Residents might get aid for Irene costs

Some homeowners on Shelter Island may qualify for federal aid to repair damage caused by Hurricane Irene, Town Police Chief James Read reported to the Town Board at its work session on Tuesday. He said he had met with FEMA representatives on Monday and they had given him a website (DisasterAssistance.gov) and a phone number (1-800-621-3362) that residents can use to obtain information and file a claim.

He warned that “very few people on Shelter Island will qualify” for federal aid. Second homes are not covered, he noted, and FEMA will not pay for damage covered by car or homeowner insurance.

Chief Read also reported that FEMA would cover the town’s costs for taking in “private debris” at the Recycling Center in the wake of Irene, which totaled about $80,000 in revenue losses alone as of Tuesday, the Recycling Center’s Ron Jernick told the board. More than 1,300 tons of debris had been taken in since Irene, or about a normal two years’ worth of brush over a period of about two weeks, he said.

Also on Tuesday, the Town Board agreed to extend its moratorium on charging for Irene clean-up debris at the Recycling Center from Tuesday, when it had been scheduled to end, to the center’s closing at 5:30 p.m. on Sunday, September 18. Board members said there would be no further extensions of the fee waiver. Property owners with “extenuating circumstances,” they said, could apply to Highway Superintendent Mark Ketcham for an exemption.

Mr. Jernick and Chief Read, who is the town’s emergency preparedness coordinator, made their reports to the board the same day that Suffolk Executive Steve Levy announced on the county website that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) would make federal disaster assistance available to county residents and small businesses in the wake of Hurricane Irene.

“Hurricane damage knows no boundaries,” said Mr. Levy, “and we are grateful to all our elected representatives who lobbied for this declaration and the FEMA staff who visited our county yesterday to personally assess the conditions.”

According to the county, FEMA’s Individual Assistance declaration makes Suffolk County, its residents and business owners eligible for assistance to individuals, renters and households for documented non-insured losses up to $30,200; assistance for local governmental jurisdictions including not-for-profits that serve a public mission for debris removal, emergency protective actions and the repair or replacement of disaster-damaged facilities; a Hazard Mitigation Grant Program for governmental action taken to prevent or reduce long-term risk to life and property from natural hazards; and Small Business Administration (SBA) low-cost disaster loans.

Residents who think they are eligible must call FEMA’s toll-free number to register. The toll-free telephone numbers will operate from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. (local time) seven days a week until further notice.

Suffolk County will be opening Disaster Recovery Centers in the coming days to expedite the FEMA Individual Assistance process for those who are eligible for the help.

CABLEVISION

Joan Gilroy, a representative of Cablevision, came to Tuesday’s work session to explain the company’s phasing out of its analog signal for basic programming, which will require at least some customers to obtain cable boxes to continue receiving even basic programming. Eventually, all customers will be charged $6.95 a month for each box.

The boxes will be delivered free if customers request it or they can obtain them at the Cablevision stores in Southampton or Riverhead. Customers who have never had a cable box are entitled to two boxes free of charge for two years, Ms. Gilroy said; customers who already have a box may obtain up to three more free of charge for a year.

After those grace periods, the $6.95 fee per month for each box will be charged. The fee is regulated by the FCC so it is not likely to rise by large amounts at any one time, she told the Town Board.

The company has been operating with dual systems for delivering programming through its lines, she explained, one analog and one digital, which Cablevision in recent years upgraded to include fiber-optic lines. Any subscriber package that provides more than basic channels requires a cable box to receive the digital signal but, until now, the analog signal could be received and processed without a digital box.

She said the federal government in 2008 had encouraged cable companies to “go digital so the government could obtain analog bandwidth.” Cablevision announced in late 2008 that it would go 100-percent digital between 2009 and 2011, she said, and had completed the process in New York City and most of Long Island; it will next make the transition in Westchester. The digital signal, she said, was much clearer, had better sound, and allowed more programming and services to be provided because the signal is compressed.

Ms. Gilroy said there were about 2,400 Cablevision subscribers on Shelter Island and about 52 who do not have a cable box in their homes to receive digitally transmitted programming.

She said a story in last week’s Reporter about the digital transition had been accurate except for one point: it reported that even people with new digital TVs would need a box to continue to see basic programming. In fact, only people with older digital TVs without “QAM” tuners would need a digital box, she said.

That contradicts the experience of two customers known to the Reporter staff. In their cases, they were told by Cablevision customer service personnel on the phone that a box would be necessary for all TVs to receive any programs. In each case, those customers — one in North Haven and one in East Marion — had late-model digital TVs that displayed basic programming directly through a cable connection but, when their areas went all-digital, they lost the picture.

Ms. Gilroy explained in a phone interview Wednesday that only subscribers with basic programming will continue to see programming on their digital TVs after the analog signal is discontinued. Because the signals sent to subscribers with more expensive programming packages are encrypted, those customers will need cable boxes for every TV when analog is discontinued, even to see basic channels.

OTHER BUSINESS

In other business on Tuesday, the board:

• Heard a summary report on the town’s 4-poster program — aimed at killing ticks by swathing deer with permethrin as they feed on corn -— presented by Patricia Shillingburg, chair of the town’s Deer and Tick Committee, and Daniel Gilrein, an entomologist with the county’s Cornell Cooperative Extension Service, which managed the program. Cornell wildlife specialist Paul Curtis took part by speakerphone. Both said the program had proven the 4-poster highly effective at reducing the tick population.

As the board faces the 2012 budgeting season and making a decision on how much to spend on continuing the 4-poster program, Mr.Gilrein reviewed the findings of a final report released in May and put on line by the Cooperative Extension in June. The study found that tick populations significantly declined, for the most part, in areas where the deer-feeding 4-posters were set up, compared with the North Haven control site, where no 4-posters were used.

Ms. Shillingburg said “there are a lot fewer ticks on Shelter Island” thanks to the program. The Deer and Tick Committee is proposing that the town treat the entire Island every two years with 60 4-posters at a cost of $300,000 or $5,000 for each 4-poster unit. That would be $150,000 a year for treating half the Island each year.

One audience member who was not identified urged the board to use 4-posters to “eliminate ticks entirely” from the Island. He said there were residents who would underwrite the cost.

• Heard Supervisor Jim Dougherty report that the town would make short-term repairs to Oak Tree Lane, the road on Shell Beach that was partly undermined near its north end during Hurricane Irene’s passage as erosion gouged out beachfront owned by the Silver Beach Association. He said he had met with association officials and there had been discussion of the possibility of a “gift” to the town of the property, to increase the chances that grants would be available for long-term erosion control there. Mr. Dougherty said that the idea of a gift “was a stretch” and a “temporary fix is what we’re aiming for.”

• Heard the supervisor report that a committee had been formed to meet on October 3 with Councilwoman Chris Lewis to review the language of the proposed amendment to the zoning code to clarify the rules for pre-existing, non-conforming business uses — a hot topic among the business community, which stridently opposed any changes to the code when they were last reviewed at a public hearing. Mr. Dougherty said Lisa Shaw, Sean McLean, Mike Anglin and Punch Johnston had been named to the panel.

• Heard Councilman Glenn Waddington report that he would be meeting this week with the Town Trustees of Southold and Southampton to discuss strategy on whether “we want to continue the fight” against state interference with the individual fishing rights of towns that have royal charters dating to the 17th century granting them sole jurisdiction over their own waters and the products of those waters. The issue is the state’s requirement that saltwater fishermen register in order to meet federal requirements for obtaining data on fishing activities. The charter towns sued the state and won over a saltwater fishing license requirement, which the state has abandoned.