Friday, November 24, 2017
Vol. 94, No.10
FOUNDED 1923
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LOCALLY OWNED AND EDITED
Re-laxin' PAGE 22 n Tree sale PAGE 14
Improvements to streetscape, lighting parking planned
NASSAU COUNTY CHAMPS
BY RIKKI N. MASSAND
The Garden City Trojans blasted Mepham in a 33-0 shutout to win the Nassau County championship, for the Trojans 23rd straight win. Above, Sal Ingrassia (56) leads the GC defense. See page 68.
Board, POAs spar over ad for volunteers BY RIKKI N. MASSAND
Last Thursday night resident Leo Stimmler questioned Mayor Brian Daughney and the Board of Trustees on why an ad appeared recently in The Garden City News to solicit applications from residents for volunteer service on village boards and commissions, including the Board of Commissioners of Recreation and Cultural Affairs (Rec. Commission), the village Planning Commission, the Architectural Design Review Board (ADRB), the Environmental Advisory Board (EAB) and others.
According to the mayor, processes of POA “vetting” have not been circumvented and all applications will go through the regular reviews from POA leadership. “These are VILLAGE Boards and Commissions. There has been no change to any process other than trying to get people interested. There is no cutting out of anybody and by the way, we put in the same ad last year and no one said a word. I did not leave out the West POA, we were requested and told to remove the WPOA name from the ad and they called The Garden
City News to make sure. Don’t put it on me. The West told us to take their name out of the ad,” Mayor Daughney told Stimmler at the Board’s November 16 meeting. Trustee John Delany interjected to ask the mayor if it was true that if a respondent to the ad or any interested resident sent in their resume directly to the village, it would be forwarded to the Joint Conference Committee (JCC) to go through the property owners’ association. “If a request came in from any citizen to Village Clerk Karen Altman she would forSee page 44
Days after an email detailing the outages in street lamps lining Franklin Avenue reached village officials, including the inbox of Mayor Brian Daughney, the village took a look at its plans for a key parking lot in Garden City’s downtown and the bigger picture of beautification. At the Board of Trustees’ November 16 meeting Village Administrator Ralph Suozzi said Village Engineer Craig Bandini has been the point person on the Wye Lot project, and he will soon complete a comprehensive “lights survey” of the lot. (The Wye Lot is also known as Parking Field 6E, near the Chamber of Commerce office.) Suozzi says the village instructed its vendor for the Wye Lot lights, Anker’s Electric of Locust Valley to make suggestions and provide pricing for LED fixtures, but he said “I am afraid the vendor was going to increase the light but it wasn’t necessarily accurate. We asked them to come talk with us to make sure changes are discussed and assessed thoroughly. We did not want them just to put new lights up on poles because the poles may not be in the right spots,” he said. Mayor Daughney immediately suggested that any such survey and data collection on the lights and meetings with Anker’s Electric about the situation should take place after 7 p.m. when the area is fully dark. According to Suozzi the village’s goal now is to ascertain what the Wye Lot lighting needs are. “Then we can reposition and/or add lights appropriately. We will meet Anker’s Electric after Thanksgiving and also we will talk about the outage issues with lights in our business districts (Franklin Avenue, 7th Street and the New Hyde Park Road district) which are important to us and that we have been working to address,” Suozzi said last Thursday.
PSEG Substation Issue
In July, the Village Board of Trustees heard initial plans for survey work through a third-party firm to survey the Wye lot and determine the location of easements for the Long Island Railroad and utilities. In August the Board approved $19,000 in contractual services for Village Parking Field 6E (Wye Lot) to Lynbrook-based firm CarmanDunne, P.C., along with $8,000 for Lot 9E, to discern the boundaries with the LIRR Third Track expansion planned, as part of the “Street Administration” budget allocated for 2017-2018. Then in its October 20 press release “Garden City News and Information” the village stated the priority to address conditions of the Wye Parking Lot. “Among the many items being considered are potential changes or modifications to parking lots, planting beds, sidewalk materials, See page 46
Sen. Schumer visits GC, calls for railroad safety PAGE 3 GC Community Church Americana Fair PAGES 50-51