I can’t believe I’m writing this – but I’d like to commend Con Ed for the way they handled the power outages in Greenburgh on Christmas day.
After the storm a number of residents of Greenburgh contacted me complaining that they were out of power. After Con Ed was notified of the power outages, they promptly sent crews to repair the outages. I spent some time spot checking neighborhoods where there were outages and personally observed Con Ed crews working hard to restore the power on a holiday!
It wasn’t difficult to find Con Ed crews working almost immediately after every outage was reported to them. In most cases power was restored within a few hours. Con Ed was prepared for the storm – they had more crews available than they had during past storms and their municipal liaisons provided updates and explanations when there were unusual circumstances (Hawthorne Way in Hartsdale for example, where a 60 foot tree fell down damaging the transformers-making it harder to immediately restore power).
Over the years I have been highly critical of Con Ed after every major storm. I joined other officials from around the county and state condemning Con Ed for being unprepared after every storm. Speaking personally, I’ve been out of power for over a week at least three times in recent years, most recently this summer. In the past we didn’t see Con Ed repair trucks for days and ratepayers and officials were provided with inaccurate information.
It’s my hope that Con Ed will continue to work hard to improve their responses to power outages. Their efforts on December 25th, 2020 was a great start. The company deserves our thanks for trying and learning from their previous mistakes.
Paul Feiner
Greenburgh Town Supervisor
