By Thomas Gillen
The Village of New Hyde Park held an eventful board meeting as Mayor Lofaro and other trustees discussed various issues and events occurring in New Hyde Park. Trustees Richard Coppola Jr. and Donald Barbieri were not in attendance at the Nov. 15 meeting, while Mayor Robert Lofaro, Deputy Mayor Lawrence Montreuil and Trustee Donna Squicciarino were present. Items included on the agenda were reports from each trustee and requests made to the board from various organizations in the village. The reports took up a majority of the meeting while the requests were handled fairly quickly in the beginning.
Requests to the board were sent in from the New Hyde Park Fire Department, the New Hyde Park Museum and the Community Emergency Response Team (CERT). The fire department requested a Wounded Warrior Fundraiser, the NHP Museum requested a museum tour for Cub Scout Pack 544 at the William Gill Theatre and CERT requested an emergency preparedness meeting for Division 4 CERT members at Marcus Christ Hall. All three requests were approved without any deliberation, even though a board meeting will be held on the same night as the CERT meeting on Dec. 6.
When the board moved onto individual reports, Lofaro spoke for trustees Coppola and Barbieri. For Coppola’s report, Lofaro spoke about the upcoming Wounded Warriors fundraiser for the fire department, saying “it’s an outstanding event that raises a lot of money for the Wounded Warriors, who are our veterans. We encourage everybody to attend it.”
During Barbieri’s report, Lofaro spoke about noise abatement and how aircraft noises are being monitored in the community.
“I attended a workshop at the Cradle of Aviation Museum where they were discussing a Part 150 Study related to aircraft noise,” said Lofaro. “The decibel that they use as the minimum floor for the decibels everywhere else in the country is 50. For some reason in the New York Metropolitan area, it’s 60 decibels. That being the floor, if it’s between 50 and 60 in New York, no action will be taken. Anywhere else in the country between 50 and 60, there needs to be remediation.”
There are several sound meters used to evaluate aircraft noise in New Hyde Park and Floral Park. One is located at the intersection of New Hyde Park Road between Baxter Avenue and Corwin Avenue and another is in south Floral Park. The meter in New Hyde Park spikes anywhere between 70 and 80 decibels when an airplane flies over it, according to Lofaro. Even though these meters are operating in good condition, they cannot be included in the Part 150 study that determines aircraft noise around the country.
“What we were told is that those meters are not used in the study because they cannot definitively say that that meter’s sound went up because of an aircraft,” said Lofaro. “So even though you see a plane going over the meter and see the meter go up accordingly, they can’t use it. They have to use computerized models to determine the sounds.”
The remainder of the meeting was devoted to the rest of the trustee reports, where upcoming community meetings and events were discussed. Lofaro also read a letter from Yorkshire Food sales that complimented the board on recent construction completed on Plaza Avenue.
