Local nonprofits gathered in East Northport to share ideas and network. Photo by Kevin Redding
A community bank and a financial education group recently partnered up in an effort to help local nonprofits thrive.
On March 25, the Equity First Foundation, an organization that primarily works with small businesses in financial distress, hosted a community breakfast for nonprofit organizers and supporters at Investors Bank in East Northport.
The networking event gave the crowd of good-hearted people who advocate for important causes across Suffolk County a rare opportunity to exchange business cards and ideas with one another.
Equity First Foundation Founder and President Rhonda Klch, a Rocky Point resident, speaks to local nonprofits during a community breakfast. Photo by Kevin Redding
Representatives from a wide range of volunteer organizations — that help everybody from families to children to veterans — bonded over their shared interest in providing a service to those who need it most.
Priscilla Arena, executive director of Suffolk Asperger-Autism Sport and Information, a Mount Sinai nonprofit that serves the needs of the autism community throughout Long Island, said the event benefitted nonprofits far better than social media ever could.
“There’s nothing better than a face-to-face meeting with anyone, with any decision makers,” Arena said. “And here you have a room of decision makers and people that make things happen. You have the right people in the room, it’s communities helping other communities and it’s fantastic.”
Communities helping other communities is exactly what pushed Investment Bank Branch Manager and Miller Place resident Amanda Seppi to pursue the idea of the gathering with her frequent collaborator Rhonda Klch, a Mount Sinai resident and executive director of the Equity First Foundation.
Seppi, whose bank is geared toward community grassroots organizations and overall community giving, said she wanted to bring nonprofits from the local area together to network with one another and potentially help strengthen their individual causes.
“I was finding that nonprofits don’t necessarily interact with one another to develop strategies to grow, and I figured it was a win-win for everybody to be able to learn about one another,” Seppi said. “[Ultimately], I want them to be able to reach a wider audience, to be able to raise funds in order to escalate and continue to do the good they’re trying to do for the community.”
The nonprofits don’t have the exposure they deserve, she added.
“I’d like to bring as much attention to the people who are doing good for nothing, it’s important to me to have them grow and do well,” Seppi said.
Klch agreed, feeling as though the nonprofits could use all the help they could get in terms of funding, which all nonprofits rely on to survive.
Through Investors Foundation at the bank, nonprofits can receive grants and scholarships.
Members of local nonprofits share ideas and network. Photo by Kevin Redding
“With a lot of changes happening in the economy, a lot of grants are no longer available, qualifying for funding is much more difficult and even your local business community that would normally support different fundraising initiatives, because of their own setbacks, aren’t able to provide as much,” Klch said. “What we’re looking to do is have nonprofits partner and work uniformly. If I have money or resources coming into my organization, I can offer it to somebody else.”
Klch presented “The Haven,” a beachside retreat that nonprofits can offer to clients who may be facing economic hardships caused by illness, death and addiction. The retreat would serve as a mental reprieve for individuals and families, as well as a sponsorship opportunity.
Among some of the organizations at the gathering were Youth Directions & Alternatives, a community agency that serves youth and families in the Northport-East Northport-Elwood-Harborfields school districts; Maria’Z Hope Foundation, a group made up of women dedicated to providing support for those seeking an alternative approach to medical healing; and East Northport-based General Needs, which helps homeless Long Island veterans and their families through charitable donations and support.
Lonnie Sherman, founder of General Needs, started the group 10 years ago when he realized there were 5,000 homeless veterans on Long Island without basic necessities like socks, underwear and boots. Today, the group takes care of about 3,000 of them, cooking food, helping to treat those suffering from PTSD and delivering hundreds of pairs of boots so they can get jobs.
A recent grant from Investors Bank allowed the group to help veterans get apartments.
“When I go to an event like this, I want to walk out having had a conversation with one person that’s going to listen, so we get the word out … ultimately that’s going to make a difference,” he said. “We [nonprofits] are the ones who can make a difference.”
Beetles, which thrive in warmer temperatures, are threatening pine trees
Residents from Cutchogue work together to place sand bags at the edge of the Salt Air Farm before Hurricane Sandy in 2012. Photo by Prudence Heston
While surrounded by salt water, Long Island is in the midst of a drought that is heading into its third year. Amid a trend towards global warming, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation sent a letter to water district superintendents throughout Suffolk and Nassau County to ask them to lower their water consumption by 15 percent in the next three to four years.
“The primary area that is ripe for reduction is summertime watering,” said Bill Fonda, a spokesman for the DEC. The department has asked the water districts to reduce consumption, but it’s up to the districts to determine how they will reach those goals, he said.
The letter, written by Tony Leung, the regional water engineer, indicated that “results for 2015 show both Nassau and Suffolk County have exceeded the safe yield as cited in the 1986 Long Island Groundwater Management Program,” and that “a concerted effort is needed to reduce peak season water demand.”
The letter, which doesn’t cite global warming, indicates that salt water intrusion, contaminant plumes migration, salt water upconing and competing demand have raised concerns about a need to reduce peak season water demand.
Observers suggested the demand was likely rising for a host of reasons, including increased use of underground irrigation systems and a rise in the population of Long Island.
Water experts welcomed the DEC’s initiative, which is one of many steps Long Islanders can and are taking to respond to a changing environment.
“Most people have no clue how much water they use…They get their water bill, it is what it is, and then they write a check and send it in.”
— Sarah Meyland
Sarah Meyland, the director of the Center for Water Resources Management and associate professor at the New York Institute of Technology, commended the DEC for asserting control over water withdrawals.
“Most people have no clue how much water they use,” Meyland said. “They get their water bill, it is what it is, and then they write a check and send it in.”
She admitted changing consumer behavior will be challenging.
The first step in ensuring water suppliers meet this request, Meyland suggested, is to inform the public about the need for less water use, particularly during the summer months. One possible solution is for irrigation systems that turn off automatically after a rainstorm.
The change in climate has posed a threat to trees that commonly grow on Long Island.
