To all resident of Mount Pleasant3/8/18

The past week has been a difficult one for so many of our residents and continuing, with power outages, fallen trees and inaccessible roadways.

I apologize for my lack of public communication through the social media’s it’s not my forte and have relied on Councilman Nick Dipaolo to assist me, but we have learned a valuable lesson on improving our emergency alerts and web site notifications.In the future we will need to dedicate an individual to share the necessary information to the public in emergency situations.

Unfortunately we have not had much positive information to share, we had over three thousand residents still without power Tuesday evening and we were down to seven hundred yesterday morning. After the snow storm we were back to having over fourteen hundred again without power, additional trees down and more inaccessible roads. There has been much misinformation going around also and some by Con Ed personnel that they cannot do anything before the town removes the tree. Our Highway Department cannot touch a tree if there is a wire involved, once Con Ed determines the wire is safe then we will follow to remove the tree as they have been doing an exceptional job of.

Electrical crews were pulled away late yesterday due to the horrible conditions and for safety concerns that was understandable.

My focus has been in the field accessing the damage and pushing Con Edison to get their crews to the damage as soon as possible.

That effort has not been an easy one; Con Edison’s communication has been totally unacceptable.

And their website, where they tell everyone to go to rarely works.

Crews that have been sent here from other parts of the country have had little or no communication with our muni reps that have been stationed at our Emergency Operations Center since Saturday. They have been dispatched by the main office at Con Edison to all parts of the county without notification to the town.

I have been all over our town with our superintendentof highways Peter Sciliano finding crews from out of state that we had no idea were even dispatched.

I have been in constant communication with the Governor’s office,State Senator Terrance Murphy and our County Legislator Margaret Cunzio to put additional pressure on Con Ed, their assistance has been tremendous.

There will be some major ramifications for Con Edison following this cleanup and heads will roll, there has been absolutely no improvement with their communications as was promised after Sandy.

I appreciate your patience and understanding and look forward to closing this chapter as soon as possible so all of our lives can get back to normal.

Carl Fulgenzi

Town Supervisor