New Hyde Park 2012 Road Project Nears Completion

The top asphalt coat for the roadways involved in New Hyde Park’s 2012 road reconstruction project was expected to be laid on November 21 or by November 24 at the latest.

At the November 20 meeting of the village board at the village hall, deputy mayor Robert Lofaro said that the village had a few “glitches” with the contractor involved in the project but that those were worked out through the village’s engineering firm.

Before the top coat could be applied the roadway had to be cleaned as well as some concrete work and tree removal.

The village scheduled the following areas to be completed on November 21: South 12th Street, First Avenue and South 10th Street between First and Second Avenues.

There is still concrete work to be done on South 11th Street, South 10th Street and Sixth Avenue before work can continue. Subsurface issues have been reported on South 12th Street and around manhole covers, but have since been rectified.

The village is looking to issue $1.3 million in serial bonds to fund the project, which will be paid in $100,000 principal installments for 13 years.

“We’ll probably look to do the bond offering around the 15th of December,” Lofaro said. “We’ve already started getting the bills for the hurricane and there’s many more that’s going to follow. It’s going to put a strain on our cashflow and it’s going to be important that these bonds do get in because between paying for the road contractors and all the expenses from the storm, we have a reserve fund of $500,000 that goes pretty quickly.”

It was between 6 to 14 months before the village saw reimbursement from FEMA for damages sustained for Hurricane Irene. Reimbursements for larger projects, which rise above $75,000, take longer to complete, but the village’s applications always fell into the smaller category. “the good news is we’re a lot better at submitting paperwork,” Gannon said.

Lofaro commented that the FEMA projects under Irene totaled about $54,000 but those after Hurricane Sandy would run in excess of $200,000 and possibly closer to $500,000.