Outages, Credits; Clean-up; Russia's Policies: Harrison Mayor

From Harrison Mayor Ron Belmont

The NY State Public Service Commission is sponsoring a series of public hearings regarding the March 2018 winter storm and resulting power outages. The Commission is in the process of investigating the storm preparation and response, by the state’s major electric utilities, and is soliciting comments from the communities that were affected by the storm.

The date, time and location, of the hearing for our area, is as follows: Monday, April 23, 2018, 2 PM at the Larchmont Public Library, 121 Larchmont Ave. in the Village Center Room.

Information about the investigation can be found at www.dps.ny.gov. From the homepage, click on “Search” and enter the associated matter number (18-00618) in the “Search by Case Number” field.

On a related note, if you lost Cablevision/Optimum service during the recent storms, you may qualify for a credit on your bill. Although the utility company can identify, by address, how long service was interrupted, it’s advisable that customers have the exact dates their service was suspended. It is my understanding that customers need to call Cablevision to request that a credit be issued. The minimum outage requirement, to get credit, is 4 hours for New York customers. Customers can contact the company at 718-860- 3513 or via Chat at https://www.optimum.net/support/outage.

It’s taken a while but it looks like the spring season has finally arrived and we are moving into one of the busiest times of the year. The warmer weather signals the start of community-wide efforts to tidy up our town. On Saturday, April 7th and Sunday, April 8th, Harrison held its annual Spring Spruce Up event. Led by our dedicated town personnel, volunteers rolled up their sleeves and got to work. We were very fortunate to have residents and students prepare our gardens for spring plantings and pick up debris at various locations in Harrison, West Harrison and Purchase. Each year, targeted areas are greatly improved by the labors of all involved. Thank you to all the volunteers who made this event such a huge success. International celebrity and Harrison’s own Scott Rogowsky, host of the popular app trivia game HQ Trivia, returns to town this coming Sunday morning, April 15 th , at the Jewish Community Center (130 Union Avenue) for a fun morning of humor, trivia and other games, prizes, raffles and great eats. Plus, everyone gets a selfie! More details and tickets are available at www.jcch.org.

“Great Decisions,” the Harrison Public Library’s discussion program on world affairs, will focus on Russia’s foreign policy on April 16 from 1:30-3:30 pm. They will examine the shadows of the Cold War that have stretched into the current day. The guest speaker is Daniel Hoffman. Daniel Hoffman is a former Intelligence Officer with 30 years of distinguished government service. He served tours of duty in the former Soviet Union, Europe, and war zones in both the Middle East and South Asia. He has broad, substantive expertise on geopolitical and transnational issues including the Middle East, South Asia, Russia, counterterrorism, cyber, and counterintelligence.