By Jeff Lipton
The nearly two feet of snow that fell on the Five Towns on Presidents Day left villages with a hefty cleanup bill that will dramatically impact their budgets. Combined with the two other major storms that hit this season, the Feb. 17 blizzard put some villages way over budget.
The massive cleanup effort in the Village of Cedarhurst continued through last Wednesday and Thursday, as workers cleared sidewalks, streets and municipal parking lots and tons of snow was hauled to Cedarhurst Park, where it was dumped and left to melt.
It's killing me with my budget, said Cedarhurst Mayor Andrew Parise, estimating that about 400 tons of salt was spread over village streets to prevent them from icing over.
Parise said that during the latest storm, more than 15 workers were paid triple time and a half for working overtime on the holiday. The total tab came to more than $21,000. Added to the cleanup bill from previous storms this season, the total cost tops $33,000, in a year when the village budgeted about half that amount for snow removal, Parise said.
It's well over, Parise said. We'll have to make it up, or do without something, or cut someplace else. In the seven years that he has served as mayor, he said, he has not raised taxes, but the unexpected expenditures may leave him no choice. He said the budget picture would become clearer next month, when villages must submit their budget proposals.
I haven't raised taxes since I've been mayor, but the money has to come from somewhere, Parise said. Otherwise we have to cut back [on services]. Who the hell figured we would have this kind of winter? For a number of years we've had nothing.
Parise said he would apply for aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, since the county was declared a state of emergency, but he isn't hanging his hopes on obtaining the funds to offset last week's cleanup bill.
The Village of Atlantic Beach spent about twice as much as its entire seasonal snow-removal budget of $10,528. It'll be way over, about double, said village Clerk Emily Siniscalchi. We got away with it last year, but this year we really got hit.
Mayor Stephen Mahler said, We're all spoiled. We've had surpluses in our budget all these years. He added that in the past eight years, taxes have gone up about 2 percent. This year there will probably be a rise, Mahler said, for all additional expenses and snow removal on top of everything else.
He said that village residents also will be footing the bill for about $1 million in renovations to Village Hall. For most communities, this will be a very bad budget year, Mahler said.
The new county assessments will also sap Atlantic Beach's budget, as the village will shell out untold legal fees to meet challenges of the tax assessments by homeowners. The new county assessments are going to be very unfair to villages, Mahler said.
The Village of Lawrence spent about $15,000 to clear the snow from the 28 miles of village streets during the latest storm and has spent a total of about $40,000 for snow removal so far this season. The village budgeted about $80,000 for the cleanup.
We're in good shape, said Peter Overs, Lawrence Village administrator. It's just a matter of anticipating what's going to happen. We try to think ahead a little bit.
If the money is not spent, it goes back into the general fund.
The cleanup costs aren't as high for smaller villages such as Woodsburgh, Hewlett Bay Park, Hewlett Harbor and Hewlett Neck, which have fewer streets to clear and usually use their regular maintenance workers to clear the roads.
We do our own, said a Hewlett Harbor official. We got one guy who was paid double-time for 26 or 27 straight hours last Monday and Tuesday. We budget so much money a year for snow removal, to sand and salt the roads. We didn't use anything last year.
The snow removal cost Nassau County $325,000 in overtime, county spokesperson David Chauvin said. On Sunday, Feb. 16, snow removal came to $7,000 an hour. But on Presidents Day, overtime and holiday pay more than doubled the cost, to $15,000 an hour.
Officials in the Town of Hempstead, which covers Woodmere, Inwood, Hewlett, North Woodmere, North Lawrence and Meadowmere Park, said it would be a couple of weeks before they knew the toll the snow has taken on the town budget.
