Friday, April 13, 2018
Vol. 94, No.29
FOUNDED 1923
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LOCALLY OWNED AND EDITED
Scouts open house PAGE 39 n A comic ballet PAGE 47
Environmental Advisory Board hears about solar panel options
SPRING BREAK WINNERS
BY RIKKI N. MASSAND
The Garden City High School Girls Lacrosse team racked up two wins during a spring break trip south. Above, the girls are all smiles after beating St. Mary's in Maryland 14-7. See pages 60-61.
Hannon: State budget to help fund Garden City road improvements
“Winter weather has again wrought havoc on our streets and highways,” said Senator Kemp Hannon (R-Nassau). “Potholes, cracked pavement, damaged curbs, and other road hazards are just some of the weather and wear-related issues drivers face. I’m pleased to announce that help is on the way to Villages who can take advantage of road and highway repair funding in this year’s budget.” The 2018-19 state budget includes funding for The
Consolidated Local Street and Highway Improvement Program (CHIPs), a program established by the Legislature in 1981. The funds go directly to local governments to support repairs to the highways, bridges and roads they operate and maintain. Additional funding will be available to the Village in the form of Extreme Winter Recovery and PAVE-NY moneys. The Village of Garden City will receive $402,187.69 from CHIPS, $72,671.83 from the extreme win-
ter recovery apportionment, and $91,789.33 through PAVE-NY, for a combined total of $566,648.85. “The Village can make use of these funds to make repairs and key upgrades,” said Hannon. “The winter storms, particularly the four Nor’easters that hit in March, have taken a toll on our streets, and potholes are everywhere. If you need to report a pothole, you can contact my office or visit kemphannon.com for important contact numbers and information.”
At its meeting on Monday, April 9, the Garden City Environmental Advisory Board hosted a panel of residents who have installed solar panels on their homes. The discussion ranged from environmentally-conscious and sustainable planning and emerging technology in the solar energy arena, and the few downsides to solar on a home’s roof. Days before the Garden City “Solar Panelists” spoke inside the Golf Club Lane Senior Center, the Wall Street Journal published an article on the declining number of homeowners adding solar panel systems. The Journal cited data from the firm GTM Research, which noted an on-average 49% growth in residential solar units installed from 2010 through 2016, before a dip of 16% in 2017. At the meeting, geologist Robert Alvey, spoke about his 20-year lease of solar panels that began a little more than four years ago after his application to the Architectural Design Review Board (ADRB) was approved in December 2013. (In 1996 Alvey founded the nine-acre Garden City Bird Sanctuary and Alvey Arboretum, which together comprise the Tanners Pond Environmental Center. His LinkedIn profile lists his title as “frequent volunteer and environmental innovator.”) Alvey told the EAB that he is very happy with the solar panels, but he recognizes the scope of issues the village has had regulating applications for panels. “It works if you have the right location and exposure for these panels. Rightfully so, a lot of us don’t want the panels visible on the front of houses or looking over a place. Tesla does have new products that actually look like roofing tiles -- they could be red ceramic tiles like on an Italian colony type house or the asphalt roofing tiles, ones you would not even notice,” he said. Alvey’s said he approached vendor SolarCity to do the installation free and lease the panels “for as cheap as possible.” SolarCity incurred a cost of $13,000 to put a system on Alvey’s two-story colonial house as he has raised panels, installed from the second floor. “By then the village had already said panels didn’t have to be ‘flush-mounted anymore’ so I have the typical ones you see every place. I had a limit on how many solar panels I could put on my roof due to LIPA. They calculated energy use and electricity from the previous two years before that, and they would See page 48
Swim-a-thon to benefit NYU Winthrop Hospital PAGE 34 GCHS Boys Lacrosse team rounding into form PAGES 58-59