According Greater Patchogue Chamber of Commerce executive director David
Kennedy, the scheduled Midnight on Main event this year, scheduled at 7 p.m. at the
intersection of West Main Street and West Avenue with Grucci fireworks, won’t be
taking place.
“We had a meeting today (Tuesday), it’s a chamber event but we do this in concert
with everybody,” he said. “I met with Mayor Pontieri, Department of Public Works
supervisor Joe Dean, Director of Public Safety Jim Berberich and Senior Building
Inspector Peter Sarich who we depend on for fireworks safety. Obviously the rise of
the Omicron cases has increased and as the event got closer, making sure people
were masked and vaccinated, we just don’t have staff to check this. All the agencies
we depend on Suffolk County police... they’re all telling me they are severely short staffed so they can’t even
provide me with the basic staff we’d need. Knowing that, we had no choice to cancel
the event without the proper personnel. It’s disappointing we thought we’d be in a
better place but we’re not. I’m incredibly grateful to all the agencies, this is a
collective decision we made. Everyone was trying to make this happen and went to
great lengths to provide it but recent circumstances are just preventing it.”