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File photo by Victoria Espinoza

Employees from Port Jefferson Station and Terryville gas stations were arrested Jan. 31 for allegedly selling alcohol to minors, according to the Suffolk County Police Department.

The arrests came as a result of New York State Liquor Authority inspections Jan. 31 in the Town of Brookhaven, police said. Due to numerous community complaints, 6th Precinct Crime Section officers conducted SLA inspections utilizing underage police agents, according to police. The police agents attempted to purchase alcoholic beverages from targeted businesses within the town. Employees at Sunoco gas stations located at 669 Old Town Road in Terryville and and 200 Route 112 in Port Jefferson Station allegedly sold an alcoholic beverage to an underage police agent.

Paresh Patel, 25, and Tirath Ram, 61, both of Port Jefferson Station, were charged with ABC Law 65.1 – Sale to Persons Under 21. They were issued Field Appearance Tickets and are scheduled to be arraigned at First District Court in Central Islip April 2, 2018.

The following businesses complied with the New York State Liquor Authority and refused to sell an alcoholic beverage to an underage police agent:

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Rebecca Holt and Lucia Buscemi, above, are hosting a soup cookoff, Sunday, March 18, at The Bates House in Setauket. Photo from Lucia Buscemi

By Rita J. Egan

Two Ward Melville High School juniors are asking the Three Village community to join them in achieving their goal to build a school in the African country Malawi.

Last summer, Lucia Buscemi and Rebecca Holt, of Setauket, brainstormed ideas for a fundraiser they could spearhead. They researched the nonprofit buildOn, which helps students raise funds to build schools in impoverished countries, and the pair liked the idea of helping children in need have access to education.

“What got me most excited is that I know that education is the best way to eradicate poverty,” Holt said.

Buscemi agreed and said she believes providing children with an education can be better than donating food.

“It’s not giving someone a handout,” Buscemi said. “It’s giving somebody a lifetime supply of education, and of food practically.”

When it came time to choose a country, the teenagers solicited the help of Lucas Turner, one of buildOn’s community engagement managers. After talking to Turner, Buscemi and Holt decided Malawi was the country with the greatest need.

It’s not about a bunch of kids going down there to build a school to get community service hours. They’re making sure that it’s something sustainable and will last for generations to come.

— Lucia Buscemi

Buscemi and Holt’s goal is to raise $30,000 to fund the building of the school. Turner said if a student wants to travel to Malawi where he or she will stay with a host family and help build the school, he or she must fund their own travel. The girls said they are hoping to make the trip as well, which would take place during summer vacation.

“Rebecca and I are both very excited to learn about the culture there,” Buscemi said, adding they have only traveled within the United States and Europe. “We are anticipating a culture shock when we get there because it’s going to be so unlike every single place we’ve been to.”

Buscemi said buildOn requires help from residents to build the structure, many of whom will eventually attend the school.

“When the school opens, [villagers] are not looking at it and saying, ‘Oh, these foreigners came and gave us this school,’” Turner said. “They look at that, and they say, ‘We built that with buildOn and this is something we can be very proud of.’”

Turner said while students visit a country to help for seven to 10 days, it can take the villagers 15 to 20 weeks to complete construction.

“It’s not about a bunch of kids going down there to build a school to get community service hours,” Buscemi said. “They’re making sure that it’s something sustainable and will last for generations to come.”

Friends since they were in seventh grade at P.J. Gelinas Junior High School, Holt said this is the first time she will be heading up a fundraiser, while Buscemi has been involved with philanthropic efforts since she was in elementary school. For the past three years, she has organized an annual 30-hour famine fundraiser at Caroline Church of Brookhaven, where young adults fast for 30 hours while performing everyday tasks to simulate how it feels for the undernourished.

The pair is using social media and email to spread the word about their buildOn project and are currently planning a soup cook-off fundraiser for March 18 at The Bates House in Setauket. The high school juniors said so far their fundraising has been a valuable learning experience, and they hope to apply those lessons toward future pursuits. Buscemi said she is considering taking a gap year after she graduates from high school to work with refugees in Athens, Greece.