Pine trees have faced an invasion from the southern pine beetle, which extended its range onto Long Island in 2014 and is now a pest that requires routine managing and monitoring.
Long the scourge of pine trees in southern states, the pine beetle, which is about the size of a grain of rice, has found Long Island’s warmer climate to its liking.
“We’re assuming either [Hurricane] Irene or Sandy brought it in,” said John Wernet, a supervising forester at the DEC. “Because it’s getting warmer, the beetle has been able to survive farther north than they have historically.”
Forestry professionals in the south have waged a battle against the beetle for years, trying to reduce the economic damage to the timber market. On Long Island, Wernet said, they threaten to reduce or destroy the rare Pine Barrens ecosystem.
The beetle can have three or four generations in a year and each generation can produce thousands of young.
The first step relies on surveying trees to find evidence of an infestation. Where they discover these unwanted pests, they cut down trees and score the bark, which creates an inhospitable environment for the beetle.
“If left alone, the beetle is like a wildfire and will keep going,” Wernet said. Without direct action, that would be bad news for the pine warbler, a yellow bird that lives near the tops of pine trees, he said.
Wernet added Long Island’s drought also increases the risk of
wildfires.
Farmers, meanwhile, have had to contend with warmer winters that trick their crops into growing too soon while also handling the curveballs created by unexpected cold snaps, frosts, and the occasional nor’easter.
Dan Heston and Tom Wickham survey waters that entered Salt Air Farm after Hurricane Sandy. Photo by Prudence Heston
Last year, the colored hydrangeas of Salt Air Farm in Cutchogue budded early amid warmer temperatures in March, only to perish amid two eight-degree nights.
“We lost [thousands of dollars] worth of hydrangeas in two nights,” said Dan Heston, who works on the farm with his wife Prudence, whose family has been farming on Long Island for 11 generations. “Our whole colored hydrangea season was done.”
Heston said he’s been a skeptic of climate change, but suggested he can see that there’s something happening with the climate on Long Island, including the destructive force of Hurricane Sandy, which flooded areas that were never flooded during large storms before.
“I think the climate is shifting on Long Island,” Prudence Heston explained in an email. “Farmers are constantly having to adapt to protect their crops. In the end, pretty much every adaptation a farmer makes boils down to climate.”
Changes on Long Island, however, haven’t all been for the worse. Warmer weather has allowed some residents to grow crops people don’t typically associate with Long Island, such as apricots and figs. For three generations, Heston’s family has grown apricots.
Other Long Islanders have attempted to grow figs, which are even more sensitive to Long Island winters, Heston said. This was not an economically viable option, as each plant required individual wrapping to survive. That hasn’t stopped some from trying.
“People are now finding our winters to be warm enough to make [figs] a fun back yard plant,” Prudence Heston said.
In other positive developments, the Long Island Sound has had a reduction in hypoxia — low oxygen conditions — over the last decade, according to Larry Swanson, the interim dean of the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences at Stony Brook University.
“The state and the Environmental Protection Agency have agreed to a nitrogen reduction program,” Swanson said. “It appears that the decline in nitrogen may be having a positive effect.”
Brookhaven Town took a similar step in 2016.
The town board approved a local law proposed by Supervisor Ed Romaine (R) last summer that established nitrogen protection zones within 500 feet of any body of water on or around Long Island. The zones prohibit new structures or dwellings being built in that range from installing cesspools or septic systems.
Ryan Madden from the Long Island Progressive Coalition leads a march calling for renewable energy in the form of wind. Photo from Ryan Madden
Scientists and politicians are relied upon to do the bulk of the work to reduce the effects and pace of climate change, but local activist organizations on Long Island are taking on the burden as well.
“I think it’s really important for grassroots and local solutions to tackle this crisis — to be at the forefront of the solutions,” Ryan Madden, with the Long Island Progressive Coalition said. “A lot of the problems we see in this country, in New York State and on Long Island, whether it’s rampant income inequality, access to education, just issues of local pollution and ailments related to the combustion of fossil fuels, all of this connects into a larger system that informs why climate change is a problem in the first place.”
The LIPC, a community-based grassroots organization that works on a range of issues related to sustainable development as well as achieving social, racial and economic justice, has a program for improving energy efficiency. The group helps low- to moderate-income homeowners take advantage of free energy assessments and obtain financial resources to be able to go through energy-efficient retrofits and ultimately help reduce carbon footprints. The organization also recently entered the solar arena.
Members of Sustainable Long Island’s youth-staffed farmers market in New Cassel. Photo from Gabrielle Lindau
“It’s part of a larger push to democratize our energy system so that communities have a say in the build out of renewable energy and have ownership or control over the systems themselves,” Madden said. “We’re pushing for constructive and far-reaching changes, which is what we think is needed in this time.”
Madden added he has fears about the future because of comments President Donald Trump (R) has made in the past regarding climate change and his previously stated belief it is a hoax. Trump signed an executive order March 28 that served as a rollback of the Clean Power Plan, an initiative meant to reduce carbon pollution from power plants. The order infringes on commitments to the Paris Agreement, a universal, legally binding global climate deal.
“We’re trying to meet that with really bold, visionary climate policy that has a wide range of economic transformative impacts, while also remaining on the ground helping homeowners and institutions make that switch through energy efficiency and renewable energy,” Madden said.
Other organizations like the Sierra Club, a nonprofit, are also focused on renewable energy, but in the form of offshore wind.
“Offshore wind is the best way to meet our need for large-scale renewable energy that can help us fight climate change and provide good jobs for New Yorkers, but we aren’t used to getting our energy this way in the United States,” Sierra Club organizer Shay O’Reilly said. “Instead, we’re used to relying on dirty fossil fuels, and our energy markets and production systems are centered on these ways of producing electricity.”
Gordian Raacke, with Renewable Energy Long Island also works on this front. He and his group advocated for and eventually convinced the Long Island Power Authority to do a study on offshore wind power.
“January of this year, LIPA agreed to sign a contract for New York’s first, and the country’s largest, offshore wind project,” he said.
