Williston Park Mayor Paul Ehrbar said Monday that it is not outsiders that are the cause of an ongoing issue of drivers running stop signs in the village, it is the residents.
“It’s our own residents. We need to be cautious while we’re driving. We need to slow down,” Ehrbar said at a Board of Trustees meeting. “We need to try our best to send our messages to our neighbors.”
He continued, “Some residents follow the rules and some residents don’t.”
Ehrbar said that he gets frustrated seeing drivers go through stop signs and not slowing down. He said he goes to Texas to see his grandchildren and notices that everybody stops at stop signs and red lights and slows down in school zones.
“They just have a different way of doing things than we do in New York. In New York, we’re in a hurry to get everywhere,” Ehrbar said.
Bob Mitchell, president of the Williston Park Civic Association, commended the board and the Nassau County Police Department’s 3rd Precinct for issuing 23 moving violations in the past month.
Ehrbar said that he has asked officers of the 3rd Precinct, which has its headquarters in Williston Park, to avoid main roads such as Hillside Avenue, but rather loop around the area and keep an eye on village roads such as Park Avenue and Center Street.
Trustee William O’Brien said that two violations would have been a “busy month” in prior years, but the 23 violations are an improvement.
Mitchell, a former police officer, said that during the 1970s the village saw up to 60 moving violations a month.
Umberto Mignardi, a spokesman for the civic association, said that the burden may be on the residents to spread the message and urge residents to obey traffic laws.
O’Brien said that the solution may be to make “exaggerated stops” saying, “If we stop the person behind us stops.” He stressed that village board members are not asking neighbors to create conflict with another neighbor.
O’Brien said the civic association can communicate via email blasts and social media posts and publicizing the problem in local papers.
Ehrbar said the village moves speeding signs every week and is still in talks with traffic engineers about what the village can do to remedy speeding and failure to stop at signs in the village.
