New Hyde Park Deputy Mayor Robert Lofaro clarified the budgetary allocation for village of Department of Public Works snow removal to dispell possible misunderstandings he said were prompted by a recent report in a local newspaper.
“There’s been a lot of misunderstanding around the cost of snow removal. Every year we budget pretty much the same amount of money for snow removal,” he said.
Lofaro said the village annually earmarks $15,000 for personnel overtime and $10,000 for sand and salt, with a total of $30,000 for all anticipated expenses, which he described as a “pretty conservative amount” for what is typically expended during winter seasons with light snowfalls.
A recent report in the New Hyde Park Herald Courier mistakenly reported the village incurred $30,000 in snow removal costs for the post-Christmas blizzard. The actual cost was $16,900.
“On years when we get a lot, we’ll spend more than has been appropriated,” he said, explaining that expenses are then drawn from other budget lines, such as tree trimming. “If we don’t have any lines to borrow from, worst comes to worst we borrow.”
Lofaro indicated that the sequence of recent storms is a source of concern for the board.
“We do get concerned when we have several storms or we have storms on holidays. We look very carefully at the snow lines and try to expend it in a very conservative way,” Lofaro said, noting that the board anticipates exhausting that budgetary line annually to minimize taxes on residents.
“If we had three major storms, we could be in trouble on the overtime aspect of it,” Village of New Hyde Park Mayor Daniel Petruccio said.
Petruccio said the village had considered snow insurance in the past, but had rejected the idea.
He praised DPW Superintendent Tom Gannon for his “creative” use of funds following the two recent snow storms.
Lofaro noted that there were also less evident costs associated with the preparation the village Department of Public Works has to undertake prior to each predicted snowfall.
“Getting those trucks prepared takes several hours to do so,” he said. “We had a situation that the weather forecasters said it was going to snow, and we spent as much time getting prepared and then unloading the sand and salt from the trucks because it did not snow.”
Preparation work includes DPW crews putting sand and salt down when snow starts falling, Lofaro said.
Lofaro neglected to note that a portion of snow removal costs are recovered from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
In other developments:
• The refurbished Willilam Gill Theatre on the second floor of New Hyde Park Village Hall will have its grand reopening on Jan. 31 at 8 p.m. with residents invited for performances by local musicians. Light refreshments will be served.
• The village official largely responsible for overseeing the revamped theater project, Village Clerk Pat Farrell, has resigned his position to take a position as village clerk in Floral Park. The board officially accepted Farrell’s resignation.
• The village board is seeking to reschedule a meeting that was cancelled with the state Department of Transportation to review changes proposed changes for Jericho Turnpike in what is denoted as the village business district.
• The village board passed a resolution to pay recently retired DPW Superintendent Jim McCloat $45,764.25 from its contingency account for compensatory time accrued during his tenure.
