The Floral Park Department of Public Works (DPW) and its buildings department posted some impressive year-end numbers for 2014. The building department issued 595 permits, the most processed in 10 years. The support staff answered 18,552 phone calls and were visited by 3,332 walk-ins. DPW’s year-end numbers are even more impressive.
The village sanitation crews lifted over 8,600 tons of trash and landscape debris. Our sweepers collected over 300 tons of street sweepings. The village highway department put down 501 tons of hot patch and 76 tons of cold patch (a record). To put these numbers into perspective, after trees were toppled throughout the village and roads suffered due to Superstorm Sandy—we laid 447 tons of hot patch that year.
With new equipment, training, efficient planning, experience and just plain hard work our highway crews are realizing the promise of performing more of these repairs in house. Our village tree crews pruned 904 trees, took down 131 trees and answered 855 trim requests.
Once again, with the village investing in new equipment, renting equipment when appropriate and with additional labor, we are at long last attending efficiently to emergency and ongoing maintenance pruning of our trees and we are making significant impact on the “tree list”.
In some cases, 11 at this writing, we must await PSEG to either move power wires or trim with their contractor around such wires before we can remove the tree. But once PSEG does its work, our village crews, usually on standby with the utility, immediately perform their work.
In 2014, we launched a maintenance division and began performing some building repairs in-house. Projects tackled by this new department included: at village hall, lower-level bathroom renovations, restored cast stone, painted front doors and restored exterior fixed
door by Chief’s room, cleaned staining of masonry, installed partitions for new (mandated) rescue supply room, painted exterior trim, plastered and painted interiors at library, repaired stucco on exterior panels at the garage to name but a few projects. We are very satisfied with the quality and productivity of this new department.
The village parks department continues to manage our village green spaces beautifully.
In addition to that immense workload, they also created a new reflection space at the 9/11 Relic Memorial Park and have begun the renovations of Rotary Park. The top soil used there is a process of reconditioning the existing soil with new enriched soil from our composting program at Centennial Gardens. We completed a major drainage and road reconstruction project at Vernon Street, Verbena Avenue and Floral Boulevard. We also restored road surfaces and curbing on Beverly Avenue between Covert Avenue and Orchid Street. These accomplishments are something about which we and our ‘everyday heroes’, our men of the DPW should be very proud.
May I also extend my thanks on behalf of the village board to the many members our all-volunteer Floral Park Fire Department who attended the wake and funeral of Chief Joseph Sanford of the Inwood Fire Department. Chief Sanford died of injuries sustained fighting a house fire on Dec. 23. His life and death exemplifies the sacrifice our firefighters and rescue members extend to their neighbors each and every time they answer a call. They have our respect, admiration and gratitude.
Finally, may I extend thanks to members of the Village Police Department members who represented FPPD at the funerals of NYPD Detectives Rafael Ramos and Wenijan Liu. Our officers attended each of these sorrowful events on their own time, standing should to shoulder with police agencies from across the country, indeed from around the world. We are very proud of our police department and even as our village is one of the safest in the state, none are exempt from random acts of violence. May Chief Joseph Sanford, Detective Rafael Ramos and Detective Wenijan Lui rest in peace and may God continue to bless the men and women in service to our village each day.
