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Friday, January 25, 2019
Vol. 7, No. 4
HEALTH & WELLNESS
EAST HILLS BURGLARY
CUOMO AIDS NASSAU REASSESSMENT PHASE-IN
PAGES 37-44
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Old Westbury passes wall amendment To vote on law requiring drafted laws to be published on website BY T E R I W EST The Village of Old Westbury Board of Trustees passed a law that more closely regulates retaining walls and introduced another requiring all pending legislation to be posted on the village website at its meeting Tuesday night.! The introduction of and eventual vote on the latter motion came in the middle of an often heated hour-long public hearing before the Board of Trustees about the wall amendment. Trustee Leslie Fastenberg seemingly spontaneously dictated the new law. “There is no reason that anything that we are doing should not be available to every resident, particularly when we are trying to introduce new code that’s going to impact people,” she said. “That’s the way to encourage participation.” Resident Mikel Eisenberg was the first to raise concern about a
lack of transparency. He had urged the board to postpone a vote on the wall amendment in September so as to give the village time to alert residents of the potential change but said that most residents are still unaware of the changes. Myron St. Wecker, a resident at the meeting who said he attends “just because I’ve lived in the village for nearly 50 years,” said that he had to go through the process of submitting a Freedom of Information Act request to view the retaining wall amendment in advance of Tuesday’s meeting. After hearing such remarks, the Board of Trustees, with Trustee Edward Novick absent, unanimously approved the introduction of the local law, which will now be voted on in February. The majority of the requirements in the retaining wall law that passed pertain to the construction of new walls, creating procedures for applying for permits and reguContinued on Page 77
PHOTO BY TERI WEST
Esther Bloom, 5, decorates cardboard boxes of food at a Sid Jacobson Jewish Community Center food packaging event on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
JCC packages 30,000 meals on MLK Jr. Day BY T E R I W EST A cymbal rang throughout the gym, eliciting cheers that momentarily drowned out 2016’s record of the year bopping along in the background.
The 150 or so hairnet-clad volunteers had packaged 15,000 meals in under two hours and were halfway to their goal for the day. “We are ahead of schedule,” said Carol Robinson, the
event’s coordinator from the Outreach Program, grinning as she strolled along a table of families positioned into an assembly line. Hosting a food-packaging Continued on Page 67
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