Election Results: Mayor Brian Herrington 596, Kate Hirsch 233

By Ronnie K,

 

Three (3) Trustee Seats

Trustee –  Gary Lewandowski 577

Trustee – Randall Rosenbaum 562

Trustee –  Robert McNamara (dec.) 560

Trustee – Diane Turner 240

Trustee – Jeffrey Greilsheimer 232

Trustee – Jay Silverman 225

 

Village Justice

Dennis Reisman 613

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Statement from the Village of Flower Hill on Admonishment of Trustee Kate Hirsch

By Ronnie K,

Board of Trustees votes to admonish Trustee Hirsch after the conclusion of an independent investigation into harassment complaints by Village staff members.

Manhasset, NY (September 1, 2020) Today, the Board of Trustees of the Village of Flower Hill voted to admonish Trustee Kate Hirsch for inappropriate conduct after the conclusion of an independent investigation carried out by the law firm of Berkman, Henoch, Peterson, Peddy & Fenchel, PC into two separate complaints of workplace harassment filed against her by village staff members as required by law. The workplace harassment complaints were filed with the Village after an incident in Village Hall that took place in front of several staff members this past February and a second separate incident weeks later. The independent investigation was delayed by the COVID-19 shutdown and was focused on violations of Title VII and the NYS Human Rights Law.

“I am saddened that last night our Village Board had to take actions to reprimand a member of our Board of Trustees for inappropriate and offensive comments to our staff. After receiving the report by the independent investigators, it was clear that the statements and actions Trustee Hirsch was accused of did take place and that the behavior was inappropriate. Our staff and residents can be assured that our Village has a zero tolerance policy when it comes to acts of bias, discrimination and harassment. We are truly sorry to anyone that has been offended by Trustee Hirsch’s comments and we will redouble our efforts to ensure this type of behavior does not have a home in Flower Hill” Mayor Brian Herrington said on behalf of the Board of Trustees.

The Board passed a resolution that not only admonished Trustee Hirsch for her statements to the staff but also requires her to attend an anti-discrimination training class to be assigned by the Village. The Village will also review its discrimination and harassment policy and education programs for staff, Trustees, and other Village Board Members.

Chastise-KH-Harassmt-9-1-20     

Attachmt Chastise KH 9-1-20

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Mayor Herrington Addresses St. Francis Hospital Expansion Plans for Oaktree Lane

By Ronnie K,

September 1, 2020

Dear Neighbors,

I know concerns have circulated the community about St. Francis Hospital’s plans for future expansion and acquisition of properties on Oaktree Lane. I reached out to the President of the hospital recently asking for an update on their plans and wanted to share his response with you (below).
If we are made aware of any further actions by the hospital, I will inform you all.

Very truly yours,

Mayor Brian Herrington

 

 

St. Francis Hospital, The Heart Center®

Catholic Health Services

At the heart of health   

July 28, 2020

Dear Mayor Herrington,

Thank you for your recent letter and for your kind words regarding St. Francis Hospital’s efforts in battling the COVID-19 pandemic. St. Francis Hospital is a nationally respected medical facility that is known for overall excellence and an unwavering commitment to delivering the highest level of medical care to the community. We are happy to serve Long Islanders. While we beat back the first wave of this often deadly virus, we remain vigilant should it reemerge. Our continued goal is to provide first-class quality care to all who need it.

 

I understand from your letter that Village residents have questions concerning the hospital’s future plans. As you know, St. Francis Hospital is located in a fully developed area, which has limited our ability to expand to meet the increasing need for enhanced services. As we consider how to best serve Long Islanders in the future, we must study ways to grow to continue delivering the superior medical care that our patients and their families expect. We have explored purchasing adjacent property, as any responsible organization in similar circumstances would do.

 

As we were contemplating how best to respond to our community’s needs, 90 Oaktree Lane located on the northern border of the St, Francis Hospital campus and at the Southwest comer of Oaktree Lane and Port Washington Boulevard was publicly listed for sale. In August of 2019, an agent for St. Francis Hospital was able to acquire the property. A few months later, an agent for the hospital was able to acquire 39 Oaktree Lane, which is currently being used as housing for religious sisters who are employed and work at St Francis Hospital. These two properties are the only ones that have been obtained to date.

