The Great Neck board of trustees approved essential Department of Public Works projects at the village meeting on July 11.

Among the approved items were certain roads to be resurfaced, updated planter boxes and the rental of a Vac-Truck to clean the village’s catchment basin. One unapproved item mentioned – pocket parks – was said to need more consideration but is still a future goal of the trustees. The board expects all the projects to be done by the end of the summer.

The road resurfacing is expected to take place on Potters Lane, Wood Road, Beach Road, and parking field number four. Forest Row, which is in desperate need, was not approved as of yet because of work already taking place while Green Bay Terrace is still under construction.

Great Neck is piggybacking the Town of North Hempstead’s contract with Posillico Civil Inc., so they get a better rate. The money was already voted on in the latest capital budget and a resolution was passed.

“Roads are done annually on a schedule,” said Deputy Mayor Barton Sobel, “so on a 20-year schedule, all out roads are repaved in their entirety. The only thing that would interrupt that it if any particular road has significant damage that needs to be redone, I think Beach Road is one that was done less than 20 years ago and needs to be redone.”

Much of the roadwork is dependent on if roads are heavily trafficked or not, which the Department of Public Works notices and asks the board to address.

Another approved project was the installation of two updated planter boxes made of loose stone to be put in parking lot four. The planter boxes haven’t been updated for years and again the village will be piggybacking off the Town of Hempstead by using Castle Industries.

The last approved item was the request of the public works to rent a Vac-Truck to clean the catchment basin throughout the village of debris and clutter.

Board members noted the last time it was done was after some flooding before Hurricane Isaias. In total, 23 miles will be vacuumed. Afterward, the flow of runoff will go into the bay easier.

“Bottom line is we need to do this,” said Sobel.

The only unapproved project was a reoccurring idea that was originally brought up during COVID-19 called a pocket park. Although it was brought up again it is one of the projects that were not approved to be done over the summer because more consideration needs to be made logistically.

When it does get approved, the village will need to hire a parking engineer to redesign the area and find new spots. The holdup is mainly because the road may become one to two feet narrower.

“Before we do that,” Sobel said, “we were at some point in the past examining whether we could get another lane of parking in that lot between the two end roads. Before we approve this, we should probably take a look to see and get a final word.”

Overall, Sobel said,  “Anything that improves our streetscape, improves our parking lots, is going to improve life for our residents, even in smaller increments but to say we’re excited about it. I think that we’re relieved and we’re happy about it. Some of the bigger ones I think that we do get excited about. This is nice. To have proper benches put in, and proper planters to be put in, where we’ve had kind of a deteriorating situation for several years. So, I’m glad to see those go and to have ones go in.”