The Mineola Village Board voted at last week week’s board meeting to seek bids to repair roofs of Mineola Village Hall and the Mineola Fire Headquarters and to commit $22,840 for emergency electrical repairs at the pump house of the John S. DaVanzo Community Pool.
Citing the effects of the “devastating winter,” Mineola Department of Public Works Superintendent Thomas Rini said the roofs on Village Hall, the community center, and the firehouse are still in need of repair. He noted the board rejected bids on the roofs last year, and asked permission to seek bids again, adding that the timing is right.
“If the pricing is something we can deal with, the village can get in on the peak roof season,” Rini said.
In what seemed to some like the peak state grant season last year, the Mineola Fire Department was offered $200,000 in two state grants by state Sen. Craig Johnson to repair the firehouse roof, village officials said. The grant, which were awarded to the village, went unfulfilled, along with approximately $2 million in grants to fire departments throughout the 7th state Senate district after Johnson lost his re-election bid against then Village of Mineola Mayor Jacks Martins.
Officials said the village would now have to come up with the $200,000 needed to fix the firehouse roof.
Village of Mineola Mayor Scott Strauss said the board was voting to receive bids, not to approve that the work be done.
With the municipal pool season starting soon, Rini said badly needed repairs at the community pool house include replacement of steel gear boxes for the electric motors corroded from chlorine exposure. Other essential equipment, including new waterproof enclosures for the gear boxes and starters and a new motor for the wading pool, adds up to $16,840 and $6,000 for installation costs for a total of $22,840.
Rini said the equipment is 15 years old and the repairs will solve a recurrent problem with the pump, which enables the pool water to be filtrated. Without the repairs, he said, the pump will likely malfunction “at a peak [usage] time.”
“The water wants to back up from the pool into the pool house,” Rini said.
He said the 208-volt system is below contemporary power standards of 225 volts or more.
“If we need this to get the pool up and running, let’s do it,” Strauss said.
The board members followed Strauss’s lead and authorized the work to be done by United Electric Power and Aragona Electrical Contractor.
Preparing for the start of the baseball season, Rini said his staff has been reseeding field two at the Wilson Field complex to replace patches worn thin by soccer players.
Commenting on the current DPW spring clean-up, Rini said his department’s workers had removed 40 trees during April, and said residents should be patient in awaiting tree trimming on village streets to be completed.
In other developments:
• Strauss said Nassau County Executive Edward Mangano recently assured him that “he isn’t closing the door on the Third Precinct” headquarters of the Nassau County Police Department in Williston Park.
• Trustee Lawrence Werther slammed the county’s most recent proposal to install several more red camera lights in the area among an additional 50 the state Legislature is considering authorizing.
“They’re a substitute for good police work,” Werther said.
• A resident said that bottles and cans accumulating in the catch basin in Mineola Memorial Park have caused problems with flooding in the area during recent severe rainstorms. He suggested the county Department of Public Works be asked to clear the catch basin biannually. Strauss agreed, saying, “Preventive maintenance is a good thing,” and said he would follow up with the county DPW on the issue.
• Strauss said the board will continue the hearing of on an application from the Learn and Play Day Care Center next Wednesday night, and will not hold its regularly scheduled meeting afterward. Strauss said the village board work session and public meeting scheduled for May 18 will be canceled because it conflicts with the village charity event, “Night on the Town”. slated for the same night to benefit the Michael J. Fox Parkinson’s Foundation and the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.
• Sal Cataldo, commander of American Legion Post 244 in Mineola presented Strauss with a Vietnam POW-MIA flag to replace one that recently went missing in village hall.
