Roslyn Harbor ‘going green’

Max Zahn
Roslyn Harbor Mayor Louis Badolato

The Roslyn Harbor Board of Trustees on Monday approved two resolutions and vowed additional measures as part of an effort to gain state accreditation as a clean energy community.

If attained, the designation will allow the village to get additional grants from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority for environmental improvements, village Clerk Marla Wolfson said.

“We are going green,” she added.

In order to attain the designation, the village must complete four of 10 “high-impact” actions that reduce its carbon emissions or its use of fossil fuels, according to the agency’s website.

The village has already begun one of the high-impact actions, which requires its compliance officers to undergo energy code enforcement training, Wolfson said.

The village is in the process of completing a second action, which requires it to upgrade 50 percent of its street lights to energy efficient light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, Wolfson said.

“There are already 35 fixtures on Bryant Avenue put in place; we just never put the LED lights in,” Wolfson said. “We’ll be putting in 25 in another location. That’s 50 percent.”

The resolutions passed on Tuesday enable the village to complete the two additional high-impact actions required for it to receive the designation.

First, the trustees approved benchmarking at Village Hall, which satisfies the accreditation requirement for reporting energy use at all local government buildings that exceed 1,000 square feet, Wolfson said.

A second resolution approved the village’s use of a New York Unified Solar Permit when processing all applications for small-scale solar installations, which are defined as those costing less than $23,000. The permit is a statewide standardized document “expected to cut costs by creating a uniform permitting process in municipalities across the state,” the agency website said.

Roslyn Village is also in the process of pursuing the environmental accreditation.

Wolfson said the village has not determined which environmental projects it will pursue with the resulting grant money.

“We’ll figure out what’s best for us in our village at that time,” she said. “Should we be lucky enough.”

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