HALF HOLLOW HILLS Copyright © 2012 Long Islander Newspapers, LLC
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N E W S P A P E R
VOLUME FIFTEEN, ISSUE 29
2 SECTIONS, 28 PAGES
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 2012
MELVILLE/HUNTINGTON HALF HOLLOW HILLS
New Face On School Board By Danny Schrafel dschrafel@longislandernews.com
After former school board President Jeanine Bottenus resigned her post over the summer, new leadership is at the helm of the Half Hollow Hills School Board after a new trustee was appointed and two longtime members were tapped for leadership roles. Melville’s David Kaston, an attorney with a local practice, emerged from a pool of roughly 50 candidates for an open trustee position, said school board President James Ptucha. Kaston was sworn during the Half Hollow Hills School Board’s reorganization meeting Aug. 27, taking Bottenus’ spot. She resigned in late July after eight years on the board because of emerging family commitments. Kaston’s professional experience, his perspective as a western Melville resident since 2001 and his more than 10 years as a civic activist as head of the Sweet Hollow Farms Homeowners Association will be a benefit to the board, Ptucha said. “He’s charismatic, he’s well-spoken. He does represent folks from the way far western end of the district,” the president said. “He’s dealt with unions in negotiating contracts. He was just a nice overall package.” Kaston, the father of a Hills East senior and freshman and a Sunquam eighth-grader, has coached flag football, baseball and basketball, and supported his oldest daughter as she competed in dance. As his commitments wound down, the opening on the school board came up, he said. (Continued on page A13)
Road Safety Debate Returns By Danny Schrafel dschrafel@longislandernews.com
When Laura Glen moved to Round Swamp Road in 1999, an unsettling development quickly emerged. “We immediately had accidents right in front of my driveway,” she said. A recent rash of spectacular crashes only drew renewed attention to the stretch of road that connects Huntington and Melville. A head-on crash Aug. 20 injured four, and a landscaping truck tipped near Manetto Hill Road on Aug. 27. Since last year, Glen has reached out Town Hall officials with emails, including pictures of wrecks as they happen, to drive her point home and demand action. Noting that children wait for school buses with their parents every day along the stretch, she is urging the town board to act – and act quickly. “I’m not letting go until I see it happen,” she vowed. “It’s the principle of it.” A major contributing factor, she argued, is a sharp, hilly bend on Round Swamp Road just hundreds of feet north of her house. While the speed limit is 20 mph for that bend, there is also hardly any shoulder – two feet at most at the widest point – so if a vehicle breaches the double-yellow line on the two-lane road, there are few options to navigate the stretch safely. “Some of it is speeding, yes. Some of it is drivers texting,” Glen said. “But it’s so narrow there. Even this traffic light – there’s still going to be accidents because there’s no way for you to move over because there’s no shoulder.” Glen said she first began lobbying Town Hall for relief in the early 2000s and rejoined the fight last winter, which began the process toward installing a new traffic light and four traffic feedback signals. The traffic light, Transportation and Traffic Safety director Steve McGloin said, is a rest-on-red signal, designed to reward drivers who follow the speed limit with uninterrupted driving. Those signals should be in place in about two months, officials said.
Melville’s Laura Glen explains how a Cadillac SUV crashed into a tree in front of her home in late May 2011. She is urging the Town Board to widen Round Swamp Road, but town traffic experts say that will counteract new traffic calming measures they’re implementing. “It’s red on all sides. As vehicles approach, there’s detectors that detect a vehicle 400 feet or so out,” he explained. “If you approach at 30 mph, you’ll hit the detector and by the time you get to the signal, it’ll turn green so you don’t have to stop. If you’re going faster than 30, it’ll still be red when you get to the signal.” A pair of driver feedback signs will be installed at the intersection of Westvale Lane and Round Swamp Road, while the other two will be located near Kingsley Road. Numerous curve signs alert drivers to the 20 mph bend near Glen’s home. And traffic-calming markings – white paint hashmarks up and down Round Swamp Road – were added last week. A relatively new concept in traffic control,
McGloin said they are designed to give the driver the impression that they are going faster than they really are. Glen said the traffic light and feedback signals should help calm traffic, especially on the southbound side. She still has concerns, however, about the flow of northbound traffic, and argued the shoulder should be widened to allow drivers room to navigate an emergency. “If northbound traffic gets close, southbound does a knee-jerk reaction [and goes off the road],” she said. But McGloin said the driver feedback signs should address some of her northbound concerns. “Any cars northbound will hit this driver (Continued on page A13)
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