Greenport residents can now pay all their utility bills online or by phone, plans for this summer’s Dances in the Park are underway and the price of carousel rides is rising, village officials said at a work session last week. 

“It’s something that a number of people in the community have been asking for for quite a while,” said Mayor Kevin Stuessi, who made a campaign promise to take village utility bill paying online, in an interview after the meeting. 

The service can be accessed through the homepage of the village website or at invoicecloud.com/VillageofGreenportNY. Residents who want to pay by phone can call 866-766-0261.

At the work session, officials also passed a resolution rehiring Lisa Otis to manage McCann’s Campground this year. 

Greenport Village Board member Lily Dougherty-Johnson said the Dances in the Park committee has met twice so far to plan this year’s free summer concerts on the Mitchell Park boardwalk. 

“We’re working with Friends of Mitchell Park to be our potential fiscal sponsor,” she said of the nonprofit founded in 2008. “And we have a lot of good new ideas — one of which is a Labor Day Battle of the Bands … where we have a few different bands, who then compete for a spot in next year’s lineup.”

She said the committee is also working with Friends of Mitchell Park on a plan to have more regularly scheduled hours of operation for the camera obscura, and hope to hold workshops there this summer. 

A camera obscura is a darkened room into which light enters through a small opening, projecting a live image onto a flat, circular table.

“In the modern version, the view outside is reflected by a mirror through a lens, which projects onto a viewing table,” reads a description on the village’s website. “Looking down at the table one sees a living, two-dimensional image of the outside scene, in full color.”

Greenport village is home to one of only about 50 public camera obscuras worldwide, according to its website. 

The board also passed a resolution — on the recommendation of the carousel committee — to raise the price of a ride. Effective June 1, the cost of a single carousel ride will rise to $3 from $2.50, and a book of 15 tickets will cost $30, up from $25.