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Local father says 'stop!'

Rhame Avenue signage rarely observed, says resident

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Rick O’Neill says he’s just about at the end of the rope. After nearly a decade of fighting to ensure the safety of his street without any results, he is, he said, “out of ideas.”

“I really don’t know what to do anymore, it feels like I’ve almost exhausted all of my options,” he said. “At this point I just really hope it doesn’t end with someone, be it my kid or one of their friends or someone else’s kid, getting hurt.”

His frustrations arise from a stop sign located on Rhame Avenue in East Rockaway. O’Neill, along with his wife and three daughters, age four, nine and 11, lives at the corner of Rhame Avenue and Franklin Street, a dead end. There is a four way stop sign at the corner, but he says many times, cars roll right through the intersection, failing to stop or even slow down.

“I noticed it a few years ago, pretty much right after we bought the house in 2008, that people just move right through the stop sign without even slowing down,” he explained. “It seems to happen more with the cars moving from the Bay Park side near North Boulevard, but it happens really at both ends of it.”

He said the ignored road sign made him fear for the safety of not only his young children, but also other children in the area.

“I just thought, I see my kids walk to school past that intersection, or play and ride their bikes with their friends there, and if anything were to happen it would just terrible,” he explained. “I’ve tried talking to the mayor, the board, and said ‘listen, I voted for you, and this is a problem’ — but they say nothing can be done.”

Since buying his home seven years ago, he’s been fighting to get it changed “with a lot of the little spare time I had,” he said, often filming offending vehicles from his window. The fight hit a setback when damage from Hurricane Sandy forced the family to leave their home for two years, but is back on after they moved in earlier this month.

“I tried to just take care of the problem myself, but that somehow even that didn’t work,” he said. “I bought four speed bumps, one for each part of the intersection, but they said it was illegal, and that it would hinder emergency vehicles. That made enough sense to me, so I got bumps that were smaller and the axles of a fire truck or ambulance could fit over them, but they still said no.”

Unfazed by the setback, he pressed on, trying to find new ways to address the issue.

“I’ve called [Town Supervisor] Kate Murray’s office, I’ve called villages that do use speed bumps, but everything I’ve been told says it’s the local municipality,” he said. “And it’s illegal in East Rockaway. I completely understand and agree that they can’t just keep a Nassau police officer on the street all day, so there’s not much else they can do, other than try to get people to understand how dangerous it can be.”

He still has not let the issue go, however, and vows not to. Some progress had been made he said, as the James Alles, village clerk, said the village agreed to conduct a traffic study of the area in order to attempt to find new ways to address the issue.

“That was definitely good news, and I hope something can come of it,” O’Neill said. “But I’m not holding my breath. I’ve been fighting this fight for a while, and nothings come of it, but maybe this will be the start of a new chapter with it.”