Hewlett Harbor Notebook: Smooth Roads, Building Permits, Street Signs

Hewlett Harbor trustees hope to continue having utility companies fix the village’s roads after they’ve completed work, they said at their .

“The project on Albon saved us a lot of money. I think they did a phenomenal job,” said Mayor Mark Weiss. “We brought it in at a great price. We’re not going to go blindly into the needs of the utilities.”

Trustee Michael Yohai said he thinks companies should do curb to curb repairs after each project.

“Repairs ruin the roads,” he said. “You can take a gorgeous road and turn it into garbage in a year.”

But some utilities may oppose patching such a big swath of road, Trustee Tom Cohen said.

Here’s a summary of other issues discussed at the meeting:

• The line item for snow removal in the village’s budget cost more than expected last fiscal year.
  “I think it’s going to be the same thing this year,” Weiss said. “We don’t have rain anymore, we have rainstorms; we don’t have snow anymore, we have snowstorms; we don’t have a breeze, we have gale force winds.”
• The board passed a resolution that building permits will expire after nine months and any permit that requires street repairs will close in a month.
  “We’ve had a couple of instances where utilities come in, they get a permit and they don’t act on it until one or two years,” Weiss said.
  The village currently has 18 open permits. The holders are being given one last opportunity to finish the work.
• Cohen said the village would start taking pictures of the most significant potholes so the village can quickly patch them. There are currently 18.
  “It saves wear and tear on people’s cars and it shows we’re proactive,” he said.
• The board passed a new law that any requests to install new utility boxes should come to the board of building design. Boxes on personal property will be discussed by the village and the homeowner jointly.
• Trustees gave the go-ahead for the village to spend $12,000 to replace the weathered flatbed of its truck with a stainless steel dumper, which would not be so easily eroded, Weiss said.
• The board passed a resolution that all village residents will have to get dog licenses from the Town of Hempstead.
• Hewlett Harbor will introduce new forms to record quality of life issues that the mayor hopes can be logged into a computer system. This will hopefully make it easier for trustees to keep track of the concerns, he said.
  “I think this will be helpful and make us more responsive,” he said.
• The board wants to send letters out to residents to tell them to input their email addresses on the village’s website for its emergency contact system, at a cost of about $500.
• The village’s street sign discussion continued, with Yohai saying that he ordered a black and gold combination. The question now is who will install the signs. Yohai said he wants to have the issue wrapped by next month’s meeting.
  “We have signs that are totally ineligible,” Weiss said. “My concern is it’s going to be winter and we won’t be able to install them.”