are not as compelling. A central argument last time was that sending villagers and other court users to Cortlandt was a form of alienation of village-centered life, which is highly valued in Croton.
But looking at the CGR proposal, it is not clear to what extent such human criteria will be taken into account. Surprisingly, the proposal envisions in-person interviews with a number of public officials, including the Village Justice, Prosecutor, Court Clerk, Mayor, Village Manager, and Cortlandt officials; but there is no provision in the proposal for talking to everyday villagers or conducting any kind of public opinion survey.
To complicate matters, the Chronicle has reliably learned that the Croton Democratic Committee has decided to jettison Judge Sam Watkins and instead put forward attorney Ali R. Jaffery as the Democratic candidate for Village Justice in November’s elections. Jaffery works for the law firm Sutton Sachs Meyer PLLC in New York City, and certainly has the experience to be a judge; but he is also, to a much greater extent than Watkins, a party loyalist who has proved to be a fierce partisan in village politics.
For example, during last November’s village elections, Jaffery wrote a letter to The Gazette that amounted to what we then called an attempted smear against Voice of Croton’s Stacey Nachtaler, essentially accusing her of not being a real Democrat as she had claimed (similar smear tactics against Nachtaler failed to keep her from winning a trustee seat.) Some in the village might now be expected to question how even-handed Jaffery would be as a judge.
Watkins, while politically liberal, has by and large stayed away from overt partisan politics. He is also very well liked in the village and by the attorneys and prosecutors who frequent his courtroom; the Chronicle has spent many hours observing his calm and non-judgmental (as it were) adjudication of tough criminal and civil cases.
So why do Croton Democrats want to get rid of Sam Watkins, who may have been expected to retire anyway after serving one last term? We are told by multiple sources that the vote was close. We posed that question to Croton Democratic Committee chair and vice-chair Michael Eisenkraft and Emiljana Ulaj, respectively, but neither of them responded to repeated queries. Nor did Jaffery respond to repeated attempts to discuss with us his own qualifications to be Village Justice.
Given the vocal opposition and leadership role that Sam Watkins played the last time village officials wanted to shut down Croton’s court, is there concern that he would be an obstacle to such a plan this time as well? While Healy’s memo to the Board stresses that there is “no pre-determined outcome expected from” the study he wants the village to spend $36,500 on, the history of this issue suggests that some village officials are not necessarily neutral on the subject.
Jaffery, on the other hand, as a loyalist, might be expected to put up less resistance—or none at all—to moving the court that he is likely to be in charge of fairly soon, given the unlikelihood that his candidacy will be opposed in any meaningful way by an opposition candidate.
At the very least, the juxtaposition between these two developments is likely to raise some eyebrows in the village.
It will be interesting to see how strongly villagers feel about keeping their local court this time around. And if the Board of Trustees does vote to abolish it, that resolution will be subject to a permissive referendum. Watch for what might be yet another drawn out fight.
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What, exactly, gives you the impression that Jaffery "certainly has the experience" to preside over a local justice court? Is it simply the fact that he's a practicing attorney? Nothing in his firm biography indicates that his practice deals in any way with the matters that would come before him, or that he has any familiarity with the areas of law that are dealt with in local justice courts. Sam Watkins, on the other hand, runs a fair, efficient and effective courtroom because he is judicial in the best sense, and knows what he's doing, and undoubtedly that contributes to the fact that the village court is the only village department that actually pays for itself. What a loss for the village.
Sam was once a Democratic trustee--and a very good one. I dont understand this at all, unless he wants to retire sooner than we know.