Southold Town is holding up a refund of a $250 clean-up deposit posted by the Mattituck-Cutchogue Teachers Association for the Thanksgiving Turkey Trot.
The organization hasn’t cleared markings from the roadways along the race route, Councilman Bill Ruland said.
A resolution item on yesterday’s town board agenda authorizing refund of the deposit was removed from the resolution after a discussion at yesterday’s work session.
The cleanup is required by the town’s special events policy that all groups using town roads and properties must agree to as a condition of their permits, Ruland said.
The markings should be painted over before the deposit is refunded, he said. If the town doesn’t enforce this, it will end up with a confusing array of markings on the pavement, he said. “The next group will come along and make marks in a different color, and so forth,” Ruland said.
The only permanent markings on the pavement should be those indicating where buried utilities are located.
“Those are there for good reason and we don’t want to allow other groups to make marks that will confuse the ones workers need to know about,” Ruland said.
Underground utilities are indicated by color-coded markings, according to the American Public Works Association. Red is for buried power lines, orange for telecommunication cables, yellow is for natural gas, blue is for drinking water, pink is for temporary survey markings and white is used to indicated excavation limits.
Groups should be encouraged to use chalk for such purposes rather than paint, according to the councilman.
The resolution authorizing the refund was amended to delete reference to the Mattituck foot race. The board did authorize a refund to the Southold Athletic Association for the $250 it deposited in connection with a foot race.
Supervisor Scott Russell said the town will send a letter to the Mattituck Teachers Association notifying it of the problem and he hoped the group will take care of it.
It will likely cost the town more than $250 in labor to paint over the markings itself, Ruland noted.
Representatives of the Mattituck-Cutchogue Teachers Association could not be reached for comment.
