2024 Public Servants of the Year: Mike Zaleski and the Riverhead Highway Department
When Town Councilman Ken Rothwell heard that Riverhead Highway Department Superintendent Mike Zaleski and his staff are being honored with Riverhead News-Review’s Person/People of the year award for 2024, he was thrilled.
“He’s one of the hardest working elected officials on the East End of Long Island. He genuinely cares about his town, loves where he works and lives, and he wholeheartedly deserves this recognition,” he said. “But I know that Mike would not accept this alone. He would tell you that it belongs to all the employees that work with him.”
Riverhead Town Supervisor Tim Hubbard said the town’s highway department is exemplary.
“They really bust their chops out there,” he said of the staff. “I give those guys a lot of credit. They are out there in all conditions and everything else. And Mike does a lot with the few people he’s got.”
Mr. Hubbard said the highway department is constantly assisting other departments. “It’s very refreshing to see — whether it’s loaning equipment to another department or just going out and doing work for them that would make it a lot easier than if they tried to do it themselves with their own equipment,” he said.
Trischa Yakobski, Mr. Zaleski’s friend and campaign treasurer, said his love for Riverhead is evident in everything he does.
“He treats every street in this town like it’s the road that he or his parents live on,” she said. “When he goes running, he picks up trash. He’ll move branches out of the street.”
The son of a Riverhead cop, Mr. Zaleski has been working for the highway department for 30 years — the last three of them, he’s been the superintendent. With a team of 40, it’s second only to the police department in size.
Riverhead Police Chief Ed Frost works frequently with the highway superintendent.
“He’s a great person,” he said. “He does a lot of things for the town, and a lot on his own. He really goes out of his way.”
Mr. Rothwell said Mr. Zaleski is both a leader who empowers his employees and an innovator.
“Every single highway worker in the town of Riverhead brings knowledge to the table, and Mike understands that. He’s like, ‘Hey, if you guys can do this, show everybody, show me your forte, or what you can do,’” Mr. Rothwell said. “Mike gives people the opportunity to excel in that highway department as a group under his leadership, and his staff likes it … because it allows them to excel on their own.”
In one staff-driven department project, Mr. Zaleski worked with David Arteaga — a highway department worker, professional photographer and drone pilot — to create an innovative video showcasing the highway department’s equipment.
Mr. Rothwell said Mr. Zaleski has been “phenomenal” in managing his limited department budgeting.
“The man was left with a lot of long overdue, dilapidated equipment, some of it that really, quite frankly, looked like it should be put on a flatbed and hauled out of there,” the councilman said. “He has restored a lot of it, put a lot of it back to work, and repurposed a lot of equipment. He basically took all the leftover equipment around the highway yard and built his own striping truck.”
Mr. Rothwell is most impressed with Mr. Zaleski’s problem-solving skills.
“He built an overhead wash system to wash all the trucks,” he said. “That’s a major safety issue completely resolved by Mike. You had guys trying to climb on top of vehicles in the wintertime, trying to spray out salt with ice conditions and so forth, or … let it sit and then the equipment rusts. It rots, it gets damaged. So Mike and the highway department workers as a team built this whole overhead wash station … and they won a statewide award for it.”
Last fall, the Riverhead Highway Department won a state Department of Transportation ‘Build a Better Mousetrap’ Award for designing and constructing the new washing station. Previously, Mr. Zaleski’s department won a Northeast AAA Community Traffic Safety Award, among others.
He also developed a policy to strengthen filled potholes, according to colleagues. Previously, the highway department would “patch” potholes by filling them with asphalt material to repair localized damage. Under the current administration, potholes are “milled,” meaning a machine is used to grind down a larger section of the road to a specific depth, before applying a whole new layer of asphalt to the area, strengthening the damaged section of road.
Ms. Yakobski said Mr. Zaleski is as fastidious at home as he is at work.
“You should see his yard. It’s a meticulous yard. You could play golf on his yard. His grass is amazing — it’s almost obnoxious,” she said, laughing.
She said the highway superintendent has a soft spot in his heart for kids and cats, and that every year, he looks forward to his department’s massive toy drive for underprivileged Riverhead kids. “Truly, he would do anything to make any child smile,” she said. “He buys [McDonald’s] Happy Meals for himself for lunch, and I swear it’s so he can give away the toy. I’ve seen him hop back in his truck because he ran into somebody who might have their kid in the backseat, and it’s ‘Oh, I have something for him.’”
She said when he stops by her daycare facility, “it’s the same thing: ‘How many kids do you have?’ And he is going to count out his stockpile of McDonald’s toys. He’ll tell you he gets Happy Meals because it’s the perfect amount of food. I will tell you, it’s because he wants the toy so he can give it to a kid.”
For more than a decade, Mr. Zaleski has been representing the department in visits to local elementary schools. He and staffers bring equipment like snow plows and dump trucks to teach first graders about the highway department. The visit includes safety-oriented coloring books on topics like snow safety.
“He’s definitely Riverhead, through and through” said Roanoke Avenue Elementary School principal Thomas Payton. “And you can see it when he’s talking with the kids. They’re in awe, and they’re listening to what he’s got to say, and they’re so excited that he’s here … You could just see how much he loves what he does.”
Over the summer, Mr. Zaleski decided to expand his annual school presentation into a full-blown highway department event.
“We had well over 100 kids here this year, and next year he wants to make it bigger and better,” said Joan Mottern, Mr. Zaleski’s administrative assistant. “He’s going to have a sand pile for the kids to play in.”
Ms. Yakobski said that several years ago, Mr. Zaleski began running 5k races — and quickly became addicted, both to the racing itself and the fundraising.
“He does probably close to 20 [races] every year — all over the island. He does breast cancer races. He does the [Run for] Briggs race, the Run for Ridley. And God forbid he hears of a race for a child with cancer. If there’s a spaghetti dinner somewhere supporting somebody, he’s there.”
She said he’s less a Good Samaritan, more a great one.
“You know those bumper stickers, ‘I break for’ this or that? Mike’s would be too big for a bumper because he literally stops for anybody. There was a[n injured] baby deer he came upon once and he was calling up all the wildlife centers. He stops for turtles. He stops for injured birds … He always stops to help.”
For all these reasons, Mr. Zaleski and his team are The Riverhead News-Review’s People of the Year.
Previous Winners
2023: Diane Wilhelm
2022: Steve Shauger & Kristy Verity
2021: Dawn Thomas
2019: Allen Smith
2018: Dashan Briggs
2017: Richard Ligon
2016: Tom Lateulere
2015: Susan Wilk
2014: Carl James
2013: Dennis Cavanagh
2012: Ed Romaine
2011: George Woodson
2010: Robert Brown
2009: Barbara Grattan
2008: Liz Stokes
2007: Michael Reichel
2006: Gary Pendzick
2005: The Riverhead Ambulance Corps
2004: Richard Wines
2003: Ken Testa
2002: “KeySpan Coalition”
2001: Ed Densieski
2000: Judge Richard Ehlers
1999: Barbara Blass
1998: Vicki Staciwo
1997: Lenard Makowski
1996: Buildings & Grounds
1995: Jack Hansen
1994: Jim Stark
1993: Rick Hanley
1992: Lawyer Jackson
1991: Andrea Lohneiss
1990: Monique Gablenz
1989: George Bartunek
1988: Patricia Tormey
