Unfortunately, the lines get a little blurry when you're dealing with a unique community like Greenburgh. For one, the town of Greenburgh doesn't have its own zip code, so no one has a Greenburgh mailing address — that includes Greenburgh Town Hall, which is at 177 Hillside Ave., White Plains.
"It's very confusing," said Greenburgh Police Chief Joe DeCarlo. "You usually say you live wherever it is you put down on a letterhead. For some people, that's Scarsdale — but really, they live in Greenburgh."
Greenburgh encompasses an unincorporated area and six villages — Ardsley, Dobbs Ferry, Elmsford, Hastings-on-Hudson, Irvington and Tarrytown. Each village has its own mayor, police department and fire department.
But there are still responsibilities left to the Greenburgh Town Board, which is why Greenburgh must adopt an "A" budget for the villages, and a "B" budget for unincorporated Greenburgh. However, most of the decisions made by the town board affect only unincorporated Greenburgh.
To keep it simple, it's best to stick with where your school district is. The Greenburgh Central 7 School District is made up of three different zip codes and two post office addresses, including White Plains and Hartsdale. But if your child goes to Greenburgh 7, you live in Greenburgh.
Elmsford, though inside Greenburgh, has its own school district as well. But while Hartsdale has a post office address, it is only a hamlet, not a village, of Greenburgh.
Edgemont, however, is where it can get tricky, admitted Edgemont Community Council Director Bob Bernstein. Search for Edgemont in a GPS, and it will most likely bring up Greenville, the original name for what Bernstein calls an "unincorporated village" of Greenburgh.
"To people who live outside of Edgemont, Greenville is just another name for Edgemont," Bernstein said. "To those who live in Edgemont, Greenville refers specifically to that portion of Edgemont on the west side of Central Park Avenue."
There are also Greenburgh residents who live in the Edgemont school district, but have a Scarsdale mailing address because they're within the bounds of the Scarsdale Post Office. This explains the irony of the Greenburgh Nature Center having a Scarsdale address.
And while some may be surprised to see the Greenburgh Police Department or one of the town's three fire districts in their area, DeCarlo explained that all the villages have a mutual-aid agreement in case village authorities need assistance.
"The ultimate response depends on what jurisdiction the incident occurs in," DeCarlo said. "But we all help each other out."
Want to find out where you live? You can visit the U.S. Census Bureau's website and type your address into its Fact Finder.
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