Featuring two nationally recognized groups in folk music and an open mic filled with 10 local singer-songwriters, the Northport Arts Coalition’s StarLight Concert Series ended its season with a bang on Friday.
A packed house was captivated by the intertwined harmonies of singer-songwriters Chuck E. Costa and Mira Stanley of The Sea and the Sea and the old time up-tempo music of Jan Bell and the Maybelles, a cornerstone in the Brooklyn folk and country scene.
By Bill Landon
These Warriors are still the superior League VI team.
Despite giving up a 1-0 lead to trail 4-1 in the fifth inning, the Comsewogue baseball team put together an eight-run rally in the top of the seventh to claim a 9-4 victory over Sayville Thursday and take the series by winning two of out three games.
Dan Colasanto crossed the plate first courtesy of Mike Stiles’ stand-up double to take an early lead, but both teams struggled to bring runners home over the next three innings.
“We were all scrappy in the beginning — we had a couple of errors, a couple of bad plays,” Stiles said. “[We just needed] to get a couple of hits, a couple of walks together, and that’s just what we did in that last inning.”
Sayville’s bats came alive in the bottom of the fifth with a four-run rally to take its first lead of the game, which stood until the final inning.
Comsewogue head coach Mike Bonura told his team it’s just a three-run deficit, and to keep their composure.
“Let’s have some quality at bats,” he said to his athletes. “It’s just three runs. We just got to get to first base.”
Despite the deficit, Colasanto went back to work in the sixth inning and retired three in a row.
“We just had to keep our heads in the game and I knew my job was to throw strikes,” Colasanto said. “I knew if I could keep it in the strike zone we’d have a chance, because I have a great field behind me.”
Bonura was pleased with his player’s efforts.
“Dan didn’t get rattled after he gave up three runs in the fifth,” Bonura said. “He just stayed the course and didn’t let anyone’s mistakes in the field effect the way he pitched, and everyone feeds off of that. Dan’s been with me four years — he had a great game, he’s a senior captain who’s a team leader.”
In the top of the seventh, Comsewogue’s Vin Velazquez chopped an infield hit that fell into no man’s land to get him to first in time to load the bases with no outs.
James Mimnaugh followed with single that drove home Ryan Szalay to cut the deficit to two, and teammate John Braun smacked the ball into shallow right field for a two-run hit that drove in Robert Dattoma and Jake Sardinia, to even the score at 4-4.
David Nodeland helped the Warriors claim the lead after Braun and Sardinia crossed the plate off of his deep hit, to give his team a 6-4 advantage.
“We all just stayed in it,” Nodeland said. “Everyone stayed alive on the bench and kept it going. Once the hits started coming they just kept rolling, so it was a nice little rally we had.”
Trying to stop the Warriors in their tracks, Sayville made its fourth pitching change of the game, but to no avail.
Colasanto ripped one deep for a stand-up double, driving in Nodeland, and after scoring a run earlier in the inning, Szalay helped Colasanto earn a run of his own with a short fly ball in the gap,
With a full count against him, Velazquez drew a walk with the bases loaded for the final run of the game and the 9-4 win.
“[We didn’t want to do] anything big, just make sure you get on base, and that’s what we did,” Braun said.
On Sayville’s last at-bat, Bonura said Colasanto wanted to close the game out, but was pulled after his pitch count reached 100, to prevent the risk of injury.
Szalay took the mound in place of Colasanto, and finished the job his teammate started,
With the win, Comsewogue improves to 8-1 atop the League VI leaderboard. The team will travel to Westhampton Beach on Tuesday to take on the No. 2 Hurricanes, at 7-2 in the standings, at 4 p.m.
Police allege a young man drove drunk, blew through a stop sign and crashed into a house early on Saturday morning, causing extensive damage.
