Message from the Mayor: Infrastructure, Spring Thing, Memorial Day Parade, Call for Art
Posted on: May 15, 2018 - 1:28am
Infrastructure work and the major events associated with Spring dominate the update today. The prettiest time of the year with all in bloom.
Infrastructure Updates
====================
Downtown Work
------------------------
This Con Ed-induced traffic and parking nightmare that has trashed the downtown, brought grief to merchants and dissuaded shoppers is coming to an end. This work, an upgrade to the diameter of the gas supply pipes for the north end of Warburton, should finish by the end of this week. We should see the steel plates up and asphalt patches in place in time for our Memorial Day Parade (see below) on May 27th. Merchants at the north end of town have been slammed. Please over-compensate in your shopping in the days and weeks ahead to help them recover some ground lost during this disruptive phase.
Warburton Repaving
-----------------------------
The patches are not the end of this job. Westchester County is repaving Warburton Avenue (which is owned by the County) its full length later this summer – from the border of Yonkers all the way through to Broadway. Repaving tends to move quickly, and it will leave behind, for a brief shining moment anyway, a pristine Warburton its full length. More on this as it approaches.
Village Repaving
-----------------------
The winter seemed rough on the roads – but it always seems that way in Spring. The asphalt plants have reopened and Village crews have been patching potholes as they find time. (“Cold patch” can be applied during the winter, and lasts a short period of time – hot asphalt, available in Spring, clings harder and can last years). More importantly, we are carrying out an extensive repaving effort early in the Summer, nearly as ambitious as last year, about three times what we usually do, as part of a concerted effort to improve the state of the roads and curbs. Disasters like upper Washington Avenue will be repaved at that time. (Usually, this happens later in September, but this was funded last year so can be done sooner, thank goodness.) A list of the (approximately two miles of) roads being addressed can be found here. We haven’t yet finalized the list of curbs. The list is largely derived from a prioritized schedule prepared three years ago that we are working our way through to catch up on needed road repair. By the end of this, we should be in better shape, for as long as that lasts. The battle against entropy is never-ending, alas.
Chemka Drainage Pipe
-------------------------------
Speaking of entropy, an aging metal pipe that passed under the Chemka pool complex, routing the stream that emerges from Sugar Pond and descends to the Hudson, collapsed and caused a sink hole a few weeks back. Our DPW has been working around the clock since on what is a major excavation and pipe installation effort to replace the conduit and seek to have the area restored in time for the opening of pool season. Now, I’m not urging people to go take a look, but this is not a small project. I’m impressed.
Spring Thing
===========
This annual tradition, reborn in the last couple of years, shuts down the downtown this Sunday, May 20th from 12PM to 4PM and opens it to food, vendors, shopping specials, Fire Department cookout, live music (provided by a range of Hastings bands), the Museum of Interesting Things, a bouncy castle, and more. Read about it here. Come Sunday and enjoy. (Sunshine permitting.) This is a lot of fun, and the price (nothing) is right. Make an afternoon of it.
Memorial Day Parade
===================
The annual Memorial Day Parade kicks off at 2PM on Sunday, May 27th, starting at Reynolds Field and descending down Main Street and making a right on Warburton, with a finishing loop onto Maple. This is the full magilla: marching bands, convertibles, fire engines, a contingent of fifty Marines and Navy personnel, the whole nine yards, with a three-star Admiral (on his second visit to Hastings) overseeing it all. It concludes with a short and meaningful ceremony at the VFW that acknowledges what, in the end, this holiday is truly about. The names of those from this village who perished on the battlefields of the First and Second World Wars, and the Vietnam and Korean conflicts are engraved on the monuments that mutely stand watch during the twenty minutes of these ceremonies (and all the minutes of all the other days), reminders of the young who died in service. The parade is a classic, and shouldn’t be missed. You live in a living and breathing village that celebrates its history and honors its sacrifice. Come out and enjoy the spectacle. (The presence of the senior military brass means a precautionary higher-than-usual level of security – and that should be no cause for alarm.)
Juried Art Exhibition seeks Entries
===============================
The tireless Hastings Village Arts Commission, in association with The Newington Cropsey Foundation (read about them here) will be presenting “The River Flows Both Ways”, a juried exhibition of traditional and contemporary interpretations of the Hudson River, inspired by the famed Hudson River School painter Jasper Francis Cropsey, who lived and worked in Hastings-on-Hudson, NY. Deadline for entries is June 22, 2018. For more information and details on how to submit, visit the Arts Commission on Facebook here.
I hope to see you at the upcoming events and around town.
Peter Swiderski
Mayor