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November 27, 2009 | 12:20 PM
Upon waking Monday morning, Port Jefferson resident Joe Dombrowski heard machinery on his block in the Laurita Manor neighborhood. He looked out the window to see the Village Highway Department using heavy equipment to clear leaf bags and unbagged leaves from the street.
"This is the same equipment Mayor Garant was quoted in your newspaper saying the village didn't want to use because of potential damage to the roads," Dombrowski said in an email to Times Beacon Record Newspapers.
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| | | Port Jeff Highway Department workers use all means at their disposal to remove leaves from the streets by order of Mayor Margot Garant. Shown here, the operation Monday on Chuck Court. Photo courtesy of Joe Dombrowski. (click for larger version) | |
"I did direct the Highway Department to clean up the streets," Mayor Margot Garant said, and explained, "The streets need to be cleaned."
Garant, who claimed she had inherited the leaf bag program from the former Village Board, which had budgeted for it, said a final cost-benefit analysis after all the leaves have been cleaned — by around mid-December — would determine the future of the program. Leaf bags could become a voluntary option for those residents who don't mind. Garant explained the leaf bags themselves contain a component that speeds the composting process, and thus would help prolong the life of the village landfill.
The mayor said the leaf bags have already saved the Highway Department man-hours but added that if "the long-term benefit for our environment doesn't pay we'll go back to the old way."
But when Village Treasurer Don Pearce was asked how the leaf bag program had impacted the highway budget, he was at a loss to explain the mayor's comment. Is there such a budget line? "Not that I'm aware of," said Pearce, who was not able to locate it by press time.
Garant conceded a number of things had not been properly taken into
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| | | | The village landfill, used for biodegradable waste — including leaves — is located next to the driving range at the golf course at the Country Club at Harbor Hills.
Photo by Jennifer Choi. (click for larger version) | | |
account; for example, persons too sick to bag leaves; any difficulties bagging might place on the elderly; and additional costs to residents who are forced to hire landscapers to comply with the bagging. But the mayor said, "I'm really dismayed that people feel a service has been cut."
Back on Chuck Court, Dombrowski said, "This is the very essence of our complaints. After weeks of bagging and on day one of the official leaf removal, they went back to their old method. We could have spent just one day raking and blowing our leaves to the street for this type of removal. Instead we labored weeks of work doing the bagging, not to mention the cost of the bags that the village provided — plus the out-of-pocket expense for some of us who had to buy additional bags."
Read Dombrowski's letter to the editor on page A18.
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