North Hempstead extends pact with road contractor amid pushback

North Hempstead has extended its contract with a paving contractor, despite complaints from Democrats who said the town missed its goal of having 40 miles of roadway repaved last year.

The board voted 4-3 earlier this month to approve the contract with West Babylon-based Metro Paving.

The town, which does not use municipal workers to pave roads, is expected to spend no more than the $6 million budgeted for paving in 2026, town spokesman Umberto Mignardi said in an email. 

The town spent $4.8 million on paving in 2025. The new contract is based in part on an increase in the price of asphalt, from $85 per ton to $86 per ton.

North Hempstead planned to resurface more than 40 miles of roads last year, according to a July news release. The town ended up completing 77% of the work, Supervisor Jennifer DeSena said in an interview. 

“This maximizes our ability to get the work done,” DeSena said.

Metro Paving declined to comment. 

Mignardi said the town expects to pave smaller roads in Roslyn Heights, New Hyde Park and Albertson by the summer. 

Robert Troiano Jr., a Democratic councilman, accused the town of not following through on its promise.

Troiano said he wanted to understand why all 40 miles were not repaved “before we vote on this contract.”

DeSena responded: “Weather. You can only pave until the temperature gets to a certain degree, and when it gets to that degree, you can’t keep paving." She continued, "in New York, you can’t keep paving through the winter.”

During the meeting, Troiano displayed a chart detailing the percentage of roads paved in his council district. But Mignardi said in a later email that those numbers were "misleading."

The percentage of roads paved is "calculated on the total length of roadway" as well as the "amount of paving material required," Mignardi said.

DeSena said in a statement the town had moved to data-driven pavement condition index surveys to determine which roads to pave first. The index rates roads from 0 to 100 based on general surface conditions. 

"The system objectively evaluates road conditions and takes the politics out of the process," she said.

Mignardi said the town maintains and repairs roads, but does not pave them because that "requires very expensive, specialized machines that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and are used for just part of the year."

"Asphalt is delivered hot so contractors usually own the plants that produce it," he said. "Asphalt contractors work on many projects from different towns across the area so they can spread out their costs and that makes their per-mile cost lower than what any single town could achieve alone."

By Joshua Needelman

joshua.needelman@newsday.com

Joshua Needelman covers the Town of North Hempstead for Newsday. A Long Island native and University of Maryland graduate, his work has appeared in publications including The New York Times and The Washington Post.