By RAVYN MALVINO
The Village of New Hyde Park Board of Trustees addressed traffic concerns and the impact of new construction on villagers’ commutes on Thursday.
“It’s no secret that New Hyde Park Road closed on Feb. 3 in the morning and will be closed for seven months until it will reopen on Labor Day weekend,” said Trustee Rainer Burger.
Nassau County police have been active due to the road closing. “In the past, there were one or two tickets a day in New Hyde Park,” said an officer. “Just to give you the stats for the last few days, Monday we wrote 10, Tuesday 27 and Wednesday 28. We’ve done hundreds of stops, mostly warnings the first two days. We warned almost everybody: we’re here, slow down, don’t avoid the stop signs.”
“Safety is the number one thing we need to take a look at throughout the area,” added Burger. “We’re trying to bring in the schedule overall we can finish up the project so it’s out of the village and we can get back to some normalcy within the village itself. We were disappointed Monday morning that signs were not placed where they should have been.” The board is now working on getting signs that blink to better alert residents of road closings as well as signs to divert traffic toward Nassau Boulevard.
“We also had to get the commuters adjusted to the new platform and parking and everything else,” he said. “Things seem to kind of be normalizing now.”
This construction has also affected village finances.
Auditor Bill Barrett from Rynkar, Vail & Barrett said that the village is “in excellent financial condition,” adding, “This year there was a slight decrease” in funds. “Expenditures exceeded revenues by $60,000. Part of that was due to purchases of capital equipment that you had purchased during the year: dump truck, sweeper and plow.”
“You developed a spending plan, you made your budget and you spent it. You spent 100 percent of your budget and that’s excellent,” Barrett said.
“We put together a historical schedule,” he said. “Back in 2011, the fund balance was not sufficient. Since 2012 it’s grown to an amount that gives the board and gives the village flexibility. Should something come about, they can handle an emergency.”
Graffiti on the Covert Avenue underpass was addressed.
“I’m sad to see that we did have our first instance of vandalism,” said Burger. “If anybody sees anything please let us know immediately. Take a picture. This way if we recognize we can prosecute for defacing public property.”
“If you haven’t gotten the survey done on your house for assessment in terms of cracks and stuff like that, please complete it,” added Burger. “If you don’t have the survey done and you come in and say there are cracks in your foundation because of construction, there’s nothing we can do.”
The next meeting of the board will be held on Feb. 27, not Feb. 20 as it usually would be.
