Community Updates and Initiatives: From Mayor Bonnie L.S. Parente, EW Mayor
Dear Residents,
I’m always pleased when someone calls me or the Village office to comment on something they read in a resident mailing. One of our goals has always been to make sure we are finding the best and most efficient ways to communicate, so I am encouraged that residents are reading our correspondence. These methods have improved and increased over the years.
Our next communication initiative is to implement a mass notification system. We are frugal with your tax dollars, so we hope to use a system included with our website subscription to keep our costs low. The system we are looking at will allow us to send area-specific, targeted messages as well. For example, if a hydrant is opened on Bengeyfield, we’ll be able to send the notification to just residents on Bengeyfield. Stay tuned. Our incredible office staff is diligently looking for the best way to provide this service.
As I stated last month, we are planning a new sidewalk in East Williston. The original plan was to install a sidewalk on the southeast corner of the intersection of East Williston Avenue and Roslyn Road going east to North Side School. This idea has overwhelming support from the residents of the properties directly affected. We have commissioned a rendering of the proposed sidewalks to visually demonstrate what the area would look like upon completion, which we will share as soon as it’s available.
After publishing our idea about the south side of the street, residents on the opposite side of the street reached out to inquire about installing a sidewalk on the north side as well. Many individuals attended the board meeting in early July to engage in preliminary discussions. There were many voices in the room, both for and against the idea, and some simply inquiring how it would proceed, if it proceeds. What was encouraging about the meeting was that there was no discord. Everyone listened to each other’s opinions and respected the differing points of view without raised voices. In the world we now live in, I find it so promising that people can be in the same room as people with starkly different opinions and walk away friends. No decisions were made by the end of the meeting, but we have plenty of great points to consider. As we continue to weigh the options, please attend a board meeting if you have anything you’d like to add to the discussion.
Another discussion we’d like to have with our residents is what you would like to see in terms of program offerings. Thanks to our recreation committee and library, we do have a lot of children’s programming, but we also want to focus on our adult residents. For starters, we will have a summer social on Wednesday, August 14th, from 5:30 pm to 6:30 pm. Please join us. If you have attended events in the past, stop in and tell us what you like. If you haven’t joined us in the past, stop by and see what it’s all about. Tell us what kind of event would keep you coming back. Everyone is welcome and encouraged to attend. If the weather permits, we will do this on the patio in front of the DPW garage. It will be a cocktail hour setting. Even if you have nothing to say, join us for an hour of socializing in this new setting to see how it goes.
By focusing on our adults, we also want to pay particular attention to senior programming. By “seniors” I mean anyone over 59 years of age. Being a “senior” does not mean you’re old. It might simply mean you are at a different point in your life and are looking to do something new. We have been fortunate to take advantage of a grant program that allowed us to hire, without taxpayer expense, a coordinator for senior events. Shari Raduazzo comes to us with great credentials. Her role as Senior Coordinator starts in September, but she joins us part-time this summer to assist with general recreation coordination. We are not replacing the already exceptionally successful senior club, nor are we replacing Carla Strauss, our super-talented, perhaps unofficial, leader of the club. We are simply going to expand, have more offerings, and hopefully attract some newer seniors to the mix. Carla and Shari are working together, with Carla identifying what has worked in the past and what our residents are looking for. Shari will be at the summer social on August 14th. Please stop by to meet her.
I am grateful for the opportunity to have been recently elected to serve as President of the Nassau County Village Officials Association. In this role, we will be at the forefront of issues affecting villages and will have the opportunity to protect the governance of villages in general. We live in an incorporated village because we want to. We know the benefits of local government, including the ease at which a resident can enlist the assistance of local officials when needed. In this role, I hope to continue the incredible initiatives of my predecessors. We must not lose sight of our fight to maintain Home Rule, to challenge the botched implementation of bail reform and accompanying discovery rules, and to do what we can, collectively, to address the effects of illegal immigration on our villages.
There will also be a few issues I plan on bringing to the forefront. One in particular that I would like to keep in our crosshairs is the growing fragility of volunteer fire services. I grew up in a volunteer firefighter family and have the greatest respect for the role of volunteer. Without our continued support, financial and otherwise, we will lose what we sometimes now take for granted. Growing federal (OSHA) regulations threaten to raise the financial burden on villages. This needs to be reviewed and considered.
I have a strong team in place with Mayors Elena Villafane (Mayor of the Village of Sea Cliff) as First Vice President, Steven Weinberg (Mayor of the Village of Thomaston) as Second Vice President, and Paul Pereira (Mayor of the Village of Mineola) as Treasurer. I also hope to engage Dennis Siry (Mayor of the Village of Amityville), President of the Suffolk County Village Officials Association, as a partner. Strength in numbers. The relationships we have with other villages, and the communication amongst them, can only help us as we move forward.
As always, if you call or email the Village office, I will return your call. Enjoy the summer!
- Bonnie Parente, Mayor of East Williston
