Brighter outlook for Route 25A street lights?
Joe Evans holds a collection of letters he's received from various officials in his efforts to get working street lights on Northern Boulevard in Manhasset.
Newsday photo by Gwen Young
It’s been almost three months since we first wrote about a complaint by Manhasset resident Joe Evans about lights on Northern Boulevard.
Evans has trying for more than four years to fix a street lighting problem on Route 25A by repeatedly contacting state, town and village officials.
The non-working lights that border the Villages of Munsey Park, Flower Hill and Roslyn Estates leave the road dark and dangerous at night, Evans said.
In early May, North Hempstead Supervisor Jon Kaiman told us the problem shouldn’t be hard to fix.
But for years the issue has been trapped in Long Island’s morass of overlapping jurisdictions. The state Department of Transportation sent Evans letters saying the villages are responsible for the lights. However, LIPA said the Town of North Hempstead was the municipality of record. Kaiman said that while the town could easily take on the lighting maintenance, the villages would have to sign agreements allowing the town to do the work.
We first published Evans’ complaint in early May, after Kaiman said he’d meet with the Munsey Park mayor to determine a course of action.
We checked on things last month and learned that the meeting didn't happen because of conflicting schedules.
Recently, we called again to ask for an update. In an e-mail, town spokesman Collin Nash wrote: “While a LIPA map shows that the lights in question, located on the north side of Northern Boulevard and Copely Road, are on TONH property, it’s not clear-cut from the town’s standpoint that that ndeed is the case. Northern Boulevard is a state road and as such the rights of way falls under the town’s jurisdiction`. That said, the town is willing to take responsibility for maintaining the lights but we need authorization from the three bordering villages... The town is now in the process of preparing and negotiating an inter-municipal agreement with the three villages to grant us easement to maintain the lights. In the meantime, we are trying to establish protocol to begin maintenance of the lights before finalizing the agreement.”
The agreements, Nash wrote, could be drawn up within four to six weeks.
Stay tuned.
