Mineola Day Care Center Denied Expansion

Following several months of debate, the has denied an application for a proposed expansion at the day care facility on the basis of several issues.

“I have a couple of problems approving it,” said during a meeting on June 20 at the , specifically pointing to the single entrance/ exit onto Herricks Road and the “unacceptable” behavior of motorists during pickup and drop-off for southbound traffic crossing Herricks Road.

The mayor also cited the “tremendous difficulty” that emergency vehicles have accessing and exiting the property and in his estimation what is an inadequate amount of employee and customer parking. Despite employees saying they would not park on the property, “which happen to be our residential streets,” the mayor said “I think that would negatively affect their quality of life, those people that live on those streets.”

The day care facility had been into the adjacent vacant to the north of their primary space, coming before the board on February 9.

“The layout of the parking lot in the event of a fire or an emergency make it almost impossible for an emergency vehicle to get in there with any type of real movement,” trustee Lawrence Werther said, concurring about there being an insufficient amount of parking.

“There are times when I’ve sat in my car and just watched what was taking place and terrified about people making illegal turns and the way cars are moving,” said trustee Paul Cusato, who also was at the site as a member of the when emergency services were called to the address.

Trustee George Durham noted that the proposal in his view did not have a “satisfactory fire escape plan for removing the children off the property. The way they were exiting the children, they went into a trapped area and we can’t have that.”