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BID to hire someone to cleanup downtown

ANDREW LEPRE PHOTO Downtown Riverhead looking south.

The Riverhead Business Improvement District’s Management Association is planning to hire someone to help clean up downtown Riverhead.

At its meeting last Wednesday, the BIDMA voted to spend up to $2,000 to hire a part-time person to work seven days a week for 2.5 hours per day, according to BIDMA executive director Diane Tucci. Those hours could also be split between two part-timers.

Steve Shauger, BIDMA’s president, said he’d had spoken to officials with the Patchogue Village BID, which has had a full-time employee for over a decade whose job is to keep the village clean. 

Mr. Shauger said the part-time work for Riverhead’s BID will start immediately and continue until sometime in the fall, for a total of about 18 weeks. 

The $2,000 cost will come from money generated by the BID’s Alive on 25 events and from sponsorship money it received from BNB Bank, Ms. Tucci said. 

“Right now, you can walk by a vacant storefront and there may be a pile of leaves or garbage in front of it and there’s nobody there to clean it up,” she said. “This is a good thing because this person or persons will be downtown seven days a week, cleaning wherever we tell them to and making sure that everything in general looks neater downtown.” 

Ms. Tucci added that Riverhead Town will also share in the costs. Mr. Shauger said the employee will be paid $11.50 per hour, with the town making up the difference after the $2,000 is applied.

The cleanup person also will wear a shirt identifying them as a BID employee, she said. 

The BID is a special taxing district covering commercial properties in downtown Riverhead, extending from the Suffolk County Historical Society on the west to just east of Riverhead Town Hall, and stretching north to the Long Island Rail Road tracks, and as far south as the Peconic River. 

The BID has a 2018 budget of $118,000.

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