Our residential streets have experienced a great volume of commercial and other traffic especially during the afternoon/evening rush hours. The short-term solution for this serious quality of life and public safety issue is to make westbound traffic flow more efficiently on County Road 39, as commercial and other commuter vehicles travel from localities east of the Village to Sunrise Highway. Working with the Town and County, we have made significant strides to keep traffic off our local residential streets, first in conducting a successful pilot last Spring, and then more recently in successfully petitioning the County to make changes in lane markings and traffic light sequencing on County Roads 39 to move traffic westbound more efficiently. We continue to ask for modifications to get this approach right. In the short term, this is the most viable tool we have to help our residents. We are hoping to make this a permanent change; and we are engaging with the County and Town officials to develop long term solutions.

Our first responder communications have deteriorated as cellular usage has greatly increased on the east end. Along with the Planning Commission, Diamond Communications was engaged to assess the signal propagation situation and they have concluded that the Village needs a cell tower to prevent dropped 911 and other emergency calls. Following Village procurement rules, the cell tower has been constructed on Village property on Windmill Lane behind the firehouse. Motorola, Verizon and AT&T, have been signed up to operate this summer, and T-Mobile is expected to sign up, as well.

We have been working for years with the Village Clean Water/Sewer Task Force and our professional engineers to develop a map and plan and find an appropriate site to treat our business district sewerage, as a first phase in eventually providing sewer service to the entire Village. An appropriate Village owned site on Windmill Lane has been identified. The positive effect will be immediate and will help solve the serious nitrogen problems in our local waterbodies, especially the jewel that is Lake Agawam. Additionally, we have been promoting through public outreach the septic replacement program which through local grants can be installed virtually free of cost to Village residents. This program, together with the business district sewer initiative, will markedly change our environment for the better.

Our teamwork has included eliminating the use of gas-powered leaf blowers and implementing environmentally friendly changes, through Johnson Controls, in our Village buildings, streetlamps, and other public facilities. We have installed solar panels on Village property with the goal of making the Village a net-zero electrical usage entity, meaning the amount of electricity the Village consumes annually is roughly equal to the amount of renewable energy it generates.

Through stringent financial practices, including creating thoughtful financial plans for operating and capital budgets and implementing zero-based budgeting, the Village finances are in excellent shape. This has been endorsed by our auditors and has led to a Triple A rating by Moody’s Investors Service. In our years of experience, no organization is truly viable and successful unless its finances are in order, and we are privileged to say that we have been a part of this accomplishment. Our ability to deliver services, with very modest taxes that have not pierced the tax cap, is a proud achievement. In recent years, many of our neighboring localities, including our Town, have pierced the tax cap in order to continue basic services.

Our Village is being renewed with respect to public works infrastructure. As Trustees, we have accomplished so many improvements in our public spaces including renovating and creating parks and athletic fields, repairing playgrounds, planting trees, repaving local roadways, providing new street drainage, providing new roofs for Veterans Hall and the Southampton Arts Center, renovating the Rogers History Museum, and many other improvements. These accomplishments are making the Village physically sustainable for years to come. Our residents do not deserve years of expensive deferred maintenance; instead, our residents deserve safe, well-planned and funded public infrastructure projects to emphasize quality and community betterment.