Power Outage Town Hall Meeting

Last week I took part in a town meeting about the power outage we had in many parts of Bethlehem in Mid-December. Many Bethlehem residents came to the meeting to talk about their continuing problems with power provision through National Grid. I listened and took down notes -- but most people agreed that a core solution to the problems that exist is burying power lines. The meeting was lead by Town Supervisor Jack Cunningham and attended by Councilmembers Kyle Kotary and Sam Messina as well as Planning Board members John Smolinksy and Kate Powers.

I asked a question about historical staffing levels at National Grid's predecessor Niagara Mowhawk versus its staffing levels today. I believe that the process of bringing people in from other areas means that time need to be spent transporting people instead of responding to the crisis in front of them. The representative from National Grid said that she did not know an answer to my question about comparative staffing levels.

At the beginning of my question I also thanked all of our first responders and volunteers who helped out at Town Hall. I spent some time working in Town Hall and can say that everyone there did a great job in assisting people. I live on Elsmere, so I knew that our fire response personnel were put serving the community all weekend and into the beginning of the week -- a fact confirmed by Jack Brennan, our Town Director of Emergency Management.