On Thursday, December 20, the Aroma Thyme Bistro's weekly 'Jazz Night' was interrupted when an employee of the village's street department entered the restaurant to ask patrons to move their cars so the workers could begin clearing snow from the sidewalks along Canal Street. The worker's intrusion angered restaurant owner Marcus Guiliano, and, according to Guiliano, the Ellenville Police Department was called to intervene on behalf of the street department. After this, at around 11 p.m., Mayor Jeff Kaplan arrived and ordered the crew to move to another street. No criminal charges were filed.

Guiliano reports having similar problems in years past, where he has questioned the times chosen for the street department to perform their cleanup operations.

“When they close the street and start cleaning, and put police cars and all the equipment out there, this, I feel, deters customers,” says Guiliano. “It got to a point last year where somebody from the street department would actually come in and ask my customers to move their cars, which I'm extremely uncomfortable with.”

After last year's incident, Guiliano says that he had thought this problem would not happen again, but when this year's snow removal crew entered the restaurant, Guiliano became, in his own words, “extremely upset,” and again told the crews to move to another street, which he thought would be enough.

“I was under the impression that they were going to move streets. This was at 9:30 at night. Well, ten minutes later, they sent a police officer in,” says Guiliano. “I explained to him, 'I'm not telling my customers, and you're not telling my customers, to move their cars. I refuse to do that.'”

As the conflict continued, it was discovered that because the crew had already begun their efforts, it was necessary to try and finish, rather than leave the piles of snow moved from the curb in the middle of the street. In an effort to halt their operations, however, Guiliano moved his car to block the crews from continuing to work. Eventually, Mayor Kaplan, who, upon hearing of the incident in the first place had asked that the crew move their cleanup efforts, came down to the restaurant himself and successfully ordered the crew to relocate.

“You have to learn from some of these issues that come up, and I think what it comes down to, is that our street department is not used to nighttime businesses in our business district,” says Mayor Kaplan. “So when they go out at ten at night, it's not an issue, because nobody's open at ten o'clock. Now that we do have at least one successful nighttime business, we have to, as a community, be sensitive to that.”

Mayor Kaplan reports that there is a meeting scheduled for January 7 with the heads of the village's different departments to discuss this issue. “It's really nobody's fault, it's just one of those things that happens. The street department was just doing what it normally did in the past. If it was a Wednesday night, when they're closed, as opposed to a Thursday night, it wouldn't have come up either.”

According to Village Manager Elliott Auerbach, who thinks this misunderstanding was “blown out of proportion,” the cleanup efforts actually were originally scheduled for Wednesday night, but were delayed a day to deal with a ruptured water main. The crews did not attempt their cleanup during the day to avoid interrupting the downtown area's usual business hours, and to avoid causing traffic delays on the streets. As such, the crews were to begin working after normal business hours had concluded, when there would be less street traffic. Unfortunately, the crew's choice of beginning with Canal Street, where the Aroma Thyme Bistro resides, coincided with the open restaurant's very busy jazz night.

“I think that people allowed their emotions to take charge in the situation and really didn't think it out,” says Auerbach. “I understand that Marcus and Jamie raised some concerns, and I appreciate it. They're a very important business in the downtown business district. However, that being said, if the snow wasn't removed off the curb, I'm sure I would've gotten a phone call from them or a couple of other business people the next day, saying, 'Hey, why can't we park cars on the street here?'”

Responding to the question of why the sidewalks and curbs had as much snow as they did by the time of the incident at the Aroma Thyme, Mayor Kaplan puts it down to prioritizing: the street department's first priority is to ensure that the streets can accommodate cars as soon as possible. This forced the sidewalks to be less accessible than normal for a longer period of time while the crews worked on the all of the village's streets. Complicating the matter further this time around was the hard, icy nature of the snow, making the crews work that much harder to remove it. As to whether or not the street department is in need of greater funding, Kaplan doesn't think so, believing the conflict's origins to be based on poor timing rather than a staff shortage.

“It's always been, by ten o'clock at night, everyone's closed,” says Kaplan. “If it was the past, then this wouldn't even be happening. Fortunately, we're starting to have some sort of a nightlife during the winter, and that's really what caused it. If you're in a community that has a nightlife, then they find other ways to remove the snow; we just haven't had to deal with it before. And I hope we have to deal with a lot more in the future, quite frankly,” he adds with a laugh. “We need the nightlife more than we need the snow removed at ten o'clock.”

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