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MOUNT KISCO, N.Y. — The damage caused during the October snowstorm, coupled with related repair and pickup expenses, will cost an estimated $100,000, Village Manager Jim Palmer said Friday.
The cost will not be covered by the state, which declared on Thursday that the overall estimated cost of the damage fell nearly $16.5 million short of what would be required for the state to step in.
“In a word to me: devastating. Our estimated expenses, and we still have them coming in, will be approximately $100,000,” Palmer said. “In many respects, the October storm was worse than Tropical Storm Irene. One hundred thousand dollars for just a small community like ours is just devastating.”
The expenses are still being measured mostly because of the tipping fees that continue to be scaling upward, along with “overtime, all the public workers, police, renting chippers and other machines to lift the debris up with grapples and loaders, damage to light fixtures and all the way down to lost inventory in the senior center,” Palmer explained. He also noted the tipping fees alone will amount to “tens of thousands of dollars.”
The damage done in New York State amounted to approximately $8.4 million, according to the New York State Office of Emergency Management. The office assessed the damage and notified the municipalities on Thursday in an email through Jennifer Wacha, the director of the Office of Emergency Management in Westchester. In the email, Wacha explained Mount Kisco, and every other municipality, will not receive funding because the state did not reach the damage threshold of “just over $25 million.”
Palmer, though, has not given up in his quest to find help in funding the large tab and has continued to keep in touch with Wacha on a nearly daily basis. Along with Wacha, Palmer has kept in touch with communities around him, trying to get them to document as many expenses as possible. If there is no state funding, Palmer is unsure as to what could happen to the town’s budget.
“Obviously the storm wasn’t something we budgeted for. We have overtime budgeted,” he explained, “but we’re going to have to try to make those costs up to stay within budget and we’re going to have to have those expenses made up somewhere else.”
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