Responding to my neighbors’ complaints after the recent hurricane, rains and flooding, last week I announced a new component of my campaign for the New Rochelle CIty Council, District SIx; the “District Six Direct Aid Initiative” to protect homes and public health by offering sandbags to residents of New Rochelle’s north-end, which was hardest hit during the violent weather.
Everyone I have met was impressed with the response by our fire and police departments to the severe flooding on our northern perimeter, along the Hutchinson River and parkway. Unfortunately, storm effects were exacerbated by a dilapidated drainage and sewer system whose design is many years out-of-date and hundreds of DPW (Department of Public Works) man/hours away from correction.
Side streets needing re-grading and pothole repair, and major thoroughfares requiring re-engineering to meet surrounding elevations are the most common deficiencies. The city council majority and mayor seem thoroughly overwhelmed by these challenges to our public infrastructure.
The council has abandoned the DPW and left it without the resources and equipment needed to cope with heavy rains and resulting problems of drainage. Present measures for handling floods are inadequate; pumping-out of basements is severely limited by equipment and personnel shortfalls; sand-bags and inflatable flood control booms were nowhere to be found. For the council to allow us to enter the August-October hurricane season without proper inventories is administrative neglect and incompetence at its worst.
If New Rochelle were a larger municipality, on a larger playing field run by a less politically-adept Democratic party organization (and one considerably less successful in terms of media-management), we might have heard public calls for resignations of elected officials and bureaucrats after city hall’s befuddled handling of the hurricane and its aftermath (somewhat akin to the backlash against the President Bush II administration post Hurricane Katrina).
I am offering a limited quantity of bags to residents of District Six only; on a first-come, first-served basis, as long as the generally constrained resources at our Winding Brook Road “physical plant” permit.
It is time we start re-thinking how to handle hurricane and flood conditions in the future. Do residents need to stock sandbags in their garages? Should we require the city to maintain an inventory of bags or to pre-position sand piles at city yard and other strategic locations? With demands on taxpayers at an all-time high, we should expect nothing less from city council than 100% preparedness for environmental and climatic perils.
I do not fully comprehend the origin of these dramatic weather-related occurrences. I do not know if the seeming meteorological changes are related to the effects of human agencies, or a simple, periodic outburst of “mad nature.”
Even though long-term strategies may require tens of millions of dollars in spending on New Rochelle infrastructure alone, not to mention that of the county and state, there are steps that can be taken to ameliorate the impact of these recent storms. While New Rochelle politicians must bear responsibility for the sorry state of our local infrastructure, that does not mean that they or we need to sit around and do nothing.
If we can’t find the cure for the malady, we must at least be ready with some first aid. Until those charged with running the city rise to the task of cleaning culverts, clearing sewer lines and dredging reservoirs, lakes, riverbeds and catch basins, and also determine whether new “public works” construction has some promise, they must provide the “band aids.”
Let our campaign’s humble sandbags stand as a modest, first step. This is, after all, the time to act! For the incumbent politicians at City Hall, let this be their wake-up call.
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