Quogue Employee Gym Needs Additional Work

The Quogue Village Board has set aside an additional $38,000 in funding to complete ongoing renovations at the small gym utilized by the municipality’s police officers and volunteer firefighters, a project that has already cost the village $32,000.

At their meeting on Friday, board members approved the new funding to reinforce a roof beam at the gym, which sits behind the Village Police station on Jessup Avenue. A portion of that money will also go to purchasing new workout equipment, paint and spackling supplies, as well as a new rubber floor for the gym.

In September, the board set aside $32,000 to fix the building’s foundation and roof.

“We did not expect it to cost this much, but you know how these things are,” Quogue Mayor Peter Sartorius said of the $70,000 project.

Originally, the plan was to use only money from a specially dedicated fund to upgrade the equipment inside the facility. Those plans changed a few months back when Quogue Police Lieutenant Christopher Isola said he noticed that the building appeared slanted and asked the village’s building inspector, William Nowak, to take a look. Mr. Nowak determined that the building, which is used by about 40 people, needed repairs to its sole plates, which reinforce the foundation, and roof before any work could be done inside.

The plates and roof repairs cost $32,000 and that money came from the village’s Tifft Fund; that fund was created when Mary Tifft, a village resident who died in the early 1970s, willed more than $200,000 to Quogue to benefit its police and fire departments.

Now, the Village Board has approved spending up to $16,000 of taxpayer money to reinforce the roof beam, as well as buy the necessary supplies to complete interior renovations. But Mr. Sartorius said Monday that he expects that work to cost about $8,000—or half of what the board has set aside.

The remaining $22,000 will come out of the Tifft Fund and cover the cost of a new rubber floor and new equipment.

The work is expected to wrap up in early 2015. The facility, which was open during the first phase of construction, will be closed periodically during the final phase.

After receiving no public comments, the Quogue Village Board on Friday approved a law that increases the penalties incurred by business or property owners based on the number of false alarms triggered by automatic fire or security systems.

For alarms other than fire alarms, such as automatic security or gas alarms, violating property owners will not be charged for the first offense, $50 for a second, $75 for a third, $100 for a fourth, $150 for a fifth, and $200 for a sixth and all subsequent false alarms. Prior to the change, the village fined offenders $50 per offense while still giving them a break on the first false alarm.

Under the new law, false fire alarms would be billed on an annual basis. The charge would be $50 for the first false alarm, $250 for the second, $500 for the third, and $1,000 for the fourth and each additional false alarm.

Prior to the change, each business and property owner was permitted one false fire alarm without being fined. Multiple offenders, meanwhile, were charged on the following basis over the same three-year period: $250 for a second false alarm, $500 for a third and $1,000 for a fourth.