 

The two acquisitions on Oaktree Lane allowed us to consider the possibility of other options that would enable the hospital to better serve the residents of Flower Hill and the broader community. In December, we made fair and generous offers to eight other property owners on Oaktree Lane. Although these proposals have expired, many of those property owners have expressed continued interest in possibly selling their properties. While St. Francis remains open to purchasing these Oaktree Lane properties, we have to reassess financial considerations in a post-COVID-19 world.

 

We will continue to explore options, but still have much more work to do before presenting any projects to either the community or the Village of Flower Hill. When appropriate, we would be happy to have further discussions with stakeholders in the community.

Thank you for reaching out to me and for your continuing service to the Village of Flower Hill.

Sincerely,

Charles L. Lucore, MD, MBA

President

A Member of Catholic Health Services of Long Island

Founded by the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary

 

100 Port Washington Boulevard, Roslyn, New York 11576-1348 Telephone: 516/562-6000

 

 

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Village Election Day Tuesday, September 15, 2020 – noon to 9 pm

By Ronnie K,

Governor Cuomo cancelled March 18 Village Elections due to the pandemic and has authorized all New York State Village to hold their local elections on September 15.

To promote safe elections, anyone may request an absentee ballot if the reason for not voting in person is to avoid infection by the Corona virus. You can get an absentee ballot application by clicking on the Village Forms Tab, scroll down to Miscellaneous Permits and print out the second document, “Application for an Absentee Ballot”.

https://villageflowerhill.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/absentee-ballot-application-village.pdf

Submit the original signed application to the Village and we will mail you an absentee ballot until September 9. After September 9, you may submit the application in person at Village Hall and we will hand you an absentee ballot to be filled out and returned or completed at Village Hall.

If you are planning to vote in person, election hours are noon to 9 pm. This year we will be conducting the election in the Village Hall Garage, adjacent to the parking lot. The will enable us to keep all the garage doors open for greater air circulation and allow us to maintain appropriate distancing measures. Plenty of hand sanitizer will be available and each voter will receive a personal pen.

If you have any questions please call us at Village Hall.

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How To Complain to the Public Service Commission About the Poor Service Received from PSEG During Tropical Storm Isaias

By Ronnie K,

http://documents.dps.ny.gov/public/MatterManagement/CaseMaster.aspx?MatterCaseNo=20-01633&submit=Search

Cut and paste the above link into your browser and click on the blue box titled Post Comments.  It was unacceptable that many residents were out of power for over a week. Let the Governor and other officials know that this is not right.

 

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Altice/Cablevision Restoration Status

By Ronnie K,

Good Afternoon,

I wanted to provide status of Altice’s efforts to restore services to Long Island communities. Altice has teams deployed around the clock in your communities to restore services as quickly as possible.  We have made significant progress in restoring services, with the percentage of customers on Long Island without service due to the storm falling from more than 33% immediately following the storm to less than 4% today.  However we will continue working diligently to ensure all our customers have their services restored, and I will do my best to provide more granular information on the status of customers in individual communities as soon as possible.

 

Below is additional information for you to share with your constituents relating to our services.   Specifically, below  are: 1) Trouble Shooting Tips for customers on Service Restoration, 2) Ways for Customers to Contact Us to Report Service Issues, and 3) Information on how to Request Credits.

 

Service Restoration:  Trouble Shooting Tips 

Once power has been restored to your home, your Optimum services should be back up and running.   If you experienced a loss of power, it is best to restart your equipment using the following steps:

  • Unplug your equipment from its power source.
  • Wait 30 seconds.
  • Plug your equipment back into the power source.

 

If your service does not return after restarting, it is possible that:

  • The power that feeds our network in your area comes from a different commercial power source than the power that feeds your home or business location or there is another issue relating to network power that needs to be addressed.   We are coordinating with the electric companies to identify these issues and ensure prioritization of repair or restoration.
  • There is damage to the Optimum network, like a downed utility pole or wire break, and our crews are proactively working to rectify this type of damage to restore service.