New York Renews hosted a town hall to get community members together to talk about climate change issues. Photo from Ryan Madden
Deepwater Wind will build and operate the 90-megawatt project 30 miles east of Montauk Point in the Atlantic Ocean. The project will generate enough electricity to power 50,000 homes.
In 2012, the group also commissioned a study to evaluate whether Long Island could generate 100 percent of its annual electricity consumption from renewable energy sources. The study, The Long Island Clean Electricity Vision, showed that it would not only be possible, but also economically feasible.
Currently, the LIPC has a campaign to pass the Climate and Community Protection Act in New York State, which would decarbonize all sectors of New York’s economy by 2050, redirect 40 percent of all state funding to disadvantaged communities — which would decrease pollution over decades — and ensure a transition away from fossil fuels.
These topics and others are taught in classes at Stony Brook University under its Sustainability Studies Program. Areas of study include environmental humanities, anthropology, geology, chemistry, economy, environmental policies and planning. Students do hands-on and collaborative work and take on internships in the field. They also clear trails and develop businesses to help increase sustainability among other hands-on initiatives.
“Our mission is to develop students who become leaders in sustainability and help to protect the Earth,” Heidi Hutner, director of the program said. “Climate change and pollution is the most important issue facing us today. We have to find a way to live on this planet and not totally destroy it and all of its creatures. Our students are skilled in many different ways, going into nongovernmental or not-for-profit organizations, becoming law professors, lawyers, journalists, scientists, educators, but all focused on the environment. A former student of ours is the sustainability director at Harvard Medical School.”
Students from the program organized to march in the People’s Climate March in 2014, and will be doing so again April 29. The purpose of the march is to stand up to the Trump administration’s proposed environmental policies.
Students and staff at East Islip High School work with Sustainable Long Island to build a rain garden. Photo from Gabrielle Lindau
Undergraduates in the program also work closely with environmentally active local legislators like state Assemblyman Steve Englebright (D-Setauket), and county Legislators Kara Hahn (D-Setauket) and William “Doc” Spencer (D-Centerport). There is also a Sierra Club on campus.
The LIPC regularly hosts round tables to show other environmental groups what it’s up to and town halls to let community members share their stories and even visit assembly members to lobby for support. Sustainable Long Island, a nonprofit founded in 1998 that specialized in advancing economic development, environmental health and social equality for Long Island, also focuses on low-income communities through its programs.
Food equality and environmental health are the group’s biggest areas of concentration because according to Gabrielle Lindau, the group’s director of communications, the issues are tied to each other.
“There is a polarization here on Long Island,” she said. “We have extremely rich communities, and then we have extremely poor communities.”
According to Lindau, 283,700 people receive emergency food each year, so Sustainable LI builds community gardens and hosts youth-staffed farmers markets to combat the problem.
“It’s a game-changer for low income communities,” she said. “These communities gardens are great because they give people access to fresh, healthy food, and it also puts the power in their hands to find food and also, the learning skills to be able to grow that food. It’s also a paid program, so it’s giving them an opportunity to earn what they’re working toward.”
The youth-staffed farmers markets, which began in 2010, have been a real catalyst for change in communities like Farmingdale, Roosevelt, Freeport, Flanders, New Castle and Wyandanch where access to fresh food is not a given.
Children help Sustainable Long Island build a community garden. Photo from Gabrielle Lindau
“We have so much farming going on out east here on Long Island and I don’t think people who live here ever step back to look at all the food we have here in our own backyard,” Lindau said. “These markets are an incredible program because they’re not only teaching kids in communities about agriculture where they wouldn’t have necessarily had the opportunity to do that, but they’re also teaching them financial literacy skills, and, at the same time, they’re bringing in healthy food items to their neighbors.”
Shameika Hanson a New York community organizer on Long Island for Mothers Out Front, an organization that works to give women a voice for change — empowering and providing them with skills and resources to get decision makers and elected officials to act on their behalf — does specific work with climate change, also calling for the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy. As a national organization, the topics range depending on the needs of an area from getting methane gas leaks plugged, to stopping oil trains for moving through the area, to getting involved in carbon offsets. Specifically on Long Island, women are creating a task force to ensure the drinking water quality across the island is standardized.
“Democracy doesn’t work without civic engagement,” Hanson said. “There’s a need for a conversation to happen that is united. Even though the water authorities are separate, the water isn’t.”
Sustainable Long Island also works on building rain gardens to reduce stormwater runoff into local waters.
“We’re in a dire situation here on Long Island when it comes to our aquifers,” Lindau said. “We have an intense amount of nitrogen that’s already going into the ground.”
The nonprofit works with the Environmental Resource Management Foundation and PSEG Foundation and builds rain gardens like the one at the Cove Animal Rescue in Glen Cove and others in East Islip and Long Beach.
“It’s about educating communities on the importance of the rain garden and why green infrastructure practices are pivotal for environmental health on Long Island moving forward,” Lindau said. “If we don’t have clean drinking water, we’re going to be in trouble, if we don’t have usable soil to plant in, we’re not going to have farms growing the produce we need to survive and if we don’t have that produce, then we’re not going to be able to bring food into these low-income communities for people who can’t get it otherwise. They’re all connected in a number of different ways and a lot of them root back to health.”
Students in Stony Brook University’s Sustainability Studies Program participate in the 2014 People’s Climate March in NYC. Photo from Heidi Hutner
Sustainable Long Island has done work with local municipalities following superstorms like Hurricane Sandy. They helped communities rebuild, hosted peer-to-peer education meetings to better prepare locals and business owners for another devastating storm and provided job training to bring businesses back.
“A big part of this is going into communities and educating them and helping to advocate in order to facilitate change,” Lindau said. “Working with other groups is extremely important as well. We’re not a lone wolf in the nonprofit world — we not only find it important to work with governments and other municipalities — but to connect with other nonprofits who have something unique to offer as well.”
Melanie Cirillo, with the Peconic Land Trust, reiterated the need for local organizations to team up. The Peconic Land Trust conserves open space like wetlands, woodlands and farmland. It keeps an eye on water quality and infrastructure like Forge River in Mastic, which is a natural sea sponge that absorbs storm surge.