For now, the two are focused on their present pursuit, and said every single person who contributes to the cause, no matter how much they donate, will be making a difference.

“It doesn’t take two girls to build a school,” Holt said. “It takes a community and that’s why we need to work with Three Village in order to build this school. It takes a village to build a school. We need to pool as many resources as we have in this community in order to accomplish our goal.”

Holt and Buscemi have already raised $1,086 toward their $30,000 goal. For more information on how to donate or about the March 18 soup cook-off at The Bates House, 1 Bates Road, Setauket, visit act.buildon.org/team/136930 or email [email protected].

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Three Village elementary students learn coding with Bee-Bots. Photo from Three Village Central School District

By Andrea Paldy

Whether it is a demonstration from the high school robotics team or honoring 2018 Regeneron Science Talent Search Scholars, recent school board meetings have been a venue to showcase the vast strides the Three Village School District continues to make in science, technology, engineering and math instruction and enrichment.

In recent months, the district’s teachers and information specialists have given presentations explaining how they are helping to prepare students from elementary through high school for the brave new world that’s theirs.

The spotlight is put on the elementary STEM curriculum and the district’s library services. These demonstrate the way Three Village integrates technology into the curriculum as a unit of study, while also using it as a tool for research and growth in other academic disciplines.

Three Village embarked on the first year of its elementary STEM program in the fall of 2015, just as President Barack Obama (D) was signing the STEM Education Act into law. The curriculum, which introduces elementary-aged students to concepts such as aeroponics, coding and robotics, also teaches them about engineering and design.

Speaking at a school board meeting in November, Setauket Elementary’s STEM teacher Gina Varacchi explained how design challenges are embedded into the program to teach students about the design process. Students are given a design goal along with guidelines and constraints, she said. Similar to the scientific method, students must follow certain steps as part of the process. After determining “the problem” and conducting research, they can begin to design, but most important is that students experiment with their design through old-fashioned trial and error. Varacchi said that not only do they learn problem-solving skills, they also learn persistence.

Three Village students learn coding with Bee-Bots. Photo from Three Village Central School District

Design projects range from physical construction of marble tracks and bridges to using the online program Tinkercad to design 3D sculptures and containers for 3D printing. Students also learn coding for robots — Bee-Bots for kindergarten through second grade, and Ozobots for third and fourth grade. Additional STEM units include building with littleBits circuits, as well as coding with Scratch.

The district goes further in supporting students’ technological literacy. R.C. Murphy Junior High School information specialist and district library head Betsy Knox said at January’s meeting that the library departments put an emphasis “on teaching information and inquiry skills to students and collaborating with teachers on planning appropriate lessons on research.”

To achieve this mission, the libraries offer Lightbox, a web-based system that provides supplementary lessons in English language arts, science and social studies. It also includes supporting materials such as videos, primary documents, interviews and articles, Knox said. The district has 74 different units that are also accessible to students at home.

Additionally, media specialists help to design curriculum that includes research projects with suggested resources or team-teach lessons on developing thesis statements and providing research-based evidence for support. Nicole Connelly, information specialist at P.J. Gelinas Junior High, said this helps to give students the skills they need to navigate systems to “make informed decisions and become critical thinkers.”

In addition to providing maker spaces and experiences with virtual reality, the district’s libraries, or “information centers,” teach internet safety and provide instruction in online behavior from kindergarten to 12th grade. Ward Melville’s information specialist April Hatcher said the curriculum on “digital citizenship” for grades six through 12 was recently updated and covers cyberbullying, copyrights and plagiarism, social responsibility and identity protection. Lessons on hate speech are also addressed in the high school curriculum, she said.

The district’s media specialists not only support educators with research and curriculum, but also with technology. The library service department has recently submitted grant applications for drones, digital cameras and an outdoor classroom.

But, said Allyson Konczynin information specialist at W.S. Mount Elementary School, even with growing focus on technology, emphasis is still being placed on book selection and literature appreciation.

“Nothing beats seeing a student light up with excitement when they find a book they love,” she said.

