By ANDY GARDNER

MASSENA — Town councilors say they are not likely to seek a joint Department of Public Works-Highway Department facility in the village because it would be too far from the roads they need to maintain.

The town needs to build a new highway garage and the village needs a new DPW lot for bulk materials storage.

“To move the town highway department into the village doesn’t make sense because most of the work is on the east side,” Councilman Samuel Carbone said at Wednesday’s town meeting.

“We need to be close to our roads,” Councilman Albert Nicola said. “The equipment is not the same. We plow roads, they plow streets.”

There had been talk of the town possibly letting the village store their materials on a town lot on Pontoon Bridge Road, but that won’t happen, the town supervisor said.

“The three of us are in agreement that we don’t want to relocate the village salt and sand piles to Pontoon Bridge Road … we’re concerned about wear and tear on North Main Street … trucks rumbling by [Madison elementary] school,” Supervisor Joseph Gray said, referring to councilmen Thomas Miller and Steve O’Shaughnessy having been excused from the meeting.

Councilman Albert Nicola said they are offering to let the village temporarily store their materials at the town garage on South Raquette Road.

“We agree, as a board, that the town garage is accessible, we have room there,” he said.

Gray said he thinks the town has been given a bad name throughout the whole process.

“We have been made out to be the bad guy, on more than one occasion,” he said. “This isn’t our problem. The village has a situation they have to deal with.”

He thinks one solution longterm could be to dissolve the village, which Mayor Tim Currier has recently advocated.

“I’ve been a fan of dissolution for 25 years and his presentation reinforced the fact that a town of 13,000 people doesn’t need two governments,” Gray said.