 

We have created the opportunity for customers check on service status online by doing the following:

  • Go to optimum.net/support/outage and sign in with Optimum ID and password. Next, under Support, located in the upper right corner, click “Service status”

 

Report Service Issues:

If you are experiencing a service issue, we have created four channels for you to advise us of your issue.  Contacting Optimum via any of these channels will result in a trouble ticket being created that will direct a repair team to assess and address the issue:

 

Request A Credit:

Customers may submit a request for a credit by completing the information at optimum.net/support/request-a-credit

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8/11/20 Power Outage Update from Mayor Herrington

By Ronnie K,

Hello-This is the August 11th Village of Flower Hill storm recovery update. I am happy to report that the Village has had the majority of power restored to residents but pockets of outages still remain. The Village staff and I will not stop until we get confirmation that every resident has had power restored.

 

Given PSEG’s continued issues with identifying outages I am asking residents without power to call our Village Hall or email us at info@villageflowerhill.org with your address and contact info so we can follow with PSEG as well. Continue to treat downed wires as live and do not approach them.

 

We are scheduling another limb and branch pick up for this weekend and will provide further details when they have been finalized. We apologize to anyone that we were not able to get to this past Sunday. Some additional updates for everyone:

 

-PSEG will be doing some surveying of the power lines on the island by helicopter so please do not be alarmed if you hear a low flying helicopter in the area.

 

-We have been informed that residents are responsible for damaged or displaced mast-poles and must work with their own electricians to carry out repairs.

 

-Please assist any electric crews that come into the neighborhood and if you need to engage them please wear a mask and maintain a social distance of 6 feet.

 

-PSEG will once again have 250 Willis Ave. in Roslyn Heights open for ice and water till 4pm.

 

-Village Hall is open for those that need to power up or cool off on this hot day

Please continue to check in on neighbors and that might need additional assistance.

 

Thank you and stay safe!

 

 

Respectfully,

Brian Herrington

Mayor

Village of Flower Hill

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Mayor’s Letter to President of PSEG 8-11-20

By Ronnie K,

August 11, 2020

 

Daniel Eichorn , P.E. President & CEO, PSEG Long Island Uniondale, NY

 

Dear Mr. Eichorn

I am writing to you today to express my Village’s displeasure and frustration with PSEG’s response to Tropical Storm Isaias regarding power restoration and ongoing communications failures. Currently, over half of the Village of Flower Hill is without power and estimates for restoration continue to change and be pushed back. Many residents are exasperated as this is the same experience they had after Super Storm Sandy.

The number one issue is that we need crews in our community now. It has been forty-eight hours since the storm and residents have not seen PSEG restoration personnel in the community. These PSEG customers have been abandoned. The only PSEG personnel I have spoken with in person has been assigned to keep an eye on a two day old live wire. They repeatedly tell me someone is supposed to be dispatched to turn it off at the end of their shift and then that does not happen. This is unacceptable from a safety and communications perspective.

Flower Hill is currently being under reported for the number of outages because of the communications failure during the storm. For more than twenty-four hours residents could not report outages and became so frustrated they gave up. There are entire blocks of Flower Hill you have listed as having power that do not actually have power. This is misleading and I believe impacting your response to our

community unfairly.

The communication failure has not stopped there, our residents who were able to report outages, cannot get an accurate restoration time estimate through any PSEG platform. Multiple residents have shared with me that they are getting conflicting restoration times from the telephone, text, app, and online map resources. This is continuing to increase frustration and despair in the Village.

I understand that these are challenging times but as a public serv}ce provider these issues must be addressed immediately. Due to COVID-19 customers cannot even go to a neighbor or family members home with power for shelter or support. We knew this storm was coming and you assured us multiple

 

times that PSEG was prepared but this is clearly not the case. Please provide assistance and address these communications failures immediately.

 

Brian Herrington Mayor

Village of Flower Hill

 

CC:

NYS Governor Andrew Cuomo NYS Senator Anna Kaplan

NYS Assemblyman Anthony D’Urso NYS Public Service Commission

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