Mineola Mayor’s Message: Snow, St. Patrick’s Parade and Library Partnership

The following are the opening remarks of Mineola Mayor Scott Strauss made during the public meeting of the Mineola Village Board on March 6, 2013:

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. First I’d like to congratulate our Irish-American Society for another spectacular St. Patrick’s Day celebration this past Sunday. The parade committee chairman, Jeff Clark and his staff as well as grand marshall Patrick J. Sexton and his aides did a great job putting it all together. The auxiliary police, DPW staff and all the volunteers that helped make this event successful, I also thank you. It’s great that this parade takes place in Mineola, this is the second time that it’s been here and hopefully will continue.

Tonight and tomorrow we have the chance of getting a decent amount of snow, it’s still up in the air as to what we’ll get, whether it’s going to be a rain event or a snow event. Although please, if we get two inches or more, please remove your vehicles from the roadways so the plows can come through and do their jobs. After the salt trucks and the spreaders come by, then you can put your vehicles back on the roads.

During the last storm we had out parking enforcement staff out writing snow violation summonses and will be doing so again should the weather give us that type of snowfall. Please folks, remove your vehicles from the roadways; I hope we don’t collect a dime in summonses, I hope we don’t have to write any summonses, but we need to have the roads cleared, so please, clear the roads. And also, please help your neighbors with their shoveling and clear out any hydrants, certainly from around where you live, your houses in close proximity to a hydrant, please clear them out. You don’t know when anything’s going to happen or when those hydrants are going to be needed.

Also, if you can refrain from blowing snow into the street, it would greatly help everybody. What happens is, after the plows come through or during, we blow the snow into the streets and then the street – or it could be even after the salt and sand spreader trucks come down – that the streets are cleared then we blow our snow back into the street, it freezes, it melts, it freezes, it melts, causes traffic condition on the street. We live on those blocks, folks and you’re causing a hazard for your own neighbors, so please refrain from doing that; blow your snow onto your grass.

Our library has formed a partnership of sorts with the library in Mineola, Texas. For the month of March we are displaying items that they have sent us such as info on their library as well as their town. These items will be on display in our library through the month of March. Please stop by and see the display.

This Sunday here at the community center is the junior fire department’s annual pasta dinner, it’s going to be held from noon to 5 p.m. Please come down, have a great meal, interact with your neighbors and support this great youth organization.

Lastly, this Sunday we will be changing our clocks ahead. Please take this time to also change the batteries in your smoke and CO detectors. It’s critical that you do this. These detectors, which are hopefully in all of our homes, go unnoticed in our daily lives, but they do need a little maintenance from time to time and that maintenance is just simply replacing a battery and you have to replace it before it dies. So please, change your clocks, change your batteries, be safe. Thank you.

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