“Wetlands are key in so many of our waterfront properties,” she said. “We have a finite amount of drinking water that we need to protect for our own health. The protection of land is integral to the protection of the water.”
She said although every organization may have a bit of a different focus, they’re all working under the same umbrella and premise, with the same goal in mind: maintaining the health of Long Island.
“I think it’s important for groups to have the ability to bring people together, especially because the impact of climate change affects people in a lot of different ways, whether it’s high energy costs, the impact of superstorms like Hurricane Sandy, sea level rise or coastal erosion, or ocean acidification that impacts people’s fishery and economic way of life,” Madden said. “We have to meet the immediate visceral needs of people — of communities and workers — but we also need to be thinking decades ahead on what it will take to decarbonize our entire economic system. It’s really important for groups to be oriented toward that long term focus, because this is an all hands on deck situation.”
This version corrects the spelling of Stony Brook University’s Sustainability Studies Program Director Heidi Hutner’s last name.
Scientists, like those who work out of the Stony Brook University School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences’ Marine Sciences Center, are constantly asking
questions, as the desire grows to find links between correlation and causation. File photo
Researchers often desire more data to help make the distinction between correlation — it rained the last three Tuesdays — and causation — dumping nitrogen into the lake caused the growth of algae that robbed the lake of oxygen.
Scientists don’t like to get ahead of their information, preferring to take the painstaking steps of going that extra mile to control for as many mitigating or confounding variables as they can.
Researchers are often “reluctant to say with certainty that they are correct,” Larry Swanson, the interim dean of the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences at Stony Brook University said.
This hesitation to indicate a certain conclusion can raise challenges for politicians, who would like to rely on scientific proof in developing plans for their constituents.
“Policy people want to create a law or regulation that is definitive and will have the desired outcome,” Swanson added.
File photo.
Since he began working in and around Long Island waters in 1960, he started his work collecting data at wetlands around New Haven, and has since studied hypoxia — the process through which oxygen levels are depleted in waterways.
Swanson urges a more extensive collection of data around Long Island.
“I believe we need to monitor the physical environment for changes not just for time series data, such as temperature, but in order to understand how ecological processes are being altered as a consequence of warming,” Swanson said.
Henry Bokuniewicz, a distinguished service professor of oceanography at Stony Brook, said there was a coastline monitoring program in place in 1995 after nor’easters and hurricanes in 1992, but that the effort petered out.
“This should be re-established if [New York State is] serious about coastal impact of shoreline changes,” he said.
Bokuniewicz also suggests measuring and recording waves that are close to shore, and water levels at the ocean coast and interior bays.
Stony Brook had an initiative for additional hires in a cluster for coastal engineering and management, but never completed the hires for budgetary reasons, Bokuniewicz said. “We could do much better with a new generation of scientists dedicated to the Long Island shore,” he said.
Scientists acknowledge that the study of climate change rarely involves establishing the kind of linear connection between action and reaction that turning up the thermostat in a house would provide.
Scientists distinguish between the weather — is it raining today, tomorrow or next week — and the climate — how does March in New York compare to March in North Carolina?
File photo
The climate, generally, remains consistent with a long-term outlook, even if Long Island might experience an unseasonably hot July, an unusually cool September and a heavier-than-normal snowfall in December.
With climate change, scientists collect as much data as they can to determine how the climate is shifting. That presents significant challenges: how do researchers pick data to feed into their models and the patterns to explore?
The broader trend in March could be that spring starts earlier, extending the growing season and creating opportunities for insects, plants or animals to affect the habitat. That could be slightly different this year, amid a cold snap that lasts more than a few days, or in the wake of an unexpected blizzard days before spring.
Indeed, until, and even after there is a scientific consensus, researchers debate long into the night about their interpretations, conclusions and simulation models.
More often than not, scientists crave more information to help them interpret evolving conditions.
“While we know in general why hypoxia will be bad, we can’t really predict it,” Swanson said. “When will it start? How long will it last? This is because we do not understand all the processes — things like the role of bacteria, phytoplankton and the blooming processes and water circulation.”
Science, as it turns out, is often more about collecting more information to ask better questions and developing more precise theories.
As researchers often point out, they can be wrong for the right reasons and right for the wrong ones, all of which, they hope, helps them understand more about the inevitable next set of questions. And, as scientists have offered, it’s a never-ending discussion, as the best answers lead to more questions.
Community members hold up signs on the corner of Route 25A and Miller Place Roadto bring awareness to the dangerous intersection following the death of a local 14-year-old boy. Photo by Kevin Redding
In response to a 14-year-old’s death at a busy intersection, the Miller Place community says enough is enough, and their voices were heard.
Residents from across the North Shore gathered March 26 to push for drastic safety changes at a dangerous road crossing at the intersection of Miller Place Road and Route 25A, where Nico Signore was struck by an SUV while riding his bike with friends last month.
Community members, including Signore’s family and friends, said the intersection should have a red left-turn signal to stop cars from entering the crosswalk when pedestrians are given the signal that it’s safe to walk to the other side. The group also agreed every corner of the intersection should be a no turn on red.
Community members hold up signs on the corner of Route 25A and Miller Place Road to bring awareness to the dangerous intersection following the death of a local 14-year-old boy. Photo by Kevin Redding
On Feb. 23, Signore pushed the crosswalk button, waited for the go-ahead signal to bike across the intersection, and was struck because the northbound driver had a green left turn arrow.
According to Miller Place resident Tammy McGuire, rally organizer and close friend to the Signores, the disastrous layout of the intersection gave the driver an invitation to run him over.
“There’s no reason Nico should be dead,” McGuire said, holding back tears. “We want someone to do something about it before more [people] die. Any parent or community member should want this changed.”
McGuire asked for a moment of silence among the crowd in memory of the beloved Miller Place lacrosse player, and 16-year-old John Luke, who died at the same intersection in May 2015, before leading the residents in a call and response chant.
“What do we want? Change,” the group shouted. “When do we want it? Now.”