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Valencia Tavern in Huntington. Image from Google Maps

A proposal to demolish Valencia Tavern to create a mixed-use complex is dividing Huntington residents by their generation.

The Town of Huntington has temporarily stalled a developer’s proposal to demolish the more than 100-year-old Wall Street bar in order to build a three-story building with retail storefront and apartments in Huntington Village.

Conceptual plans submitted to the town last November by the developer, 236 VT Wall Street LLC, call for 7,840-square-foot retail space with a total of 24 apartments on the second and third stories. This would require the developers to acquire more than 9,000 square feet of town land along West Shore and Creek roads in Huntington.

As an alternative, the developer also put forth a plan to redevelop without purchasing the town land for a smaller retail space, but the same number of apartments.

To move forward, the developer would need a number of variances approved for a 13-to-15 parking space deficit, mixed-use zoning, building above the two-story height restriction and possible vision obstruction.
James Margolin, a Huntington-based attorney who represents the developer, said they received a letter of denial from the planning board in January.

“We hope to acquire the surplus town land and move forward with the application,” Margolin said, saying there is no set time frame to submit plans to Huntington’s Board of Zoning Appeals.

The proposed plans have divided the community between those calling for the building’s historic preservation and those seeking affordable housing.

A copy of an online petition titled “Save the Valencia Tavern” was presented by Bob Suter to the Huntington town board Jan. 23 in an effort to save what he called one of the town’s most iconic taverns.

“Now this historic establishment, the one-time haunt of famed Long Islanders like Billy Joel, is being threatened by developers,” Suter read from the petition. “They want to tear down the Valencia and build yet another generic mixed-use property in its place. We feel that demolishing the Valencia would do irreparable harm to the fabric of the community.”

Calls to save the tavern were met by opposition from younger residents, millennials who currently work and play in Huntington hoping one day to call it home.

Dan Busci, a Huntington native, returned to the area after graduating from the University of Vermont with a degree in green building design and sustainable development looking for such apartments.

“I’ve looked at apartments around Huntington where I want to live and work,” Busci said. “The high prices have dissuaded me and made it impossible for me to move out.”

He encouraged the board to allow the developer’s plans to move forward and pushed for construction of a green, energy-efficient building in its place.

“Huntington Village has enough bars, what we really need are rental apartments,” Nicole Hoyt said.

Hoyt, a 24-year-old graphic designer, said she has an hour to hour-and-a-half commute daily to her job in Huntington after an unsuccessful hunt for an affordable apartment in town.

“I wish people opposing this new development would take a step back and consider the progression of the community as a whole,” she said. “To pass on this opportunity would be a mistake.”

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Smithtown United Civic Association member Mark Mancini. Photo by Sara-Megan Walsh

By Sara-Megan Walsh

A conceptual plan for revitalizing downtown Smithtown has community support, but faces a number of serious challenges.

Smithtown United Civic Association debuted its proposal for western Main Street’s revitalization Jan. 25 before the Smithtown Town Board to find solid community backing. Yet, elected officials and business leaders note there are serious challenges to its implementation.

Mark Mancini, a Smithtown resident and architect, presented Smithtown United’s conceptual design for Main Street which focuses on the preservation of the Smithtown school district’s New York Avenue administrative building and its fields. Public outcry halted plans to demolish the building for a 251-unit apartment complex in 2017.

“It became pretty clear that we have to take steps first as a community to make something happen on Main Street that we all can deal with,” Mancini said. “We are going to develop no matter what you might think or what you may want. Everything changes.”

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) assigned $20 million from the state budget for the installation of sewer mains in Smithtown, which Mancini said brings opportunity for development that residents need to have their say.

The first step in the civic association’s plan is to preserve the New York Avenue building and its property as open green space.

“I consider it a diamond in the rough in the Smithtown downtown Main Street area,” said Bob Hughes, one of the 10 members of Smithtown United. “I would like to see it as a downtown central park, to make it a destination.”

Pasquale LaManna, president of the Smithtown Kickers Soccer Club board, said he backed the proposal as it preserves the fields for recreational use. LaManna said the Smithtown Kickers is the third largest soccer club on Long Island with more than 2,000 children who play at New York Avenue.

