Five Towns villages spend want they need to remove snow

The refrain from residents, no matter where they live, is plow the snow, according to Five Towns village mayors, and that is what the villages do as they budget snow removal money annually.

In Cedarhurst, the current budget for snow removal is $60,000 and before this storm, Mayor Andrew Parise said the village had spent $7,000. “We will probably spend or possibly less depending on overtime,” Parise. “You have to plow the streets and you can’t tell the people you don’t have the money.”

Atlantic Beach Mayor Stephen Mahler said the village annually budgets $22,000 for snow clean-up, which he said “is always very sufficient for us.” “If we need more we take it from the general fund,” said Mahler, noting that the board takes its financial responsibilities seriously and “budgets cautiously.”

That vigilance has helped the village gain an AA+ bond rating from Standard & Poor’s, Mahler said. The rating measures the financial strength of a municipality or company, and its ability to pay back loans.

The Village of Lawrence had its workers perform four passes of the road in the past 24 hours totaling about 120 man hours in overtime, according to Mayor Martin Oliner. The village has budgeted between $50,000 and $75,000 for snow removal in the past three years. What the total numbers for this clean-up will not be finalized until next week, Oliner said. “The money is important, but it’s more important to clean up the streets,” the mayor said. “The guys did a very good job and they should be paid for it.”

Mark Weiss, the mayor of Hewlett Harbor, said it does not matter what a village budgets for snow removal, it must be done. “Villages such as ours have a certain number of responsibilities and one of them is snow removal,” he said. “We are very fortunate that our roads superintendent knows what he is doing and we have a good reputation and in the Five Towns and the county for doing a good job.”