Mineola Village Board Notebook: October 17

The Mineola Village Board of Trustees held a meeting on Wednesday, Ocotber 17. Here are some of the things you may have missed.

2012 Tree Planting Program

• The board awarded a contract with Louis Barbato Landscaping for the village’s tree planting program for 2012, the lone bidder.
• The contract retains the same pricing as has been in place for the past 4 years.
• “We’ve never had a problem, never had any complaints, if there were, they’ve always returned and taken care of it,” Superintendent of Public Works Tom Rini said.
• Generally the village plants between 100-175 trees per year.
• The pricing is as follows:
  • 1-100 Acer Campestre Hedge Maple Trees at $173 each
  • 1-100 Pyrus Calleryanna “Chanticleer Pear” Trees at $133 each.
• The village is limiting its planting to those two types of trees due to requests by residents for the pear trees and that the hedge maples are approved by LIPA for underwire plantings and highly disease resistant.
• “A lot of the other trees on the wire-friendly list either have berries or have have issues with trees, things like that,” Rini said, noting the tree maxes out at about 30 ft. in height. “A lot of the trees we’ve been taking down, we’re taking a great deal of canopy away from the village; very tall trees we’ve removed, all the oak trees we’re taking down. So a lot of these trees, we’re losing canopy at the top so I’m going for the highest wire-friendly tree I can.”
• The village also receives money back from LIPA for planting trees on the wire-friendly list.

Catch Basins

• The board authorized the emergency replacement of three collapsing catch basins at the intersection of Garfield Avenue and Walker Road to Valente Contracting at a cost of $26,000. All of the basins have to be rebuilt in place.
• The village is currently working through its catch basin cleaning list – said to be about 100 per year – and is concentrating on cleaning out the basins in flood-prone areas first.
• Crews started on Bruce Terrace and worked their way towards Roslyn Road, including Dow Avenue and Pilgrim Lane. “All that gets connected into the new system,” Superintendent of public works Tom Rini said.
• “We’ll be able to clean the basins, we’ll probably open the deep wells and see what’s going on in there but those deep wells will be connected via the transport piping put in on Dow Avenue which will then hit the Sheridan interceptor then into our recharge basin.”
• The village is currently readying all the equipment for the leaf removal program which will begin in a few weeks and the snow removal equipment thereafter.

Bruce Terrace Project

• Rini held a meeting with the apparent low bidder for the Bruce Terrace project to review qualifications, the company’s past projects and it is moving along.
• “They do seem to have some projects where they’ve done this type of work,” Rini said, “perhaps not to the size and scope that we’re doing it but the same type of work; deep cuts. We’re still vetting that out at this point. I want to make sure that we’re getting the right person here so that we can get this thing going and get it moving the way it should.”
• The Town of North Hempstead has awarded their portion of the project to Tri-State Paving – the same company who performed the work at Station Plaza.
• The town will use the soil from the Mineola property to construct the recharge basin and “build the walls that we’re looking to do,” Rini said.
• Nassau County has all the engineering review completed on its third of the project and is waiting for authorization to go out to bid.

Winston Project

• The board approved a 6-month extension for the Winston and Churchill apartment complexes.
• “They’re still waiting for county approval... for final signoff of their plan,” village attorney John Spellman said. “It’s immanent; we hope.”
• The expectation is that the Winston will file its plans around November 1, with a three-month review process to follow.
• A village permit could then be issued at the end of January or beginning of February 2013.
• “That’s kind of the target,” Spellman said. “Just because so many agencies are involved in this, their attorney wants to keep the paperwork accurate so they’re just asking for a six-month extension of the special permit.”

Other Board News

• The Mineola 50-plus Basketball group was granted use of the community center auditorium basketball courts on Mondays and Fridays from 12:30 p .m. to 2:30 p.m., where available. The group has been in existence for approximately 8 years.
• Daniel Accatino and Paul Lopes were approved as new members of the Mineola Fire Department Company No. 1; Glenn Peters and Christopher Strauss were approved as new members of the Mineola Fire Department Company No. 3 and two, respectively.
• The village awarded the annual HVAC maintenance contract to Dynaire Service Corporation for $13,545 for the village municipal buildings and $3,160 for the library for a total of $16,705, at no increase from last year.
• Boy Scout Troop 45 and Cub Scout Pack 311 currently conducting their Christmas wreath sale.

The next meeting of the Mineola Village Board will be on Wednesday, November 7 at 6:30 p.m. at the village hall.