The suspect, 20-year-old Gerard Tegins, was driving a 2002 Hyundai SUV south on Harrison Avenue in Miller Place when, at about 2:30 a.m., he passed a stop sign without stopping at the corner of Parkside Avenue, according to the Suffolk County Police Department. Tegins then lost control of the SUV, went across several lawns and crashed into the living room of a house on Parkside.
Police said no one in the home was injured, though the residence suffered extensive damage.
The driver was treated for minor injuries at John T. Mather Memorial Hospital in Port Jefferson, police said. He was the only one in the vehicle at the time of the crash.
Tegins, a Port Jefferson Station resident, was charged with driving while intoxicated, speeding, reckless driving, running a stop sign and failing to stay in a lane.
The defendant’s attorney, Commack-based Michael Alber, did not immediately return a call for comment.
Lowered tax levy increase allows district to deliver classroom upgrades, restored programs, positions
By Andrea Moore Paldy
It was welcomed news for Three Village residents when they learned the community’s school district lowered its projected tax levy increase for the upcoming school year. The good news continued with the balancing and lowering of class sizes and restoration of some programs that fell victim to previous budget cuts.
The announcement came at the district’s most recent board meeting, during which the Three Village school board adopted a $188 million budget for the 2015-16 school year. Three Village will be able to lower the tax levy increase because of a $1.65 million bump in aid — $830,000 more than previously budgeted — assistant superintendent for business services Jeff Carlson said. Originally set at 2.93 percent, the district’s new cap on the tax levy increase is 2.79 percent.
Aid from the state includes a $1.86 million restoration of the Gap Elimination Adjustment (GEA), a measure that deducts money from aid packages to fund the state’s budget. Three Village will still see a loss of $3.3 million to the state. Over the six years since the institution of the GEA, the district has lost $32,422,271 — the equivalent of $2,398 for the average taxpayer, Carlson said.
While the .81 percent budget-to-budget increase works out to about $1 million more in expenses, the tax levy will go up $3.89 million. This is because the district will be depending less on its applied fund balance, Carlson said. Instead of budgeting $6.5 million from the district’s reserves, Carlson said last month that he would budget only between $2 million and $2.5 million.
Decreases to major expenses like contributions to retirement systems and healthcare are also responsible for the district’s positive financial forecast. Next school year, Three Village will see a $3.6 million drop in its retirement contributions and a $1 million decrease — that’s 5 percent — in its health insurance costs.
Three Village also benefits from increased revenue from tuition for non-residents attending its special education programs and the Three Village Academy. This year’s tuition generated $1.2 million.
Though declining enrollment in the elementary schools would allow the district to shed seven to eight teaching positions, the administration is choosing to balance class sizes instead.
“We believe in the importance of balancing class size and lowering those class sizes that are in the 25, 26, 27 range,” Superintendent Cheryl Pedisich said. “It is not helpful in any way to our younger students.”
Three classroom positions, along with the two positions from the Pi enrichment program that ends this year, will be converted to STEM specialist positions.
“Enrichment should be for all children in grades K through 6,” Pedisich said.
The appointed science and math specialists will be in each school to work with classroom teachers and provide both enrichment and remediation for students who need it, she added.
The administration is adding another .9 full-time equivalent (FTE) position, so that health — currently only offered to sixth graders — can be taught to fourth through sixth graders. And an additional .5 FTE social worker position is being added so that each elementary school can have a full-time social worker.
This move is “critical to issues such as bullying” and preventative work, Pedisich said.
There will be small staffing increases at the junior and senior highs to balance classes, decrease study halls and increase electives, she said. Carlson said the cost for these additions will be covered by retirements.
Departments that will benefit include technology, English, foreign language, guidance, health, math, science and social studies.
The American Sign Language class, which was popular before it was cut two years ago, will again be offered by the foreign language department, while a computer programming class will be added to the math department. The district will also add 1.2 FTEs for English as a Second Language (ESL) teachers — to comply with a new state mandate — and it will add another 1.3 FTE to guidance for counseling.
