Hewlett Harbor Concerned About "Swiss Cheese" Roads

Hewlett Harbor trustees continued their push to get utilities to fix the roads properly after they break up the street to do installations and repairs.

“The roads are always being chopped up,” Trustee Michael Yohai said. “Our roads look like Swiss cheese.”

The board plans to have the village’s road superintendent catalog all trouble spots and send a report to Verizon, giving the utility a time limit in which to address the situation.

Trustees are also continuing to debate the merits of curb-to-curb repairs and whether they should be mandated.

Mayor Mark Weiss questioned the necessity of curb-to-curb repairs.

“I’m not exactly sure why a curb-to-curb repair is physically better than any other kind of repair,” he said in response to differing opinions from board members. “Are we doing it for aesthetics or because it’s a better repair?”

Trustee Tom Cohen said he thinks the village will get push back from utilities if it mandates curb-to-curb repairs.

In order to explore options, Weiss said he plans to check out a new road repair surfacing technique that was recently used in Woodmere.

Trustee Kenneth Kornblau said he recently observed someone from a utility marking up areas of the village with orange spray paint, which he said has been an ongoing problem throughout different areas of the village.

“I saw him going onto people’s properties and spraying away,” Kornblau said. “When I asked him how long the spray paint would last, he said ‘a few months.’ I said, ‘a few months is a really bad answer.’”

The board is going to inform utilities in writing that the village must be notified whenever they or their contractors are going to do any kind of work.

“If the utilities are giving work to subcontractors, and they are doing preliminary work, and they are damaging private property or leaving unsightly marks for a long period of time, it’s a big problem,” Kornblau said. “We do not need a 4-foot high orange ‘T’ on green boxes that are supposed to blend in with nature.”

Weiss threatened repercussions if the utilities don’t comply.

“If we don’t get notice from the utilities,” he said, “the village is going to view this as vandalism and destruction of our property, and we will act accordingly.”