Those in the crowd held up signs that read “make Miller Place safe again” and “we demand a full red before anyone else is dead” as passing cars honked in support.
“This corner has been a disaster — this whole section needs to be revamped and they need to do it immediately,” said Angela Campo, Signore’s former religion teacher. “The more time they take for studies, the more lives are lost. The Signore family has been destroyed and this community can’t take it anymore.”
A bear placed in memory if Nico Signore, who was hit by a car, holds a sign that says “make Miller Place safe again,” following the 14-year-old getting hit by a car at an intersection. Photo by Kevin Redding
She held up a sign containing a photo of her former student, adding that he was a beautiful and vibrant boy.
“He never got to live his life and the world is a much more awful place without him,” she said. “It’s heartbreaking.”
Kevin Cantwell, of Sound Beach, said Signore’s death should be the catalyst to get something done.
“Somebody has to figure this out because it’s a safety issue and there’s been proven deaths here,” Cantwell said. “Living in the community for 15 years — seeing this happen, seeing all the accidents, talking to the Miller Place fire department — this [intersection] is a nightmare.”
Back in October, months before Signore’s death, Suffolk County Legislator Sarah Anker (D-Mount Sinai) reached out to the department based on concern from the Miller Place School District about hazardous traffic conditions at the same intersection, where a frequent number of car accidents occurred.
Signore’s death at the intersection prompted a recent request from state Sen. Kenneth LaValle (R-Port Jefferson) to the New York State Department of Transportation to conduct an immediate pedestrian-bicycle safety study along the Route 25A corridor.
LaValle received word from the DOT that it will be making changed to the Miller Place intersection. The agreement included a red turn arrow on Miller Place Road.
“This will prevent cars from turning into the intersection while pedestrians are in the crosswalk,” LaValle said. “Additionally, the DOT will be installing new signs to warn drivers about pedestrians in the crosswalk.”
The changes, according to LaValle, will be implemented in two to four weeks.
“The DOT is in the process of developing long-term recommendations as well that, when implemented, will greatly improve the safety of this intersection,” LaValle said. “It is my deepest hope that these changes will prevent any future loss of life and lower the accident rate in this area.”
Community members hold up signs on the corner of Route 25A and Miller Place Road to bring awareness to the dangerous intersection following the death of a local 14-year-old boy. Photo by Kevin Redding
Stony Brook resident Danielle Algiere said even though she doesn’t know the Signore family, she came out for the simple fact that she’s a mother.
“It doesn’t matter that it happened in Miller Place, any local mother should be out here right now fighting for change,” she said. “He did everything he should’ve, and a flawed system is what got that child killed.”
The Signore family rejected the idea that the red light program had anything to do with Nico’s death, saying just the green arrow did.
“That’s not what this is about,” said Vincent Signore Jr., Nico’s older brother. “The intersection itself needs to be looked into and it’s nice to see a lot of people supporting this and caring about my brother. No family should ever have to go through this.”
All in attendance were encouraged to sign a petition, which help enacted the change, and another was passed around for the Rails to Trails project, to provide a safe, out-of-the-way path for residents to bike on. Also included in that petition was a request to dedicate a portion of the path running through Miller Place to Nico, an avid bicyclist.
“I met with the parents and they want to see a better situation in their community,” Anker said. “I hope if we move forward with Rails to Trails we’ll provide that safe place for our children to enjoy riding their bikes. The Signore family is close to my heart right now.”
This version is updated to include state Sen. Ken LaValle’s response from and about changes made to the intersection by the New York State Department of Transportation.
Co-CEO of East Setauket-based investment firm connected to major money behind Trump administration
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Local protesters gather outside Robert Mercer's investment facility in East Setauket March 24 to address concerns over his influence in the White House. Photo by Kevin Redding
Local protesters gather outside Robert Mercer's investment facility in East Setauket March 24 to address concerns over his influence in the White House. Photo by Kevin Redding
Local protesters gather outside Robert Mercer's investment facility in East Setauket March 24 to address concerns over his influence in the White House. Photo by Kevin Redding
Local protesters gather outside Robert Mercer's investment facility in East Setauket March 24 to address concerns over his influence in the White House. Photo by Kevin Redding
Local protesters gather outside Robert Mercer's investment facility in East Setauket March 24 to address concerns over his influence in the White House. Photo by Kevin Redding
Local protesters gather outside Robert Mercer's investment facility in East Setauket March 24 to address concerns over his influence in the White House. Photo by Kevin Redding
Local protesters gather outside Robert Mercer's investment facility in East Setauket March 24 to address concerns over his influence in the White House. Photo by Kevin Redding
Local protesters gather outside Robert Mercer's investment facility in East Setauket March 24 to address concerns over his influence in the White House. Photo by Kevin Redding
Local protesters gather outside Robert Mercer's investment facility in East Setauket March 24 to address concerns over his influence in the White House. Photo by Kevin Redding
Local protesters gather outside Robert Mercer's investment facility in East Setauket March 24 to address concerns over his influence in the White House. Photo by Kevin Redding
Local protesters gather outside Robert Mercer's investment facility in East Setauket March 24 to address concerns over his influence in the White House. Photo by Kevin Redding
Local protesters gather outside Robert Mercer's investment facility in East Setauket March 24 to address concerns over his influence in the White House. Photo by Kevin Redding
A large group of political protesters paraded along busy Route 25A in East Setauket March 24, aiming their outcry not just at the administration in Washington, D.C., but a reclusive hedge fund billionaire by the name of Robert Mercer residing in their own backyard.
Mercer, the co-CEO of an East Setauket-based investment firm and resident of Head of the Harbor, has been under the spotlight for being the money behind President Donald Trump’s (R) administration, maintaining a major influence on the White House’s agenda, including its strict immigration policies.
Mercer, a major backer of the far-right Breitbart News, reportedly contributed nearly $13.5 million to the Trump campaign and, along with his daughter Rebekah, played a part in securing the leadership positions of chief strategist Steve Bannon and campaign manager Kellyanne Conway.
