Possible Storm Next Weekend Has Patchogue Officials Pondering Main Street Cleanup Plan

PATCHOGUE, NY — After Mother Nature dumped up to 9.7 inches in some parts of the greater Patchogue area, officials are now tasked with deciding where to place the piles of snow along Main Street in Patchogue Village, given freezing temps will continue, and another storm is expected to hammer the region this coming weekend.

The village's Department of Public Works had workers distributing salt on Saturday night, and then they came in early Sunday morning and worked until 10 p.m. Workers then resumed operations at 5 a.m., salting roads and pushing snow, but the cleanup was complicated by the rain and sleet at the end of the day.

"Nature does what nature wants to do, and we have to do what we have to do," Mayor Paul Pontieri said.

On Monday afternoon, workers were still out cleaning up.

"One of the big problems that we have is people who clean their sidewalks, and the driveways into the streets," Pontieri said. "So we got to keep picking stuff up."

"It was a big storm, and what my understanding is that they're telling us there's another one next weekend," he added.

Officials must decide within the next few days what to do with all the snow that's been piled up, and that depends on the weather moving forward, he said, adding, that the village could move the piles somewhere else or leave the snow where it is.

It was a easier "back in the day" when Main Street was more of a commercial district, and the village could shut it down from midnight to 6 a.m., but it's hard now with all of the restaurants and bars, Pontieri explained.

Either way, Main Street has to be accessible.

"It's not a simple decision, but one that has to be made," he said. "It's something that depends upon what we see in future storms. If there's a big storm coming again next weekend, we got to do something over the next three or four days."