Up for vote November 6:

$1.85 million bond for purchase of parking lot for Sanitary District 6 HQ

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For decades, the roughly 150 people who work for the Town of Hempstead’s Sanitary District 6 have parked their cars and their garbage trucks in the lot across the street from the district’s offices, at 80 Cherry Valley Ave. in West Hempstead. The district has rented the lot from the Village of Garden City, which owns it, for more than 25 years.

Now the village wants to sell the property, and the sanitary district — which serves West Hempstead, Elmont, Franklin Square, Garden City South and South Floral Park — is hoping to buy it.

At the Oct. 1 town board meeting, a public hearing was scheduled for Nov. 12 to authorize a $1.85 million bond to finance the purchase and make improvements on the property — pending district residents’ approval. They will vote on the bond on Nov. 6, from 3:30 to 7:30 p.m., at district headquarters.

According to Nicholas Martelli, the district’s operations manager, $1.4 million of the bond would be used to purchase the land, and the remainder would fund capital improvements — the replacement of asphalt and fencing, the installation of lighting, and other work.

If the measure passes, “the expense of purchasing the property isn’t going to fall exclusively on West Hempstead,” said Rosalie Norton, president of the West Hempstead Community Support Association. “It is going to be divided among all the communities within Sanitary District 6. West Hempstead will bear a smaller portion of the cost because there are other areas — like North Valley Stream, South Floral Park, Franklin Square and Elmont — that are so much larger than ours.”

According to Martelli, who spoke last week at a Community Support Association meeting, the district is currently renting the property for around $86,000 a year. That amount is already included in the district’s annual budget, and would be used to pay off the 30-year bond, which, Martelli said, would have an interest rate of 3.5 percent.

“The problem we have is, there’s over 150 cars every day,” Martelli said. “If a developer buys the lot and puts a building on it, we have nowhere to put our cars. Plus, that piece of land has a Garden City address. Developers would buy that and put up anything just to have a Garden City address.”

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