Regarding Mercer as the administration’s puppeteer-in-chief, protesters assembled to bring public attention to the local family’s power in the White House and the influence “dark money” has had in America.
“I think we’ve reached a worrisome point in our history that a single individual can have the kind of influence that Robert Mercer has, simply because he has a huge amount of money,” Setauket resident John Robinson said. “I think he’s an extremely dangerous individual with worrisome views. He just wants government to not be around so people like him and companies like his can plunder to their heart’s content.”
The short march, made up of several protest groups including the North Country Peace Group, began at the CVS shopping center and landed at the bottom of the hill where Mercer’s Renaissance Technologies sits. Leading the march were local residents wearing paper cutout masks of Trump, Bannon and U.S. Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-Shirley), each strung up like puppets and controlled by a resident in a grim reaper outfit, representing Mercer.
Equipped with signs reading “Mercer $ Bought Trump We Pay the Price” and “Resist Mercer,” Long Island residents stood in front of the investment firm’s office and participated in a mock debate with the faux-political figures. The topics ranged from Mercer’s denial of climate change to Zeldin’s stance on the now-pulled American Health Care Act.
Sue McMahon, a member of the grassroots coalition Building Bridges in Brookhaven, had only recently learned about Mercer’s heavy involvement in Trump’s presidency and his close proximity and participated in the march to expose him.
“I’m very concerned we have a person like this among us who holds the power of the Republican Party,” McMahon said.
She said she’s particularly troubled by the administration’s overwhelming ignorance of environmental issues, its emphasis on money and the extreme views of Breitbart News.
“This is not the America I grew up with, this is not what I want,”she said. “I’m not normally a protester, but I believe we all have to stand up now.”
Paul Hart, a Stony Brook resident, said he was there to support democracy.
The American people have lost representative government because campaign contributions are now controlled by the rich, he said, and it’s hard to think about the needs of constituents when they don’t contribute in a way that’s beneficial to a politician’s re-election.
“The average person has absolutely no voice in politics anymore,” Hart said. “Bbefore, we had a little bit, but now, we’re being swept aside.
One protester referred to Mercer as one small part of a larger picture, and expressed concern over a growing alt-right movement throughout the country that prefers an authoritarian government that runs like a business.
“I guess that’s what Trump is all about,” said Port Jefferson resident Jordan Helin. “But we’re seeing what the country looks like when it’s being run like a business, [and it’s scary].”
Myrna Gordon, a Port Jefferson resident and member, said her organization has held previous actions against Renaissance Technologies, and was among the first grassroots groups on Long island to take notice of how entrenched in the White House Mercer and his family are. According to her, Rebekah Mercer is in many ways more powerful than her father.
“We cannot take the focus off [Rebekah Mercer] right now, because she’s become a powerful force in this whole issue of money in politics, buying candidates, everything we see in our government,” she said.
Since Robert Mercer is local and lives in our community, she added, it’s time that we showed our strength and our voice regarding what this money is doing to our country.
Members of the Rocky Point robotics team GearHeadz, Clayton Mackay, Rex Alex, Jade Pinkenburg, Julius Condemi and Jen Bradley with their first completed FRC robot at the North Shore Youth Council. Photo from Chris Pinkenburg
After building a robot for six weeks, all the GearHeadz wanted to do was sleep.
The Rocky Point-based robotics team had finished building its first machine used to compete in the FIRST Robotics Competition, and the teammates admit moving up from the FIRST Tech Challenge league was more work than even they imagined, but the team is ready for competition.
“Looking at the FTC robots we built compared to the FRC robot, it’s not even close to being the same,” said programmer Jade Pinkenburg, a junior at Rocky Point High School. “The only similarity is the aluminum plate base. Everything else we had to learn ourselves. It was complicated, but really enjoyable learning all the new elements.”
“It’s really professional-grade robotics. The control modules and modems — it’s not toys anymore.”
—Chris Pinkenburg
His father, Chris Pinkenburg, the team’s coach, said he’s thrilled to compete at Hofstra University March 31 after 42 days of hard work learning and building from 6 to 8 p.m. on weekdays and 3 to 7 p.m. on weekends — especially because the league change has been six years in the making.
“It’s been an interesting road so far,” he said. “We were a small team with a lot to do. It was six long weeks, but I’m really proud of the kids. They really pulled their weight and everybody contributed. It was a great experience, and the kids learned a lot.”
Upon receiving the kit with materials weeks ago from FIRST, or For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology, an international robotics competition sanctioning body, the head coach said it was like Christmas, looking at all of the new material they were to use for their machine. But the team quickly realized that a lot of ingenuity and creativity was going to be needed to build a robot from all of the foreign parts it began to categorize.
The three challenges this year, with the theme of steamworks, are to collect fuel represented by green balls and use pressure to propel them to a target, retrieve and deliver gears to a rotor, and climb a rope.
The team prioritized their focus based on difficulty and point value.
“At first we thought we knew what we were doing, but it turns out we had no idea what we were doing,” Jade Pinkenburg said laughing. He explained how he and his teammates had to put in a lot of time teaching themselves a new code language and how to use the parts to design the robot to do what they wanted it to. “It was six weeks of day after day designing, building and coding, plus homework, so it was a lot of work, but we prioritized to get it done. I’m proud of what we’ve done as a team.”
He said he was also inspired by the challenges brought on by the new league.
Other members of the Rocky Point GearHeadz Alek Zahradka, Travis Ferrie and Julia Jacobellis. Photos from Chris Pinkenburg
“There’s more stuff to do and things that are interesting and applicable to the real world,” he said. “It builds on concepts we learn in school in physics and seeing how it works in the real world is interesting.”
Scoring a 1570 out of 1600 on the SATs and a perfect 36 on the ACTs, it’s no wonder he was able to combat the problems the team continued to face. But to the student, it’s all about staying interested and motivated.
“My quick learning helped, but it’s more about the motivation,” Pinkenburg said. “If you want to be successful, you can be.”
His teammate Jen Bradley, a sophomore, said the six weeks to build the 120-pound robot were intense, but a great experience.
