Port Jefferson Free Library's children's section is bursting with books. Photo by Heidi Sutton
A library board president was unseated on Wednesday, in an election that will also fill the board for the first time in a while.
Two incumbents and two newcomers were gunning for three positions as Port Jefferson Free Library trustees this week, at a time when the library is working on plans to expand its facilities.
The library announced on its website that Trustee Susan Prechtl-Loper was re-elected to the board with 129 votes and newcomers Carl Siegel — who once served on the board in the late 1990s — and Joel Rosenthal were elected with 135 votes and 126 votes, respectively.
President Laura Hill Timpanaro lost her re-election bid, garnering only 77 votes, according to Tom Donlon, the interim library director.
Being the top two vote-getters, Siegel and Prechtl-Loper won five-year terms on the board, while third-place winner Rosenthal won a two-year stint that became available after former Trustee Harriet Martin vacated her spot on the board with the time still left on her term.
The library has recently acquired two properties adjacent to its corner building at Thompson and East Main streets in downtown Port Jefferson — a residential property on Thompson and a business on East Main — and is working on developing those properties to help satisfy the library’s parking and general needs.
Port Jefferson High School. File photo by Elana Glowatz
If all goes according to plan, Port Jefferson school district residents will pay almost the same in taxes next year.
Between those taxes, state aid and other revenues, the total budget for 2016-17 could actually go down, according to a presentation from Assistant Superintendent for Business Sean Leister at the school board meeting on Tuesday night. That’s largely because the district would not spend as much on capital projects next year, with the new high school elevator being one big-ticket item that will not be repeated, and because the district will see a drop in its debt repayments.
Those two significant decreases would offset increases in health insurance payments and transportation costs, among others.
The proposed $41.3 million plan would maintain all academic programs and staffing levels, despite the 2.5 percent decrease in spending as compared to the 2015-16 budget. But Leister noted that the tax levy would go in the opposite direction — residents would see a slight increase of 0.11 percent. That levy bump would come in just below the state-mandated cap on how much it could increase next year, which Leister estimates at 0.16 percent.
Leister’s estimate for next year’s increase in state aid is larger: He’s putting that at 6 percent, a number he called “conservative,” especially in light of the recent discussion between state officials about the Gap Elimination Adjustment.
The adjustment, a deduction taken out of each New York school district’s state aid, was enacted several years ago to help get the state government out of a fiscal crisis. The deduction has been decreasing lately, and there is talk that it could be removed completely in the coming cycle.
Leister is not as optimistic.
“I’ll believe it when I see it,” he said.
If, however, Port Jefferson receives more state aid than it allots for in the budget, Leister said school officials would decide together how to spend it.
And Superintendent Ken Bossert assured the school board that the district also has a plan in the event of receiving less state aid than estimated in the budget proposal.
There are “still a lot of moving parts” in the budget planning process, Leister said. In addition to the question about state aid totals, school districts are still waiting on final numbers for their tax levy caps.
A robbery suspect allegedly ripped a woman out of her car while she was stopped at a traffic light Tuesday morning.
According to the Suffolk County Police Department, the woman was driving to work and had exited the Long Island Expressway at exit 56 shortly before 9 a.m. She was waiting at a red light at the north service road’s intersection with Route 111 in Hauppauge when a man who was walking in the roadway opened the car’s front passenger door and got inside. Police said the woman tried to fight off the robber as he stole her belongings.
From there, police allege the man got out of the car, walked around to the driver’s side, opened the door, forcibly removed the victim from the car and dragged her onto the pavement. He allegedly got into the driver’s seat and took more of her property, as she again fought him.
Police said the suspect ran away as other people started to approach the car to aid the victim.
Officers searched the area and broadcasted a description of the suspect, police said, and about 10 minutes later found suspect Richard Clinton a short distance away, at Route 111 and Motor Parkway.
Clinton, a 34-year-old whose last known address was in Medford, was arrested and treated at Southside Hospital in Bay Shore “for the effects of narcotic drug use,” police said. He is charged with second-degree robbery, resisting arrest and three counts of seventh-degree criminal possession of a controlled substance.
Attorney information for the suspect was not available. According to police, Clinton will be arraigned at a later date.
Anyone who may have witnessed the alleged robbery is asked to contact detectives from the SCPD’s 4th Squad at 631-854-8452.
Police are hunting for an armed robbery suspect after a man was shot in the leg in an incident on Monday night.
A male suspect in a mask, who was carrying a gun, allegedly approached a gas pump attendant at the USA station on New York Avenue in Huntington Station that night, according to the Suffolk County Police Department. The assailant demanded cash.