There will be additions to the clerical staff, as well as to maintenance and operations, in order to lower overtime costs and outside contractors, Carlson said. There will also be additional security during the day and for evening activities, he added.
The superintendent said that the district will restructure its current administration to create new roles without the need for additional staff. Some positions expected to be restored include the coordinating chair for music, an assistant director for health and physical education, an assistant director for pupil personnel services, coordinating chair for junior high foreign language and district-wide ESL and an assistant director for instructional technology.
The assistant director for instructional technology will help the district prepare for the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, as well as help determine how to spend the money Three Village receives from the Smart Schools Bond that passed in November. The $2 billion bond is earmarked for pre-K classrooms, wireless and broadband systems, safety and security technology and classroom technology across the state. Carlson said the district’s share will be close to $3.4 million.
An approved government efficiency plan that shows a 1 percent savings to the tax levy — while also staying within the tax cap — will make residents eligible for another tax rebate check, Carlson said.
The budget vote will take place from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m., May 19 at the district’s elementary schools.
Superintendent
In other news, the board voted to reappoint the superintendent for another three years.
“I have to say, never in all my years have we had a superintendent of schools as respected and beloved by this community as Cheryl Pedisich,” said school board President Bill Connors, who has served on the board for 15 of the past 21 years.
Pedisich, who started in Three Village in 1984 as a guidance counselor at Ward Melville High School, was visibly moved by the standing ovation she received.
“I really am very overwhelmed,” she said. “I have spent my entire career here and I could not think of a place I would consider going…. My heart and my soul belong to this community, and you definitely have me 110 percent.”
Police are investigating the death of a Huntington woman after a car crash on Saturday afternoon.
According to the Suffolk County Police Department, Tracymarie Verme, 44, was driving a 1997 Lexus west on Central Street in Huntington, west of Clinton Avenue, at about 4:30 p.m. when she hit two parked cars.
Verme was pronounced dead at Huntington Hospital, police said.
The parked cars were unoccupied at the time of the collision.
Police impounded the Lexus for a safety check. Detectives from the SCPD’s 2nd Squad are investigating the incident.
Anyone with information is asked to call the squad at 631-854-8252.
Port Jefferson officials want to get the word out that residents can sign up to receive local emergency information on their phones and computers.
The Code Red system lets the village send messages to users with a call or a text to a mobile phone, a call to a landline or an email.
Suffolk County has used Code Red for a handful of years, and according to a previous presentation from Florida-based Emergency Communications Network LLC, the village can share community contact information with the county to broaden its database of users — but it still cannot reach Port Jefferson residents who are not among the thousands signed up for Suffolk alerts.
The village is encouraging local residents to sign up for the free notification service, so the public service agencies in the area can reach them in the event of a weather event like a hurricane or a snowstorm, or to inform people about road closures or other emergency information.
A link to sign up for Code Red is on the village’s website, at www.portjeff.com.
According to Dave Williams, the Port Jefferson Fire Department chief and a village deputy fire marshal who is also tasked with improving the village’s response to emergencies, the alerts could target a specific group of people with its messages, such as village employees.
“I think it’s a fantastic safety feature for everyone,” Williams said during the July presentation on the Code Red system.
Other local municipalities use the system, including the Town of Huntington and the Village of Amityville.
The Huntington Arts Council recently announced the winners of its latest exhibit, a self-portrait show titled “I See Me.”
Juried by Lynn Rozzi, director of the Firehouse Plaza Art Gallery at Nassau Community College, the “I See Me” prospectus requested artists to respond to the challenge of sharing their interpretation of questions and statements behind self-portraiture: “Who are you? How do you see yourself? Let everyone in on your personal vision of you. Self-portraits rule the day!” The response, reflected in the exhibition of works, consists of a diverse mix of media including but not limited to oil, digital photo, watercolor, graphite/gouche, ink and pastels.
