Have You Met Jan Singer? She Wants To Be Your Legislator

By Pat Biancaniello

Jan Singer is a Kings Park resident who is running for Suffolk County Legislator in the 13th L. D. She is a Democrat running against Rob Trotta who will be completing his third term in December. Winning an election against an incumbent is challenging; and winning against a Republican incumbent in L.D. 13 is akin to David striking down Goliath.  Jan is more than willing to take on the challenge. Ask her why and she will tell you that Rob Trotta is not addressing the issues that are so important to residents in the district. She points to water quality both drinking and coastal, opioid abuse and taxes as issues residents are concerned about and she is passionate about.

Jan Singer taking a break from campaigning at Commack Dunkin’ DonutsMs. Singer is extremely confident in her ability to represent the interests of residents in the 13th LD. She points to her decades of work as an attorney and her responsiblity for putting the interests of clients before all other interests as evidence of her ability and willingness to get the job done. And she believes that there is much in the county that needs to be done.

She plans to bring together environmental groups, labor advocates and energy industry experts to protect the Suffolk County’s coastline, promote sustainable energy sources and to protect drinking water.  Water is her passion. She believes that increasing filtration in Suffolk County’s sewer system and increasing sewer availability will help protect drinking water keeping families healthy. She is committed to reducing water pollution from chemical contamination and will work to bring new business and create new jobs.  She is intends to focus on identifying funding sources to make increased efficiency and expansion of our sewer system affordable and achievable.

Before she does all of the above Jan knows she needs to get elected; and so she works, doing everything she can do to get the public to understand what’s at stake. She goes door-to-door meeting residents and jokes that sometimes the “Ring” homeowners have on doorbells is her greatest asset. She gets to leave a message which is so much more powerful than a piece of literature. Jan says the reception she receives from the surprised resident has been very positive. “I like it, I didn’t think I would but it has been very rewarding.”

Why now? Jan Singer is really bothered by Rob Trotta’s agenda. She claims he doesn’t want the job and points to his plan to run for County Executive, his talk about replacing Mike Fitzpatrick in the NYS Assembly if John Flanagan left and Mike moved to NYS Senate.  Anything she says, but being a Suffolk County Legislator. She says he’s a hypocrite for complaining about county contracts at the same time he is collecting a taxpayer funded pension and his county salary. She also questions the rationale for Trotta’s suggesting that the $20 million revenue generated by red lights be refunded. This, she says is not feasible and would put the County’s budget in a hole and would put taxpayers on the hook for the millions in refunds. 

Jan believes that the people in the district need tax relief not wasteful spending. She believes that residents want to know that their legislator is looking for answers to the opioid crisis and environmental concerns and she plans to do her best to address their concerns.

Jan Singer is running for Suffolk County legislator she wants you to know that “When elected, I will represent and work for all of the people in the 13th L.D..”

The Andy Foundation To Help Build Playground For Pal-O-Mine Equestrian

Pal-O-Mine Equestrian, Inc. (www.pal-o-mine.org, Islandia, NY), a private, not for profit organization providing a comprehensive therapeutic equine program using horses to facilitate growth, learning and healing for children and adults with disabilities, announced that on Saturday, September 28^th, The Andy Foundation, a fifteen year-long supporter, will be lending its support once again by leading a project to build a new accessible, sensory playground at Pal-O-Mine. According to The Andy Foundation, over 100 volunteers will be on hand for the playground project representing its largest volunteer venture to date.

Several significant partners and sponsorships for the playground project have already been secured including The Junior League of Long Island as well as Amy and Neil McGoldrick; Chris and Greg Burke-Lane Office; Dan Donnelly, Barbara and Tom Sullivan, Jeremy Cotty- HomeCraft Contracting; Regina Imperio, Liam, Frank, Caleigh and Kieran McGoldrick, Deb and Bob Hussey, Bagel Café of Nesconset, Giorgio’s Pizza of Nesconset and Starbucks of Islandia. All of these sponsors will be recognized on a permanent sign placed at the entrance of the new playground.

