On Thursday, April 12th, I attended the Con Edison storm(s) follow-up meeting at their headquarters in Rye, NY.  Jeff Coleman, our Director of D.E.S. (highway) joined me at this meeting.  Also in attendance were many other elected Supervisors and Mayors throughout Westchester County.

The President of Con Edison was present. (The CEO was not).  Many other Con Ed managers attended, as well.

After a presentation by the Con Ed President, Tim Cawley, we were all given the opportunity to state our many issues regarding their lack of preparedness and planning for these storms.  Also, I mentioned the incorrect information that was put up on their website.  For example, when they posted that 90% of properties in the County would have power restored by Tuesday, March 6^th at 11:00 PM.  The storm hit us on Friday, March 2^nd and power was not completely restored in Cortlandt for 10 to 12 days.  Outrageous!

This information if you recall turned out to be incorrect and I told them this at the meeting. I said that we had 4,000 homes without power and 70 roads closed when the Friday storm first hit. When the Wednesday intense snowstorm hit us we still had over 3,000 homes without power.

When finally the outside companies from Canada, Ohio, etc. came in to assist Con Ed on that Thursday, Friday and Saturday (March 8,9,10) we saw some progress. They need to plan and better prepare for these major storms, just like our town crews do. This mutual aid needs to come in earlier.

At the end of the meeting, I requested a summary from the Con Edison President of the meeting and an action plan from them to improve upon restoration of power outages in the future.

                                                                                    Linda Puglisi

                                                                                    Supervisor