Police said a “confrontation ensued” and the suspect fired a shot that hit the attendant in the leg, after which the robber fled on foot — with the cash.
The victim’s injury was treated at Huntington Hospital.
Detectives from the SCPD’s 2nd Squad are investigating the armed robbery, which occurred a little before 10 p.m., and police said they are searching for a 6-foot black male with a thin build.
Anyone with information is asked to call detectivesat 631-854-8252, or to call Crime Stoppers anonymously at 1-800-220-TIPS.
The entrance to Blydenburgh County Park is in Smithtown. File photo
A man trying to rescue his dog from a freezing lake on Saturday morning needed a rescue himself, after falling into chest-deep water, according to police.
The 56-year-old Brooklyn resident was going after Dena the dog, who had gotten loose during a walk and ran onto a frozen lake at Blydenburgh County Park in Smithtown, the Suffolk County Police Department said. While going after the canine, he fell into the lake himself.
Park rangers as well as officers from the SCPD’s 4th Precinct, Emergency Service Section, Aviation Section and Marine Bureau responded to the park, on Veterans Memorial Highway. Police said Michael Coscia from the Emergency Service Section put on a water rescue suit and crawled onto the ice, while tethered to a rope officers Michael Simpson and Robert Stahl were holding.
After the man was in the water for about 25 minutes, Stahl, Simpson and Sgt. Michael Homan pulled both him and Coscia from the water, police said. The dog walked off the ice.
Police said the Brooklyn man was treated for hypothermia at Stony Brook University Hospital.
Photo by Al Semm/Port Jefferson Village digital archive
It was 44 years ago this week that a tank barge split in half in Port Jefferson Harbor, prompting a U.S. Coast Guard investigation.
The barge I.O.S. 3301 — which was connected to the towing vessel Martha R. Ingram and functioning as one with that vessel — had just finished off-loading more than 100,000 barrels of gasoline and almost 50,000 barrels of furnace oil in the incident on Monday, Jan. 10, 1972, according to a Coast Guard report. It went to turn around in the “shallow harbor” that morning but “as the last mooring line was being released, the vessel suddenly broke almost completely in half, and the two ends sank to the bottom. The barge was less than 1 year old.”
Photo by Al Semm/Port Jefferson Village digital archive
That crack in the middle of the ship went all the way across the main deck, down both the barge’s starboard and port sides and across almost half of its bottom. The forward and aft sections of the ship formed a 21-degree angle with the sea, the Coast Guard reported.
The vessel had arrived at the Consolidated Fuel Oil Company terminal in Port Jefferson Harbor the day before the sinking, after taking off from the Houston area on New Year’s Day and making a stop in Bridgeport, Conn. The Coast Guard reported that no one was injured in the sinking, but the barge was significantly damaged and the Martha R. Ingram, the adjacent pier and a tug on the scene sustained some damage.
In addition, “Residue of the ruptured tanks on the barge and piping on the pier caused some minor petroleum pollution to the harbor.”
Photo by Al Semm/Port Jefferson Village digital archive
The Coast Guard cited deficiencies in the barge’s steel as factors in the damage to the ship, but also said its primary cause was “uneven distribution of cargo and ballast at the extremities of the vessel.”
The crew members were able to get off the ship safely despite crew at the bow being cut off from lifesaving equipment, which was located at the stern.
Although the sea was calm that day, water temperatures were close to freezing — according to the Coast Guard, the air temperature was 46 degrees Fahrenheit but it was 40 degrees in the water.
The 584-foot barge “split in a manner which has occurred many times at ambient temperatures in structures fabricated from mild- and low-alloy steels.”
Port Jefferson code Chief Wally Tomaszewski. File photo by Elana Glowatz
Code enforcement officers in Port Jefferson will get a raise for the first time in several years if they approve their first union contract next week.
At the Jan. 4 village board of trustees meeting, the board approved the new agreement, settled upon a couple of years after negotiations began. The Port Jefferson Constable Association union must still ratify the contract to finalize it.
The new agreement would be retroactive to June 2014 and run through the end of May 2018, Trustee Bruce D’Abramo said in a phone interview. With part of the contract being retroactive, so is part of the proposed pay increase — the union members would receive an extra $1.50 for each hour they worked between June 2014 and the end of May 2015; and another $1.75 per hour worked from June 2015 and onward.
Moving forward, the officers from the Code Enforcement Bureau would receive an hourly bump of $0.25 each new year of the contract, meaning they would get a raise in June 2016 and June 2017.
