State Sen. Andrea Stewart-Cousins; State Assembly Member MaryJane Shimsky; and County Executive Ken Jenkins, at Sleepy Hollow government’s swearing-in ceremony in December 2025. Photo: Margaret Fox
After a resounding victory with her slate of trustee candidates in the November elections, Marjorie Hsu took office as the village of Sleepy Hollow’s mayor Dec. 1.
Her civic involvement includes chairing the village’s Planning Board and driving for the Ambulance Corps. Hsu holds an MBA and BS in electrical engineering, and her career includes leadership roles in the tech and telecom sectors. Married with two sons, she lives in Phillips Manor
Here’s a Q&A with Hsu conducted in mid-December, which has been edited for length and clarity.
River Journal: What have been the priorities since taking office?
Marjorie Hsu: Our overall priority is to make sure Sleepy Hollow is thriving across all the factors that are important to a small municipality. First and foremost is the fiscal stability of our village. The opposition slate which we decisively beat was making promises that would further jeopardize our financial state. So, we want to keep taxes low and not take on additional debt.
I created with my slate a couple of focus areas that include a task force on downtown revitalization. We have too many vacant storefronts. We passed legislation that would implement a vacant storefront buying structure. During the 11 years I’ve lived here, some storefronts have been vacant, and these absentee landlords are treating our village as a tax write-off, so we passed legislation that starts to address that.
We want to actively encourage new businesses to locate in Sleepy Hollow, we want to make it easier for developers to invest in our community, and we want a vibrant downtown that all of our residents can easily walk to and shop and dine. We also have some funding from the NY Forward program for facade improvement.
Another task force is about Halloween and tourism. How do we make Sleepy Hollow a year-round destination? How do we make our events more profitable for the village as well as for our small businesses, and how do we make sure that we’re managing the crowds of tourists to the extent that we can manage them, so that residents are not unduly inconvenienced?
The other task force is about housing affordability. We have a wonderfully diverse community. We want to make sure we’re reaching all corners of Sleepy Hollow so folks downtown know the folks in The Manors, know the folks in the Edge and Weber Park.
We’re building community among all of us geographically, ethnically, generationally and rebuilding our local social fabric.
Our firefighters, our teachers, our hospital workers can’t afford to live in Sleepy Hollow, so while we love the new Edge on Hudson development, we definitely need more housing for the workforce as well as affordable housing and also mid-tier housing.
We are also kicking off a new 501(c)(3) called Friends of Sleepy Hollow. A group of residents and small business owners are excited to do some fundraising on behalf of the village so we can do more projects, more placemaking and more environmental initiatives.
RJ: What about the budget, which is due June 1, following two years of property tax increases?
MS: We are eagerly awaiting the results of the audit, and we’re hoping to get the auditor to give us a readout in January, so that’ll be our first best sense of how our budget looks. Obviously, as a taxpayer myself, I want to keep taxes as low as possible.
RJ: The mayor is essentially a part-time position. How will you balance the job with other responsibilities?
MH: I have cleared out most of the boards that I was sitting on so that I can have more capacity to focus on the village, but I still have a consulting practice, and I sit on technology boards. I resigned from a number of my not-for-profit boards so that I can pay more attention to my mayoral duties, but it will not be a full-time occupation for me.
RJ: What are your primary responsibilities?
MS: The No. 1 job of the trustees and the mayor is to support our village administrator, Anthony Giaccio, and his department heads, and the Sleepy Hollow Police Department and our volunteer emergency services.
We are fiscal stewards; we have fiduciary responsibility first and foremost. Secondly, our job is to mitigate risk for the village so that we are resilient and successful across all dimensions. Third, the job of the board is to be strategic. What are the needs of our residents, what kinds of development would best serve our community and how do we communicate with our residents so that they know what’s going on in the Village Hall and so we’re responsive to their needs within reason. We are very open to constructive feedback, and this is a democracy. It literally takes a village; that’s why we have all these task forces.
RJ: Have you changed the way village government communicates with residents?
MH: We implemented real-time alerting, so we are sending email and text messages to our residents. We want to make sure that as residents are coming to our website, information is readily available and easy to understand in Spanish as well as English. We also recognize that different people like to consume their information across different platforms, so we’re going to look at all our communication platforms.
RJ: How do you build a feeling of inclusion among a handful of neighborhoods that are quite different from each other?
MH: We just have to show up, we need to communicate, we need to be present in all neighborhoods and continue to work together. We have to meet our neighbors where they are, and we need to have a real relationship. There’s so much more that bonds us together as humanity than that which differentiates us, so we just need to spend time together, and we’re going to have more events that facilitate that.
I’m implementing quarterly town halls so people have the opportunity to come in person and meet their neighbors and hear a little bit more expansively what’s going on in the village.
RJ: Anything else you’d like to say?
MH: We have incredibly talented residents who are leaning into this journey with us and to use the overly used phrase, I do think we are at this inflection point where the downtown is starting to see more businesses open.
We have the Strand Theater which has been vacant for a very long time and that is going to be transformational to our downtown. There’s a sale that hopefully will go through imminently and is going to get some NY Forward funding, and so we have that big, historic theater housing more retail and placemaking and the Sleepy Hollow Cinema. We have so much opportunity and it’s an exciting time.
Photos:
Please use this as lead photo – Swearing In 1:
Sleepy Hollow Mayor Marjorie Hsu greets supporters at her swearing-in ceremony in December 2025. Photo: Margaret Fox
Swearing In 2:
From left: Village Justice Katherine Baldwin; Trustee Jairo Triguero; Trustee Jared Rodriguez; Mayor Marjorie Hsu; Trustee Cory Krall;
State Sen. Andrea Stewart-Cousins; State Assembly Member MaryJane Shimsky; and County Executive Ken Jenkins, at Sleepy Hollow government’s swearing-in ceremony in December 2025. Photo: Margaret Fox
SHHS Football Team Proclamation
Mayor Marjorie Hsu presents a proclamation to Sleepy Hollow Football Coach Anthony Giuliano in recognition of the team’s memorable season, which took the Horsemen deep into the post season and generated intense community pride and support. Photo: Margaret Fox