Participating artists include Anu Annam, Christopher Arvans, Robyn Bellospirito, Mark Belton, David Benson, Pamela Best, Marlene Bezich, Elizabeth Cassidy, Beth Costello, Katherine Criss, Judith Davidson, Jessica Dayan, Emily Eisen, Paul David Elsen, Jessica Faro, Jim Finlayson, Nicole Franz, Susan Geffken Burton, William Grabowski, Donna Grossman, Dan Guido, Kirsten Hadjoglou, Rodee Hansen, Samantha Hernandez, Sofie Hoff, Lori Horowitz, Caroline Isacsson, Kate Kelly, Lauren Miceli, Margaret Minardi, Denis Ponsot, Robin Rosen-O’Leary, Lauren Ruiz, Jim Scovel, Constance Sloggatt Wolf, Jackie Stevens, Janice Sztabnik, Bobbie Turner, Tracy Vaccarino-Guzzardi, Chuck Von Schmidt, Pamela Waldroup, Lois V. Walker, Randy Weisbin and Fahiym Williams.
“‘I See Me’ employs the very interesting and up-to-the-minute concept … The Selfie … with the theme of self-portraits. And it seems to have touched the funny bone of a lot of artists who had a really good time picturing themselves in interesting, psychologically insightful and incredibly artful ways. This is a show not to be missed,” said Linda Louis, a member of the HAC board of directors and exhibition committee.
William Grabowski captured first place for his digital photo, “Past Tense.” Beth Costello garned second place for “No Language Barriers Here,” ink/oil pastel/paper on panels, and third place went to Margaret Minardi for her “Self Portrait,” colored pencil.
Awards of excellence were given to Marlene Bezich for “Under Cover Artist #1,” oil; Donna Grossman for “When One Door Closes,” oil/door panel; Jessica Dayan for “Mirror,” oil/linen; and Mark Belton for his untitled self-portrait, acrylic/canvas.
“I See Me” will be on display in the Main Street Gallery through April 27, 2015. The gallery hours are Monday to Friday from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Saturdays from noon to 4 p.m. For more information, call 631-271-8423 or visit www.huntingtonarts.org.
A Huntington man who admitted to huffing an aerosol cleaner before getting behind the wheel on New Year’s eve in 2013 and broadsiding a 63-year-old Commack woman’s car, killing her, was sentenced to four to 12 years in prison on Friday, according to the Suffolk County DA’s office.
State Supreme Court Justice John Collins sentenced James Murphy, 20, in Riverhead this morning after what DA spokesman Bob Clifford described in an email as an emotional courtroom scene. Family members of victim Herta Palma attended the sentencing.
Murphy pleaded guilty on Feb. 26 to second-degree manslaughter, second-degree reckless endangerment, reckless driving and leaving the scene of a fatal accident. He was remanded to the county jail following his February plea.
On the day of the fatal crash, Murphy was driving a Chevy Blazer north on Commack Road when he sideswiped one car and ran a red light at the intersection with Hauppauge Road, according to a Thursday statement from the DA’s office. Murphy’s SUV broadsided the Hyundai sedan Palma was driving. Palma died soon after at Huntington Hospital.
District Attorney Thomas Spota said Murphy told cops at the scene of the crash in 2013, “I was driving the white Blazer. I’m not going to lie to you officer. I just inhaled a can of Dust Off and threw it in the back of my truck.”
He also told officers he took Xanax and smoked hash a couple of days earlier.
Clifford said Murphy told the court today that he made “bad choices.”
Murphy’s attorney didn’t immediately return a call seeking comment on Friday afternoon.
According to Clifford, Palma’s son, Joe Palma Jr., spoke to the court as well, saying, “As a family we have already been given our sentence. A life sentence of pain and grief from the loss of a mother taken much too soon for no good reason.
“All of our lives have been forever altered. We will never be the same.”