Pal-O-Mine CEO and Founder, Lisa A. Gatti said, “We are so excited about this new sensory playground for children of all abilities. As we continue to advance our expansion campaign, it becomes clearer to us that with organizations like The Andy Foundation, our playground sponsors and our team of compassionate volunteers, this will be A Race We Will Win.”

The Andy Foundation has distributed over $1 million to assist children in need. In 2010, the organization’s charitable work and volunteerism was recognized with its induction into the Long Island Volunteer Hall of Fame.

About Pal-O-Mine

Founded in 1995 by Lisa Gatti, Pal-O-Mine is a private, not for profit organization providing a comprehensive therapeutic equine program using horses to facilitate growth, learning and healing for children and adults with disabilities, as well as those who have been abused or neglected, veterans and the economically compromised.  Pal-O-Mine offers a broad range of programs many of which involve the organization’s herd of therapy horses and livestock. Pal-O-Mine relies on grants and contributions from private citizens, foundations and businesses to help raise funds. For more information on Pal-O-Mine, visit:www.pal-o-mine.org or call: 631-348-1389.

Suffolk County Red Light Cameras Are Here For Another Five Years

By P. Biancaniello

Red-light cameras (RLC) in Suffolk County are here to stay - at least for the next five years. After hours of discussion with almost thirty members of the public stating their opposition to the program, legislators voted 11-7 to renew the contract with modifications. Legislators voted along party lines. Democrats citing safety supported the extension. Republican legislators citing safety and calling it a money grab opposed the renewal. 

Legislator Rob Trotta Sept. 4 discussion about red light camerasAccording to Hector Gavilla, an opponent of the RLC program and candidate for legislator in the 16th L.D.,the breakdown of camera placement is Brookhaven 38, Islip 24, Babylon 19, Huntington 15 and Smithtown 4.

Martin Buchman a member of NYS Bicyclist Coalition spoke in favor of the program saying that bicylists have a deadly fear of someone running a red light.  He urged legislators to keep the program and to ensure equity in distribution of cameras. 

Smithtown legislators Kennedy 12 L.D. and Trotta 13 L.D. voted against renewing the program. Legislator Trotta has been in the forefront of the movement to rid the county of the cameras, he claims the program is about revenue and has accused the Bellone administration of initiating the program to cover budget short falls. Red-light cameras have generated more than $25 million in revenue for the county. 

At a 2017 press event in Miller Place, at a site where two teens died in separate incidents, Trotta accused the county of improperly reporting statistics at intersections with cameras. The county through a spokesperson denied the allegation stating that the engineering firm Nelson and Pope was not instructed to exclude pedestrian and bicycle data and includes information not required by law.  

Suffolk County Committee Chairman Jesse Garcia in a statement issued to the press said, “Make no mistake - this is about shoring up the county’s failing finances. They should be called red-ink cameras because their real purpose is to prevent debt, not deaths.” 

Many of the speakers opposed the disproportionate number of cameras placed in poorer districts where fines and fees create economic hardship. Currently there is a $15 administrative fee in addition to a $50 fine late fees are added if fee is not paid on time. The approval of the contract renewal came with a commitment to look at the placement of the cameras as well as a payment plan.

Jason Elon, spokesperson for the Bellone administration referring to a proposed resolution supported by Republican legislators issued the following statement, “The same Minority Caucus that complained about red light camera fees is now introducing legislation to impose fees and ticket motorists with cameras on school buses.  Two-faced Rob Trotta and his band of conspiracy theorists should pick a side – and ours is on the side of public safety.”

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP - Climate Change Coastal Geology And Smithtown

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

Climate change is happening. As a result of sea level rise caused by global warming, lowland coastal portions of Long Island will be impacted. This area has an extremely mixed, indeed a contradictory record—that continues—when it comes to its shoreline. There has been both folly on the coast and also people pressing for understanding of coastal dynamics.

