by Richard Kavesh
A few weeks ago Trustee Jen White and village grant writer Al Butzel traveled to Washington D.C. to personally deliver Nyack’s applications for millions of dollars in federal aid. Jen and Al met with with aides to U.S. Senators Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand and with Congressman Eliot Engel himself.
Nyack is seeking federal funding to help subsidize the renovation of our downtown (the Streetscape plan); improve Memorial Park per the recently passed park master plan; repair the marina; and support the Nyack Center. We all know that the federal appropriations process is very slow, but we also know that the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. This was our first but hardly our last lobbying trip to our nation’s capital.
Don’t Count Us Out
There’s another simple and effective way for all Nyack residents to increase Nyack’s federal aid, and that’s to complete and send in the census forms that we all received recently. Census data is used for many purposes, but one of them is to determine the amount of population-based state and federal aid municipalities are entitled to, so please send back your census forms as soon as possible.
Parking With Grace
Parking and our muni-meters are perennial favorite subjects around the village. You may have read that New York City just instituted a five-minute grace period on its muni-meters, but you may not be aware that this very same five-minute grace period has been part and parcel of every parking receipt printed by Nyack’s own muni-meters for quite some time now.
Here’s how it works: Nyack’s current parking rates are 75 cents an hour, or 25 cents for 20 minutes. However, if you deposit a quarter, your parking receipt will actually expire in 25 minutes (not 20), if you deposit a dollar, the receipt expires in 65 minutes (not 60), etc. And if you’re unfortunate enough to get a ticket, it means that not just the time you paid for, but the grace period as well, has expired.
Our next meeting of the Village Board is at 7:30 on Thursday, March 25th, preceded by our usual workshop at 6:30. Hope to see you there.
Richard Kavesh – 353-1935