The few dozen staff members covered under the proposal includes code enforcement officers and sergeants as well as appearance ticket officers, D’Abramo said. The union does not include code Chief Wally Tomaszewski or three lieutenants in the bureau.
According to both village officials and the union, it has been a while since the officers received a raise.
Port Jefferson Constable Association President Tom Grimaldi has been a code officer for more than seven years, he said, and the last salary increase was “way before I got there. Probably at least 10 years ago.”
D’Abramo noted that before the proposed raises kick in, the pay for code enforcement officers is $16 per hour. For sergeants, the pay is $18.25 per hour, and appearance ticket officers currently get $13.50 per hour.
The contract is “a long time coming,” Grimaldi said.
And D’Abramo said village officials are happy to put the negotiations behind them so they can finally “give the code officers, who do such a good job for the village, the kind of remuneration” that is comparable to such officers in other villages.
The constables have been particularly visible recently with some high-profile incidents in Port Jefferson Village.
In mid-December, a Belle Terre man was killed when he lost control of his Lamborghini while driving up a steep East Broadway hill and crashed into a pole near High Street. Officer Paul Barbato was the first on the scene, finding a “horribly mangled vehicle with a person still alive inside,” Trustee Larry LaPointe reported at a board meeting shortly after the crash. Barbato got inside the car and attempted CPR on 48-year-old Glen Nelson, but the driver later died.
“You can only imagine the scene he came upon,” Mayor Margot Garant said on Jan. 4.
In a phone interview, Tomaszewski said Barbato “tried desperately to save his life. Believe me, his boots were filled with blood.”
Code enforcement officer James Murdocco. File photo by Elana Glowatz
A couple of weeks later, on New Year’s Day, patrolling code officers James Murdocco and John Vinicombe responded to an overdose at the Islandwide Taxi stand near the Port Jefferson Long Island Rail Road station.
LaPointe said at the board meeting on Jan. 4 that Murdocco administered the anti-overdose medication Narcan and “saved the person’s life by doing so.”
Tomaszewski described another recent incident in which officer Gina Savoie “thwarted a burglary” on Crystal Brook Hollow Road. He said after Savoie took action and called for police assistance, the two suspects, who are from Coram, were arrested for loitering.
“My hat goes off to the code enforcement bureau,” Garant said at the most recent board meeting. “They’re out there handling things that are unimaginable for us to even contemplate.”
Danielle Stenzel and David Delligatti Jr. welcome Jaxon Abel Delligatti at St. Charles Hospital. Photo from the hospital
Danielle Stenzel and David Delligatti Jr. rang in the new year with a bundle of joy when the mama delivered baby boy Jaxon Abel Delligatti at 6:20 a.m. on Jan. 1, the first baby born at St. Charles Hospital in 2016.
The Port Jefferson hospital presented Stenzel and Delligatti with a gift basket to celebrate the birth.
The couple is from Lake Grove and they are first-time parents.
Two drivers have been charged with driving while impaired after an early Sunday morning crash that sent both of them to the hospital.
The allegedly drunken drivers collided on Smithtown Avenue in Ronkonkoma at about 3 a.m. According to the Suffolk County Police Department, 22-year-old Bohemia resident Thomas Boyer, who had been driving south on the road, crossed into the northbound lane in his 1997 Toyota and struck a 2001 Dodge.
Boyer was charged with driving while impaired by drugs and alcohol, police said, while the driver of the Dodge, 46-year-old Selden resident Timothy Miller, was charged with driving while intoxicated.
Police said both men were treated for serious, but non-life-threatening, injuries at Stony Brook University Hospital after the crash, which occurred between Marconi Avenue and Lakeland Avenue, adjacent to MacArthur Airport. They were to be arraigned at a later date.
Police impounded both the Toyota and the Dodge. The 5th Squad is investigating the two-car crash.
Anyone with information is asked to contact the squad at 631-854-8552.
A Huntington man was allegedly inappropriate with an 8-year-old who was visiting the library with her mother on Sunday.
The Suffolk County Police Department said Christopher Elgut picked up the little girl, who was standing behind her mom at the Huntington Public Library counter, and put her down behind a column, then touched her inappropriately.
The girl screamed, police said, prompting Elgut to flee on foot.
Police broadcasted a description of the suspect after the 4:30 p.m. incident, and patrol officers from the 2nd Precinct located Elgut about 20 minutes later not far from the library.
Elgut, 28, was charged with first-degree sex abuse, endangering the welfare of a child and criminal possession of marijuana.
Attorney information for the suspect was not immediately available. He was scheduled to be arraigned on Monday.
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