The most recent folly has occurred in Montauk: the placement by the Army Corps of Engineers of 14,200 1.7- ton sandbags along Montauk’s shore in 2015 at a cost of $8.9 million. Storms have since hit the 3,100-foot-long stretch of sandbags hard and many had to be re-buried. A year before, in 2014, the Suffolk Legislature passed and County Executive Steve Bellone signed a “cost-sharing” measure providing that the Town of East Hampton pay half the cost of “maintenance” of the sandbags and Suffolk County pay the other half.

The vote was 17-to-1 with only Legislator Al Krupski of Cutchogue voting no.

Mr. Krupski predicted the cost of “maintenance” of the Montauk sandbags would run $1 million a year. He was prescient. On this July 16, the Suffolk Legislature passed a bill providing $502,000 in payment for its share of “maintenance” over the past year and Mr. Bellone signed it.

This means that you, as a Suffolk County taxpayer, are shelling out your money for “maintenance” of the Montauk sandbags—and there’ll be years of “maintenance.”

“I am very familiar with the processes of coastal erosion and the dynamics of the shoreline,” said Mr. Krupski in a 2014 letter to fellow legislators. For 20 years he was a member—14 years president—of the Southold Town Board of Trustees which oversees the shores and adjoining waters of Southold Town. “I believe Suffolk County should not endorse a project that hardens the shoreline. This is a project that, one, is sure to fail and cause accelerated erosion to adjacent properties, and two, puts the maintenance on the shoulders of the entire county.” 

It was not just Mr. Krupski seeking to stop the folly. There were demonstrations and civil disobedience on the beach with protesters arrested trying to stop bulldozers installing sandbags. There was a lawsuit with the Sag Harbor-based organization Defend H20 as key plaintiff.

In recent times, an East Hampton Town-commissioned Montauk Hamlet Report was done and urged relocation of the first line of structures along the Montauk oceanfront, mostly vulnerable motels—but some Montauk business people are objecting. 

Another example of this area’s mixed, contradictory shoreline record is happening in Smithtown. The town is now considering changes in its coastal management plan including restrictions on development in areas likely to be affected by sea level rise. The changes would require that sea level change be considered when siting, designing or approving waterfront projects. They would also require property owners to when “practical” move houses threatened by coastal erosion. The construction of “hard structures”—such as sea walls and rock groins—would be allowed only as a last resort.

But at the same time, the Village of Nissequogue, which is within the Town of Smithtown, is seeking what Kevin McAllister, H20 founding president, describes as “an easing of restrictions for people seeking to build sea walls. The village trustees are no longer requiring environmental review and have eliminated any reference to the structures having an adverse impact on beaches. The village’s plan is in contradiction to the town’s efforts.” He testified against the proposed revisions at a recent public hearing in Nissequoque.

I think back to the 1960s and Smithtown’s supervisor, John V.N. Klein, when he was also chairman of the then Suffolk County Board of Supervisors challenging the Army Corps of Engineers’ scheme to place groins—jetties of rocks extending out into the sea—along the Dune Road Westhampton oceanfront. Mr. Klein understood that with groins it was a case of “robbing Peter to pay Paul.” They would catch sand moving in the ocean’s westward “littoral drift” along Long Island’s south shore and broaden the beaches where they were placed, but at the same time deprive the shoreline to the west of sand. His understanding has been fully confirmed since then by experts in the relatively new science of coastal geology. Mr. Klein faced intense opposition from beach house owners. As a reporter for the daily Long Island Press, I covered the scene as beach house owners paraded before the board demanding groins be built. 

The groins, indeed, caused devastation. Owners of beach houses on the west, many battered, some lost, brought a lawsuit against the Army Corps, the state and Suffolk County. There was a settlement under which $80 million—of our tax dollars—is being spent to dump sand over a 30-year period along a coastline caused to erode by the placement of the 15 groins. 

Now especially with climate change and sea level rise, we must get real about the coast—and how to deal with climate change.

More next week.

Karl Grossman is a veteran investigative reporter and columnist, the winner of numerous awards for his work and a member of the L.I. Journalism Hall of Fame. He is a professor of journalism at SUNY/College at Old Westbury and the author of six books.   

