Williston Park Mayor Paul Ehrbar has enlisted the assistance of the Nassau County Police Third Precinct to keep drivers from running stop signs in Williston Park.
At Monday night’s village board meeting, Ehrbar said he had discussed a recurrent problem of drivers ignoring stop signs in the village with Third Precinct Superintendent Kevin Canavan after two accidents involving drivers running stop signs occurred over the last three weeks.
Ehrbar said Canavan assured him that the police would make a concerted effort to curb the problem.
“We need traffic enforcement. Drivers are just not stopping at the stop signs. It’s becoming a serious problem,” Ehrbar said.
He said the recent accidents, one where two cars collided at the intersection of Center Street and Capital Avenue and the other on Park Avenue, were caused by Williston Park residents.
Ehrbar emphasized that the village is not simply looking to issue more traffic summonses to motorists.
“We’re not looking for tickets. We’re looking for traffic safety,” Ehrbar said. “We just need people to slow down and observe the laws.”
On another traffic-related issue, resident Umberto Magnardi asked Ehrbar about the status of the village’s review of a traffic study commissioned by the Mineola School Board on the impact of bus traffic from the Solomon Schechter Day School. Solomon Schechter is scheduled to move into the Cross Street School this fall.
The village board had retained traffic engineer Wayne Mueller of RMS to review the study prepared for the Mineola board by Robert Eschbacher, principal of VHB Engineering.
“We met with the engineer and a number of concerns were raised. We’re going to contact Mineola and Schechter on those concerns,” Ehrbar said.
After the meeting, Ehrbar declined to go into detail about the concerns he referred to during the meeting.
“I’m anticipating our concerns will be reviewed and discussed,” Ehrbar said.
The primary concern among Williston Park residents is the impact of the 36 vehicles – including one large bus and smaller buses – that would be departing the Cross Street School in the afternoon. The VHB study suggested staggering the departure times of the buses, and staggering the starting and finishing times for the Schechter School and the nearby St. Aidan School.
Rabbi Lev Hernnson, head of the Schechter School, agreed to alter the Schechter School schedule at a Mineola School Board meeting last month.