“I think it’s good to have a general knowledge of simple machines, basic physics and mathematics and programming because in this day and age everything is becoming modernized,” she said. “Having this knowledge will help up, but it’s also just interesting and it’s fun for us.”
The GearHeadz continued to solve problem after problem. First, Rocky Point sophomore Alek Zahradka and junior Travis Ferrie got to work building the robot and its attachments. Unlike in the FIRST LEGO league, FLL, another league the team took part in last year, where you can only use parts made by Lego, in FRC you can use any part that’s available to the public as long as it’s not dangerous, which Bradley said made the process more exciting.
The team used rubber surgical tubes to sling around an axel and pull balls into the shooter. Two wheels accelerate the balls toward the target. It will be 10 feet high, and although Chris Pinkenburg said it is unclear if they can reach the mark, building the robot in a space in Yaphank and testing it inside the basement of the North Shore Public Library, he’s confident in his team’s capabilities.
“We can hit the ceiling in the library in the meantime,” he said, laughing.
“I say it’s the hardest fun you’ll ever have…We’re not engineers, but we built something.”
—Jade Pinkenburg
Rocky Point freshman Julius Condemi then worked on getting the gears moving. With 1 minute, 45 seconds to complete the tasks, Pinkenburg said he was impressed seeing his team member placing five or six gears on the peg.
“Julius must play a lot of video games, which helps,” he said. “He’s a great driver, and the robot is very agile. In the end we managed to hang the gears and climb the rope.”
The robot is now sealed in a bag inside Pinkenburg’s living room, but the GearHeadz are allowed to continue working on the attachments. The coach said it couldn’t have been made possible without the support of the community. Most team meetings were held at the North Shore Youth Council but also the Rocky Point VFW, Rocky Point Civic Association and local residents offered assistance. He said with the help and his team’s dedication, the rookie robot is comparable to many others in the league — even with eight members, compared to other teams like Longwood, that has 60 kids on the team. Rocky Point senior Clayton Mackay and freshmen Rex Alex and Julia Jacobellis round out the roster.
“The kids really focused, worked well under pressure and got the job done,” the coach said. “It’s really professional-grade robotics. The control modules and modems — it’s not toys anymore. This stuff is used in the industry to build robots. It’s on another level.”
His son said he can’t wait to show off what the GearHeadz have produced at the competition.
“It’s been an incredible experience unlike anything I’ve ever done before,” he said. “I say it’s the hardest fun you’ll ever have, and it’ll be cool to show what we’ve done in front of such a large audience. It’s crazy to see a bunch of teenagers with free time on the weekends building an inspiring and massive robot. We’re not engineers, but we built something.”
North Atlantic Industries in Bohemia and a Rookie grant from the Argosy Foundation made the team’s competition this season possible. For more information about the team, to join or to donate, visit the team’s website at www.rockypointroboticsclub.com.
Autism Social Club & Game Night attendees show off their Game On T-shirts. Photo from Tristan Whitworth
A local video game store sets itself apart from the rest by giving those with special needs, and their families, a night to call their own.
When Shoreham resident Tristan Whitworth opened Game On, a retro video game and toy store in Miller Place, in 2015, he did so with a few personal missions in mind. Not only did he want to send his adult customers back to their childhood when they entered the door, he also wanted to provide a community-oriented haven for kids with common interests. He envisioned a place kids could hang out, be themselves and play their favorite games together, similar to the comic book stores and arcades he and his friends would rush to after school when growing up.
Game On owner Tristan Whitworth plays a video game with a child. Photo from Tristan Whitworth
So when Whitworth, 31, noticed that a majority of his loyal customers were kids, teens and young adults on the autism spectrum — all separately coming into the store with their families — he jumped at the opportunity to set up an event where they could all meet one another, make new friends and form a bond.
“At first, I started a little trial thing here at the store on Fridays where we had pizza and I told certain families to just come in, play games and hang out with us [the staff],” he said. “The kids just started communicating with each other, and the parents started to communicate with each other. The kids exchanged phone numbers and even started having appointments to hang out. It blew my mind.”
In October 2016, the trial gatherings officially became “The Autism Social Club & Game Night,” a once-a-month and completely free Game On event held at North Shore United Methodist Church in Wading River, where young people on the autism spectrum, as well as those with Down syndrome and other disabilities, can enjoy some independence and play a variety of games with their siblings, parents and friends old and new.
On the last Friday of every month, Whitworth and members of the store’s staff venture to the church and set up tables, TV’s, and a wide range of game consoles from Super Nintendo to Sega Genesis to Playstation and Atari in a giant room for the game night, hosted between 7 and 9 p.m.
Those who are sound-sensitive, or don’t like video games, can pick from a large selection of board games like Trouble and Chutes and Ladders, and healthy foods, like fruit and hummus, are served to help boost better dietary habits. While about 10 kids showed up on the first night, Whitworth said there are up to 25 kids and parents that now attend and the event is only growing.
Autism Social Club & Game Night kids smile for a group photo at the North Shore United Methodist Church in Wading River. Photo from Tristan Whitworth
“I love it, I’m obsessed,” Whitworth said of the event, for which he’s made T-shirts and a logo consisting of puzzle pieces inside a brain. “The biggest thing for me is to make sure [the kids] know they’re not alone. Some don’t have others they can relate to or have friends with common interests. At the last game night, four kids who had only met through this event organized their own little thing where they each brought in one video game and they sat in a circle and played with each other. The parents didn’t organize it, I had nothing to do with it, they just communicated with each other and that was awesome.”
Dani Sanford, a Game On employee and game night volunteer, said the event has been great for her younger sister, who has Down syndrome.
“She socializes more, everyone there is so sweet to her, so welcoming and [friendly] and so my mom loves bringing her there,” Sanford said. “She usually just plays solitaire and games she can play by herself, but now, she’s actually looking forward to playing with other people.”
Sound Beach resident Samantha Netburn and her four children have been going to Game On ever since it opened, developing a close friendship with Whitworth and being a huge reason the event was thought up in the first place.