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP - Climate Change Is Happening Right Here

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

It’s happening. Climate change is hitting this area. 

In Greenport on the North Fork, the dock for Shelter Island’s North Ferry terminal is to be raised in response to higher tides—a result of sea level rise caused by global warming and consequent climate change.

In western Suffolk County, in Smithtown, changes are being proposed in the town’s coastal management plan including restrictions on development in areas likely to be affected by sea level rise. The changes would require that sea level change be considered when siting, designing or approving waterfront projects. They would also require property owners to when “practical” move houses threatened by coastal erosion. Constructing “hard structures” on the shore—such as sea walls and rock groins—would only be allowed as a last resort. 

In Sag Harbor, the second annual “Living on the Edge in the Face of Climate Change” event pairing Kevin McAllister, founding president of the organization Defend H20, and actor and environmental activist Alec Baldwin of Amagansett, has just been held.

“We are making progress. The level of enlightenment has improved. If we keep the wave going, we’ll get there,” said Mr. McAllister at the event attended by 150 people. “If you read the …news, you see we’re in serious doo.” Over the past 40 years, waters surrounding Long Island, said Mr. McAllister, have risen by four inches. The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation is projecting that because of climate change, in the next 40 years “we can expect they’ll rise by 11 to 30 inches.” That seriously threatens this area.

“We know what we are facing. We know what we need to do,” said Mr. Baldwin. And a need is to “convince a critical mass of people as to what they have to do as well.” There’s been “a cascade of unsettling information about the environment,” said Mr. Baldwin, especially about last month’s record heat in the United States.

Indeed, as the Associated Press has just reported: “July was the hottest month measured on Earth since records began in 1880, the latest in a long line of peaks that scientists say back up predictions for man-made climate change.”

This is a world-wide climate change crisis. The headline of a just-out National Geographic article: “A heat wave is turning Greenland’s ice to slush. That’s bad news.” The headline of a June piece in The New York Times: “India Heat Wave, Soaring Up to 123 Degrees.” Also in June, the headline of a Washington Post article: “Potentially historic and deadly summer heat wave to roast Europe.” In February, summer in the Southern Hemisphere, the USA Today headline was: “Record-shattering ‘unprecedented’ heat scorches Australia, Chile and Argentina.”

Back to this July: “Dangerous Temperatures Grip New York City,” headlined a story in New York Times. The headline of an Associated Press dispatch last month: “Alaska records its warmest month ever; future records likely.” And in The New York Times two weeks ago: “An Ice-Free Iceland Is Not A Joke.”

Indeed, what’s happening is no joke!

Long Island is not among the places that will disappear because of climate change. Reader’s Digest has just put together a list of places that because of climate change are “likely to be submerged within the next 80 years.” These include these nations: 1,000-island Solomon Islands, Palau, Fiji, 600-island Micronesia, the Cook Islands and the Marshall Islands, all in the Pacific; the Maldives and also Seychelles in the Indian Ocean. And French Polynesia would be inundated. Tangier Island in the Chesapeake Bay off Maryland would be under water. And so on.

Yes, Long Island won’t vanish but sitting in a rising sea with its millions in population, it will be heavily impacted. “Sections will be submerged,” says Mr. McAllister, “including Napeague, Mastic Beach, the Dune Road area of Westhampton.”

A main point Mr. McAllister made at the “Living on the Edge in the Face of Climate Change” event was the importance of dealing with the cause of climate change in addition to its effects. He questioned the opposition to the South Fork Wind Project and its placement of 15 offshore wind turbines 30 miles out to sea by some people in the Town of East Hampton. This is preferable, said Mr. McAllister, to the U.S. government’s push for drilling in waters off Long Island for a substance that is among the fossil fuels central to why we have climate change: oil. Mr. McAllister said: “Let’s move to the sustainable frontier, and that’s critical.”

More next week.

Karl Grossman is a veteran investigative reporter and columnist, the winner of numerous awards for his work and a member of the L.I. Journalism Hall of Fame. He is a professor of journalism at SUNY/College at Old Westbury and the author of six books.