Scarsdale Talks Sandy Response, Generators

Scarsdale's Village Board of Trustees met Tuesday night and discussed several items, including the response to Hurricane Sandy, the cost of Sandy to the village, the use of emergency generators and holiday happenings.

The following is a copy of Mayor Miriam Levitt Flisser's address:

The Village Board continues to analyze the effects of the Hurricane on Village services.

We have worked on, and published a statement concerning the installation of underground power lines for Scarsdale, and you may find this on www.Scarsdale.com. We have drafted a detailed letter to Con Edison concerning the Hurricane management, and we are scheduling a VB meeting with Con Edison representatives.

We had a Board Meeting with a presentation from the Technology Advisory Council concerning communications issues, with emphasis on the use of "the Cloud" with distant servers, to avoid future website failures. Cloud computing is a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management.

However, this concept does not meet standards for our Police/Public Safety installations and Department of Justice operations. We continue to explore this issue.

Tonight, the Village Board will set a Public Hearing concerning the Generator Law, for our next full Board meeting, on January 8.

On Wed., December 12 [tonight] the Law Committee will meet to review recommendations from the Planning Board in continuation of the process of legislative changes that we started last year, and referred to the PB in August. The PB held three public meetings on this topic before making their recommendations. if substantial changes to the legislation are developed at the Law Committee meeting, this will require re-notification of the Public Hearing by the Village Board, and will delay the resolution until later in January.

Staff continues to calculate Village costs for the Hurricane, which are in excess of $1 million. As in past events, we will make application for re-imbursement of expenses through larger government programs that will enable us to recover a significant portion of our expenditures. BTW, budget hearings for next year are in the scheduling phase now.

On a seasonal note, please remember that on-street parking is prohibited from 2:00 a.m. to 6:00 a.m. during the winter months (through March 31) to facilitate snow removal if needed.

And, last Friday, I lit the Christmas Tree in Boniface Circle. Two weeks ago, we approved the Creche Committee's application for the Creche placement, and tonight, we'll finalize Chabad's request for a Menorah in the Village Center. Last evening, I lit the Chabad Menorah in Bronxville. I attended a Haj commemoration event at the Mt Vernon Muslim Center on Dec 8. My friend Bruce Wells tells me that Yule celebrations are slated for the Gaian's Solstice as well. It is indeed an honor to participate in all these joyous events.

Two weeks from today is December 25, Christmas Day, and Village Hall will be closed in celebration, so we will hold a Limited Agenda Meeting on Wed. Dec 26 at 8:30 a.m.