“It’s extremely vital for us to have the green space,” he said.

Smithtown United calls for Smithtown elected officials to purchase the New York Avenue building from the Smithtown school district and use it to consolidate all town departments and services in one location.

Supervisor Ed Wehrheim (R) said negotiations between the town and school district over the potential sale of the New York Avenue property had broken down in late 2017, after an appraisal determined a fair market price would be $6.8 million. The supervisor was hopeful that these negotiations could be picked up in the future.

“If the community in that area is amicable to having those discussions about developing the property, I think the school board would get back engaged,” Wehrheim said.

Other key components of the revitalization plan call for the construction of mixed-use retail stores with apartments above on the south side of Main Street with transit-oriented housing alongside the Smithtown Long Island Rail Road station.

Jack Kulka, a real estate developer and founder of Hauppauge Industrial Association, strongly supported the construction of apartments in a new “mixed imaginative zoning” code.

“If you are serious about revitalizing downtown Smithtown, you are going to have to increase the density of population in downtown Smithtown,” he said. “You need to have creativity. I think the concept, which is very important, of having residential next to the train station … has to come to Smithtown.”

Kulka stressed that Smithtown United’s plan would not work if town officials didn’t utilize the $20 million set aside by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo to install sewers in Smithtown. Wehrheim agreed on the importance of sewers, stating that it is moving forward, but said he has also scheduled meetings with different developers in February.

“I have meetings set up with a couple developers, whose names I cannot divulge, to see if there are other developers that now have an interest in looking at the conceptual plan Smithtown United drew up and see if it’s feasible to embark on a project,” Wehrheim said. “That’s the first step.”

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Within the Crime Victims Center, a children’s play therapy area is designed to allow children to play out their trauma with a therapist, and to prepare for court appearances. Photo by Alex Petroski

In a time of changing cultural and societal norms related to the treatment of victims of sexual abuse, Laura Ahearn now has a movement behind her decades-long mission.

The founder of Parents for Megan’s Law and the Crime Victims Center, a not-for-profit organization, has been a relentless advocate for victims since the late ‘90s. What started as a small operation running out of her Three Village home advocating for sex offender registration has grown into a three-pronged program that is used as a model by other advocacy groups. The CVC assists victims of child sex abuse and rape, provides  services to victims of violent crime, and assists elderly, disabled and minor victims of all crime. Its mission is now virtually a daily part of the national conversation.

“The #MeToo movement has created an ideal climate for us to call upon legislators to help us change a culture which has minimized sexual harassment.”

— Laura Ahearn

“It’s a tremendous opportunity for organizations like ours that have worked with child sexual abuse and adult victims of sex crimes to be able to open up a dialogue now with a higher volume of a voice with state, local and federal legislators,” Ahearn said after attending a breakfast at Stony Brook University that featured lawmakers from across Long Island and all levels of government. The meeting was part of a daylong event designed to start a conversation about localizing the national #MeToo movement, a social media campaign started by Tarana Burke, a survivor of sexual violence. Burke also attended the SBU event.

“The #MeToo movement has created an ideal climate for us to call upon legislators to help us change a culture which has minimized sexual harassment, and a society or environment whose prevailing social  attitudes have the effect of normalizing or trivializing sexual assault and sexual harassment,” Ahearn said.

The group has a list of legislative goals it would like to advance in 2018, like criminalizing “revenge porn” and advancing the Child Victims Act, a state law that has passed the Assembly but not the Senate, which would extend the time frame for a victim to bring forward allegations against an abuser.

Victim advocacy

Though its actual functions have evolved over the years, advocating for victims remains Ahearn’s and the CVC’s primary objective.

The center, with locations in Ronkonkoma and Patchogue, is a certified rape crisis center.
The group has long provided advocacy for child victims of sexual abuse, and has since added advocacy components for adult rape and adult domestic violence victims. In 2006, the mission shifted to provide support for victims of all violent or hate crimes.

“These are cases that are failing between the cracks and no one was helping them,” said Ahearn said, a New York State licensed attorney and social worker.

