East Williston mulls possibility of auxiliary police force

Richard Tedesco

The East Williston Village Board is looking to modify penalties in its local statutes as it simultaneously seeks to establish an auxiliary police force to enforce its local laws.

The board will hold a public hearing at next month’s meeting to amend some local statutes that provide for jail time as penalties for relatively minor offenses.

“We felt that’s something that we, as a board, felt didn’t belong in the code,” Deputy Mayor James Daw.

After the meeting, Daw said there were as many as 10 local statutes that he felt needed to be changed to eliminate jail penalties. He declined to enumerate any of the local laws at issue, saying that he did not recall any of the specific statutes that he felt required review.

“It’s consistent with our policy of being non-confrontational with things like this,” Daw said. “I was looking through the statue book and I realized we should update the provisions.”

The move follows Daw’s recent effort to add more local statutes to East Williston code to curb incidents of anti-social behavior among adolescents in the community.

Meanwhile, the village board has been consulting with its counterparts in Williston Park, and is prepared to establish its own auxiliary police force that will work in cooperation with a similar unit already functioning in the neighboring municipality.

Village of East Williston Trustee John Ferro said the village is “now ready to go” with an auxiliary police force that will be affiliated with Williston Park’s existing force. The village has three candidates for the police force and is seeking several more, according to Ferro. The training period is six months long.

“There’s a lot of duplicative costs we won’t incur,” said Trustee Michael Braito. “It’s a win-win for everybody.”

In the context of policing the appearance of the village, Daw said there are bio-degradeable leaf bags available at Village Hall for resident who want to have their leaves picked up. The village carting company will pick up the bags from the curb at no additional cost to the village.

“It’s a very a good way of getting rid of the leaves. It looks like our plan to get in sync with other villages around here is working,” Daw said.

In other developments:

• Robert Shannon, president of the Chamber of Commerce of the Willistons, will join the village planning board to fill out the unexpired term of the late Sam Mitchell. Mitchell died earlier this year.

• Ray Gaudio was appointed chairman of the airplane safety and noise abatement committee.

Trustee Ferro will serve as the board’s liaison to the committee.

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