According to Deputy Mayor Pat Christiansen, the festive holiday arrangements currently on display on Main Street were the result of many hours of hard work put in by several groups and individuals within the Farmingdale community.
“The Beautification Committee worked together with resident and nonresident volunteers, junior firemen, firemen, Relay For Life committee members, Girl Scouts, the mayor and trustees,” Christiansen said. “They gathered on three separate occasions and worked very hard to put up all these holiday decorations. We also have to give special thanks to DPW personnel and Public Works Superintendent Andrew Fisch for their efforts in decorating the Tricentennial tree and solving numerous lighting issues. Also thanks to Amityville DPW for the loan of a truck, and to Lowe’s [Home Improvement] in Farmingdale.”
Christiansen said that Lowe’s agreed to give the Farmingdale board a $1,500 grant of goods and holiday supplies at their retail cost, which equates to $2,800 worth of decorating materials. She urged meeting attendees to stop into Lowe’s sometime this holiday season to support the store and thank them for their generosity.
In other matters, a resolution to approve the purchase of a heavy duty truck financed by a five-year ban was scrapped from the agenda, while a payment of $440,781.95 to Roadwork Ahead, Inc. for road rehabilitation for Merokee Place, Iroquis Place, Oneida Avenue, North Maple Place, Dexter Street and Simonson Place was approved. Mayor Starkie noted that most of the funding for the roadwork project came from grant monies received from the New York State Consolidated Local Street and Highway Improvement Program (CHIPS), so Farmingdale taxpayers were not burdened with the costs needed to complete the repairs.
Village Trustee Ralph Ekstrand also made a resolution to authorize Mayor Starkie to enter into negotiations with the Suffolk County Water Authority, regarding the terms and conditions of a possible management-lease arrangement for the operation of the village water supply system by the Suffolk County Water Authority, and to authorize the mayor to propose and aggregate state and local legislation to enable and facilitate such an agreement. “Once we have a proposal, we’ll put out a mailer to every resident in the village informing them of the details,” said Mayor Starkie, regarding the potential negotiations. “We’ll then have a public hearing on it.”
In other matters, the board continued a public hearing on Local Law 6 of 2011, which revolves around the zoning of Farmingdale’s office-residence district. “We looked at 109. We looked at Conklin Street. We looked at other properties,” Starkie said. “The whole concept of this office-residence use was to maintain the residential feel and some of the residential zones in that area coming into the village.”
With regards to Local Law 6, Ekstrand said that a small medical building would suit the area nicely. “[A medical building] certainly wouldn’t disturb the residents at night,” Ekstrand noted. “It also wouldn’t have an excess amount of traffic. We don’t already have a medical building, per se, in that side of the village, so it would be a good use.” Final decisions have not yet been made, and the board said they will continue the hearing on Local Law 6 at their next meeting, which is scheduled for Tuesday, Jan. 3, at 8 p.m.