Politics & Government

New Hyde Park Still Waiting on FEMA Funds Post-Sandy

Mayor Lofaro reports that village is " just waiting for the money to come in."

With New Hyde Park having fully cleaned up from Hurricane Sandy, the only thing left to deal with is the inevitable bills. While the village has been forwarding invoices to FEMA for concrete work that are popping up and removals of trees and stumps.

It was noted during the May 7 meeting of the village board at the village hall that superintendent of public works Tom Gannon and village clerk Cathryn Hillmann had spent numerous hours on forms and expenses for reimbursement.

“I can understand it is a necessary process but it is taking up a great deal of time but hopefully at the end of the day we’ll benefit by getting reimbursed for many of the expenses,” mayor Robert Lofaro said, noting that officials were helpful in letting the village know what they could claim regarding employee time and efforts such as lost regular work time when spend dealing with storm cleanup. “As far as I know, we’re very close, if not already signed and delivered the packet so now we’re probably just waiting for the money to come in.”

Lofaro went on to say that the village does not have a large fund balance and that if $300,000 was spent, the fund needs to be replenished quickly.

“This is the time of our budget cycle where we have the least amount of money in our treasury,” Lofaro said. “The account balances have been depleted pretty heavily with expenses related to the storm.”

Trustee Donald Barbieri added that “we do expect that the monies that were spent for this project that we’ve applied for will be approved and be coming back into the village treasury in the near future.”

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