Beach touts progress in village address

Lynbrook Mayor Alan Beach announced plans during his State of the Village Address to clean up the town as it experiences an influx of new residents.

Hosted by the Chamber of Commerce on Oct. 18 at Livorno restaurant, Beach addressed several problems he was able to solve or is in the process of solving. He plans to overhaul parts of the town to make them safer and more inviting to the public, similar to Lynbrook train station renovations.

“The fact that we did get a waiting station for both sides is really great and to do improvements on the cement, we stopped it from falling down, getting people in the head, and damaging vehicles,” Beach said.

With the new renovations, other issues came to light. According to Beach, the waiting areas at the station are heated, attracting the homeless to a new place to sleep. He said the MTA police force dwindled due to the pandemic, making it difficult to remove the homeless from the heated waiting areas.

Lynbrook police are “constantly at the train station” moving the homeless to a different location.

“There is a program that will get those people in a location, but they don’t want to go,” Beach said.

Along with the homeless population surge, pigeons have been showing up in droves and leaving behind a huge mess.

Pigeon droppings have been seen all over both walkways at the Lynbrook train station, and, Beach said, “It’s unsightly and it’s just rude.” He is looking to clean the mess quickly.

With an increase in new residents, one of Beach’s priorities is to make the village more appealing. He said

Since Jan. 9, 2019, 30 businesses have opened.

These businesses opened on Atlantic Avenue and Beach is please with the appearance of the street. Beach encouraged the Chamber of Commerce to try to attract more “mom and pop” stores in the village with the goal to have the community have a “family” feel to it.

Beach asked the chamber to start a committee that searches for family-owned businesses that could open up a store in Lynbrook.

“What I’m asking again, if the chamber can have a committee of two or three people to work with the Building Department Superintendent, Brian Stanton,” Beach said. “They could guide us into the direction we want to go in.”

Chamber President Cory Hirsch said he was excited about the new businesses that have opened up in Lynbrook. “We, the Chamber of Commerce, are so thrilled that new businesses are expanding or moving into Lynbrook or opening up for the first time in Lynbrook,” said Hirsch, who noted that there are a lot less empty buildings in the village and Atlantic Ave has “new storefronts being revitalized.”

While family-owned stores are very important to Beach, he is also looking to bring well-known chain restaurants to the town, which include Chipotle and Chick-fil-A.

“I’m trying to get quality places into our village that would be a great location for anybody,” Beach said.

With the increase in businesses, Beach is facing, head-on, the parking issue in the village.

“At night we need additional parking,” Beach said. He said there are new parking garages in places like Saratoga that look like “nice buildings” and he wants to bring that to Lynbrook. People have been illegally parking due to the lack of parking spots, which has caused the village to start issuing more parking tickets.

The village lost revenue due to the Covid-19 pandemic, so along with raising taxes, the Lynbrook police became more strict on issuing tickets to make up for that money.

“We are getting, unfortunately, your tickets and we make money on the tickets,” Beach said. “We have a lot of people at Sunrise Highway that speed and the police are out there so we are pushing safety.”

Speeding is an issue police have been cracking down on, but Beach is also pushing for the police to give out tickets for those who jaywalk. “We’ve had a couple of people get hit by cars because they walked out in the middle of the street,” Beach said. “You have to follow the rules and you have to be responsible.”

Beach is trying to limit these jaywalking incidents by making crossing safer and more accessible. “I would like to see a crosswalk on Atlantic Avenue,” Beach said. “The traffic comes down there trying to make that light, and they just come down so fast.”

Safety continues to be a priority for Beach as he got to the bottom of a major rat infestation that took over Lynbrook in recent years.

“It seems that the colonies during COVID did not have enough food,” Beach said. “So they dispersed. Some left and some made Lynbrook their homes.”

A colony of rats was found on Broadway, which Beach acted fast to remove. “The rats had a borough of about 30 holes that we could obviously see,” Beach said. “So we called PSE&G and they came, they cleaned out all the shrubbery, they put traps over there, and waited a while to put different chemicals in there to disperse the rats.”

The campaign to get rid of the rats is working, according to Beach, and the borough on Broadway will be turned into a park.

“We’ll put some sort of planting area, some benches, spruce it up a little bit,” Beach said. He wants to make Broadway and the village overall look more appealing to visitors.

With cleaning up the village, there have been plenty of early-morning noise complaints by neighbors woken up by the sound of leaf blowers.

“I suggested to the board, why don’t you just do quadrants where the west end, south side, east side, north side of the village clean their lawn on different days,” Beach said. “This way, we don’t have to listen to the leaf blowers every single day. It just seems unfair.”

Beach continues to ask the board for help with his agenda to make Lynbrook look inviting to residents, visitors, and people passing through.