Clifford said Herta Palma’s daughter-in-law, Mary, also spoke, saying that the victim had visited her Commack home that afternoon, reminding the family to be safe on New Year’s Eve. Palma was staying home on New Year’s Eve because she lost a friend years ago in a drunk-driving crash.
“We actually spoke of it, obviously not knowing as she drove away that her life was going to be taken within nine minutes of her leaving my home,” she said, according to Clifford. “As she was pulling away, she was waving with her big smile at me, blowing kisses. … I hold on to that memory every day.”
In his statement, Spota called on the New York State Legislature to include intoxicative inhalants to current statutes that make driving under the influence of a drug illegal.
“It is well-established science that people who abuse inhalants experience intoxication, muscle spasms, a loss of coordination, hallucinations and impaired judgment — and it is also a fact that for many teenagers, inhalants provide a cheap and accessible alternative to alcohol,” he said. “It is time New York State treats inhalants as intoxicating substances so prosecutors can charge offenders with driving while impaired by drugs in the first degree.”
Timothy Eagen, superintendent of the Kings Park Central School District, was recently elected to the position of president-elect of New York State ASCD.
Eagen served as president of the Long Island affiliate of ASCD for the 2013-2014 school year. This group consists of over 450 members of our local educational community.
Founded in 1943, ASCD, formerly the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, is the global leader in developing and delivering innovative programs, products, and services that empower educators to support the success of each and every learner. ASCD is comprised of over 125,000 members, including superintendents, principals, teachers, professors, and advocates from more than 138 countries. The ASCD community also includes 56 affiliate organizations, including NYSASCD. ASCD’s mission is to foster a “global community dedicated to excellence in learning, teaching, and leading.”
“ASCD is an incredible organization that supports best practices in teaching and learning around the world,” Eagen said. “I am proud to have been selected to lead our state organization and further the mission of ASCD. Long Island, and specifically the Kings Park-Smithtown area, will benefit by having a greater level of advocacy and ‘voice’ in educational matters.”
By Kara Hahn and Shawn Nuzzo
The Greening of 25A Committee had an absolutely beautiful day for our 2015 spring cleanup at the Stony Brook Railroad Station. The sun was shining and volunteers worked hard to spruce up this important and extremely visible gateway to our community.
Our appreciation goes out to all the civic and community volunteers: Councilwoman Cartright, Jennifer Martin, Gretchen Oldrin-Mones, Herb Mones, Paul Willoughby, Jesse Davenport, Makenzie Gazura, Graham Ball, Alyssa Turano, Zach Baum, Charles Tramontana, Donald Amodeo and Elizabeth Zamarelli. Special thanks to the Long Island Rail Road, Frank Turano and Ron Gerry for lending us garden tools, along with other supplies and equipment that made the event possible.
Special thanks to the Three Village Chamber of Commerce and their volunteers David Woods and Bruce Reisman for opening up their office in the beautiful station house and to chamber member David Prestia of Bagel Express for the tasty bagels and coffee.
This year, we had an extremely large, contingent of undergraduate volunteers from Stony Brook University — more than 50 students participated, and thank you to Emily Resnick and Joy Pawirosetiko of Commuter Student Services and Off-Campus Living for help with recruiting the student participants.
Once again, we also had volunteers from Ward Melville High School Key Club — thank you to Kyra Durko, Ashley Donovan, Gianna Forni, Ben Sullivan, Jack Kiessel, Shannon Dalton, Josie Wiltse, Alyssa Abesamis and Dylan Buzzanca.
Thank you to the Town of Brookhaven Wildlife and Ecology Center for donating flowers.
As always we could not hold the clean up without the support of Town of Brookhaven Superintendent of Highways Dan Losquadro and his highway crew, who truly make our event possible.
Thank you to everyone involved, we could not have done it without you.
Legislator Kara Hahn represents the 5th District in the Suffolk County Legislature and Shawn Nuzzo is president of the Civic Association of the Setaukets and Stony Brook.
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