With two of her children — Jeremy, 15, and Summer, 14 — on the spectrum, Netburn said the family looks forward to the game night every month.
The owner of Game On, located at 465 Route 25A in Miller Place, started the game night for kids with special needs. Photo from Tristan Whitworth
“It’s really amazing, Tristan’s such a good guy and he’s so good to the kids…it’s nice to get together and sit down with other kids and just have a good night for a few hours,” Netburn said. “It’s cute how the kids all have these friendships now and look forward to seeing each other. There are kids out there that don’t play with a lot of kids and don’t know how to…so they have this.”
Summer, who spends most of her time at the game night socializing and getting to know everyone, has broken out of her shy shell since attending the event.
“At Game On, I like to talk to new people and ask them questions like, ‘what school are you in?’ or ‘what kinds of stuff do you like to do?’ and it’s nice to talk to them about themselves,” Summer said.
Jeremy said he’s always gravitated towards the older games because they “have a lot more character” and rely heavily on “strategy and thinking,” and thinks playing video games with others is an even more connective experience than playing sports.
Pastor Hal Low of North Shore United Methodist Church said as a father of two sons on the spectrum, he was quick to respond to Whitworth’s call asking to use the building to host the event.
“I was on board from the moment he came to me with the idea,” Low said. “I know my sons look forward to it every month and it’s an opportunity for them to socialize and have fun in an environment with their peers and other people who are understanding of autism.”
Whitworth said while he hopes to start up a second game night in the future, he’s happy to have provided kids who love to get their “game on” with a place to go.
Game On is located at 465 Route 25A. For more information about Game On or the game night, call 631-821-GAME (4263) or check them out on Facebook at www.facebook.com/gameonmpgamenight/.
A view of the main page of a piece of Reclaim NY’s Transparency Project. Image from ReclaimNY website
Transparency and honesty play a major role in healthy democracies, and now New York State municipalities will have a watchdog tracking their effectiveness, providing feedback publicly to concerned citizens, by concerned citizens.
Last week, Reclaim New York, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization established to “educate New Yorkers on issues like affordability, transparency and education,” launched a website designed to rate government accessibility and transparency based on an index of recommendations.
The site is part of the group’s New York Transparency Project, an initiative launched in 2016, which kicked off with 2,500 Freedom of Information Law requests for basic expenditure information to county, town and village governments, as well as school districts across Long Island and the state.
“This is an accountability tool,” Reclaim New York Communications Director Doug Kellogg said. “Anybody who wants to help do something to make government more accessible and accountable, go spend 30 minutes and input ratings.”
The new system allows citizens to grade local governments based on 29 indicators, including whether contracts are posted on the internet, there’s access to expenditure records, notices of meetings and the minutes to the meetings are available and contact information is listed for elected officials. The municipalities will receive an overall, objective grade. The grade will indicate which are transparent and law-abiding, as budget information and records access officers need to be publicly available.
“Anybody who wants to help do something to make government more accessible and accountable, go spend 30 minutes and input ratings.”
— Doug Kellogg
“Citizens can hold their governments accountable at every level if they have the right tools for the job,” executive director for the organization Brandon Muir said in a statement. “This is a truly unprecedented moment for New Yorkers who want to reclaim ownership of their government. Working with this new site they can make proactive transparency a reality.”
To input data, users must register with an email address. When data is put into the system, it is vetted and sited prior to going live to avoid a “wild west” feel, according to Kellogg. The process of imputing data to extract a rating for municipalities has only just begun. Kellogg said it will take time to have an all-encompassing collection of information.
In May 2016, Port Jefferson Village and Commack school district failed to comply with FOIL requests as part of the organization’s Transparency Project.
New York’s FOIL requires governments and school districts respond to records requests within five business days, whether with the information requested, a denial or an acknowledgement of the request. The response needs to include an estimated date when one of the latter two will occur. Denials can be appealed butnot allowed “on the basis that the request is voluminous or that locating or reviewing the requested records or providing the requested copies is burdensome, because the agency lacks sufficient staffing.”
As part of a project it dubbed the New York Transparency Project, Reclaim New York sent 253 Freedom of Information requests to school districts and municipalities on Long Island. It reported on its findings, saying that while many entities complied with state guidelines on processing such public records requests, and after the findings were released, Port Jefferson Village and Commack school district eventually complied with the requests.
Entities that it said complied included Suffolk County; Brookhaven, Smithtown and Huntington towns; Belle Terre and Lake Grove villages; and the Port Jefferson, Kings Park, Huntington, Smithtown, Mount Sinai, Miller Place and Rocky Point school districts, among others.
To become an evaluator for the website or to view data, visit www.reclaimnewyork.org and click on the Transparency tab.
Shoreham-Wading River High School. File photo by Kevin Redding
Shoreham-Wading River school district officials took action Thursday night following a threat to one of their schools.
On March 16, an anonymous text message to a student in the early morning threatened that “something might occur” at the high school March 17. The student who received the text reported it to district administrators, who put in place procedures, which entailed searching lockers and school bags in addition to adding overnight security, upon hearing the news of the threat.
“We had a good plan in place to ensure the safety of our students,” superintendent Neil Lederer said. “Fortunately, we didn’t have to implement it because we identified the individual late last night.”
The student who sent the text will receive “appropriate consequences.”
“At this point there is no threat and the situation has been successfully resolved,” Lederer said in a letter on the school district’s website. “We take very seriously the potential threat to the safety of our schools and immediately notified the Suffolk County Police Department. The health, safety and welfare of our students and staff are always out main priority. Please know that every precaution is taken on a daily basis to protect the safety of our students and staff and to provide a secure learning environment for all.”
Back in January, the high school was also informed of an Instagram threat. The student was immediately identified and disciplinary measures were also administered in that case. Authorities were also notified and involved in the investigation in that case. It is unclear whether the two incidents are at all related.
Lederer did not respond to questions for comment.
The Suffolk County Police Department has not yet responded to requests for comment.
Updates will follow when more information is available.
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