Thursday, October 1, 2026
Two additional members of East Rockaway’s Department of Public Works will be granted the power to issue appearance tickets as part of their duties in enforcing local laws.
At their March 12 meeting, the Village Board of Trustees voted unanimously to amend section 11-1 of the village code, effective at the end of April. As of now, the superintendent of public works, Kevin Conklin, is the only member of the department who can issue summonses. Conklin said that the two people who will be given this responsibility have not yet been named, but will most likely be two senior members of the DPW.
“This mayor and this board are very [serious about] taking care of the cleanliness of the village because it’s a quality-of-life issue,” Conklin said. “They want to make sure that everybody is following the rules and the regulations of keeping the village clean — which in the long run does save [money] as well because this way, we don’t have to have people out cleaning it as much.”
Conklin said that members of his staff would issue tickets only for infractions relating to the work of their department, under the Garbage, Rubbish and Refuse chapter of the village code.
The chapter cites guidelines for the use of containers and regulations governing garbage disposal, recycling and littering in public places, among other local laws.
“What we have now is a crew that goes out and does the daily cleaning of the town,” Conklin explained. “They go out, and if any garbage is laying in the street, they pick it up. They basically make sure the town has a good cleanliness … those guys are ones who notice — unfortunately, when people are putting untied bags out, or leaving it out at times when they’re not supposed to.”
State Department of Environmental Conservation regulations required the village to install filters in its storm drains in an effort to clean up its waterways. “What happens is all the articles of debris and the garbage in the street keeps blowing into the storm drains,” Conklin said, “and it clogs up those filters even quicker, and requires them to be cleaned out even quicker.”
