In an article in the July 26 issue of the Great Neck News, Mayor Jean Celender once again tried to foist upon Plaza residents another of her continuing public half truths that she has the chutzpah to call “transparencies.”
The mayor’s most current attempt at so-called “transparency” cited delays in the completion of her TEP disaster, moving the final completion date of the project from the end of June to Oct. 19, almost four months behind schedule. If the work is actually completed by Oct. 19, residents, merchants, shoppers and postal patrons will have had to endure over seven months of noise, filth, parking and traffic problems.
In the article, Celender attributed the TEP delays to “weather woes” during the month of June. Really? Almost two months of delays from rain? When I read that, I could only shake my head sadly.
Yes, we absolutely had more wet weather than usual in June which certainly caused several lost work days. But what our illustrious full-time mayor forgot to acknowledge was that since mid-June, absolutely no progress has been made on the median in front of the stores because not a single worker has been there in over six weeks. I know; I live on the block, and I have to look at this mess night and day, whether I want to or not.
Celender also “forgot” to mention that she spent mega-bucks of her grant money and our taxpayer dollars on high-end granite pavers for her vanity park, and that for more than a month, there have been only two men, working intermittently, who have been cutting and laying the pavers into a fashionably designed two-tone wave pattern. This necessitates painstaking work, excessive time, and great expense to intricately cut the very heavy square granite pavers into curved shapes to create the wave design. As of this writing, the end is not yet in sight.
In the article, the name of Celender’s former “park”—which she previously re-named “public plaza” when the community objected to the park—was downsized to “small plaza,” undoubtedly to downplay the fact that she went against the wishes of the community to build it. Now we are saddled with a large, unsightly white elephant protruding into the middle of the street. And for this, our narcissistic mayor took away a lovely lawn that used to provide an ambiance of grace and charm in front of the post office.
Instead of creating a huge expenditure for a park that nobody wanted, the ill-spent dollars could have been used to benefit the neighborhood by repairing and repaving the dangerous, broken and unsightly strip of Welwyn Road between the post office and Gilchrest Road that the village has ignored. Our oblivious mayor could have also repaired and repaved the unsafe, ugly and broken cement sidewalks that she left in disrepair in front of the strip of stores after an installation of her beloved bricks on only the part of the newly widened sidewalk adjacent to the street.
Instead of using money to paint bicycle icons on the streets to create life-threatening “faux” bicycle lanes that no one will ever use, a caring mayor would have directed those funds to the tremendous pedestrian safety issues which she continues to ignore.
Since we are now saddled with her unwanted, newly renamed “small plaza,” Celender should make it neighborhood-friendly by converting it to a “parking plaza” with spaces for a dozen or more cars—which would be appreciated as an effort to help ameliorate the horrific residential parking problem suffered by residents—which she also continues to ignore.
But everyone already knows that Jean Celender doesn’t care one iota about doing the right thing unless she has something to gain from it.
It would be a fitting tribute to Jean Celender if she squandered a few more big bucks to hire the finest engraver of granite cemetery stones to create the inscription on her new small plaza’s cornerstone: “Celender’s Folly, est. 2019.”
It’s time for the Jean Machine Regime to go!
Muriel Pfeifer
Village of Neck Plaza
(We want our “Great” back!)