“You feel like ‘This is why I’m doing this.’”

— Sally McDonald

Since 2015, the organization has been fed cases from the Suffolk County Police Department and District Attorney’s office through a cloud-based computer software program, allowing the CVC to directly contact innocent victims to begin providing support under the direction of Mike Gunther, CVC’s director of advocacy and victim services. The cloud program has served to streamline a process it had been carrying out since 1999. Ahearn said the CVC has helped to recoup $5.5 million for Suffolk County crime victims from a county fund to cover unexpected costs for innocent victims, as some have health insurance costs or other expenses to cover in the aftermath of a traumatic incident. Currently, the CVC has between 2,500 and 3,000 cases it’s handling, and its founder said the organization is always in need of more case managers.

The group regularly sends advocates Diana Shuffler and Diana Guzman to Human Trafficking Intervention Court, a New York state initiative established to aid victims of human trafficking in every aspect of getting their life back on track, and put legal issues behind them. Prior to the program’s inception, Guzman said victims of human trafficking picked up for other crimes like prostitution were treated like criminals. The CVC even works with the FBI.

Sally McDonald, a certified therapist and victim advocate at the CVC who is passionate about the work  she does, said she has cases with victims ranging from 4 years old to adults in their 60s.

“It’s exciting — it’s so nice to see anybody do well, but especially a child,” she said of seeing someone’s life improve as a result of her work. “You feel like ‘This is why I’m doing this.’”

Ahearn stressed the importance of following up with victims and ensuring his or her traumatic incident is truly behind them.

“Whenever you’re dealing with any kind of violent crime or trauma, unless there are support services, those are individuals that are going to need help,” she said. “If they’re not getting the help they need … those kids whose families were victims of violent crime are going to gravitate toward who they believe is going to protect them, and in those communities that would be the ones that, believe it or not, are the perpetrators.”

“Whenever you’re dealing with any kind of violent crime or trauma, unless there are support services, those are individuals that are going to need help.”

— Laura Ahearn

The Ronkonkoma office features therapy rooms for all ages, including a child therapy room where kids are prepared for what to expect in a court setting, or play out personal trauma using a sandbox, toys or art therapy.

Sex offender monitoring

Megan’s Law gets its name from an incident in the mid-‘90s in which 7-year-old Megan Kanka from New Jersey was lured into a neighbor’s home, sexually assaulted and murdered. The culprit was a twice-convicted sex offender, and after a nationwide lobbying effort, Megan’s Law was passed in 1996 and required all 50 states to release information to the public about known convicted sex offenders.

Ahearn was one of those involved in the lobbying effort, and Parents for Megan’s Law was born. In 2014 the CVC implemented a new monitoring program to keep addresses and other important information about the county’s roughly 1,000 registered sex offenders current. Ahearn’s sex offender monitoring staff is comprised entirely of retired law enforcement officers, who regularly check up on the people on the list face-to-face to ensure their information is accurate and up to date.

The organization also has a Megan’s Law helpline as well as a tip line, should community members want to report anything related to a registered sex offender in their area.

Prevention

When describing the CVC’s prevention arm, Ahearn uses an analogy. Imagine you’re fishing, she says, and three separate times during the day you have to dive in the river to save people who were drowning as they headed downstream. How many times would you have to dive in the water to save a life before heading upstream to see why so many people are falling in the water and nearly drowning?

Led by prevention program manager Kim Malone, the CVC provides workshops for children, teens, parents and adults designed to empower them with knowledge and skills aimed at protecting against sexual abuse and abduction.

The CVC offers workshops for schools and organizations geared toward every age group.

To contact the Crime Victims Center call 631-689-2672 or visit www.parentsformeganslaw.org.

This story was updated Jan. 31 to correct the spelling of Laura Ahearn’s name.

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Michele and Bill McNaughton lost their son James in 2005. He was killed in Iraq by sniper fire. Photo by Kyle Barr

By Kyle Barr

Bill McNaughton, a retired NYPD officer, army veteran and Centereach resident could hear the party outside the small back room. The music was loud and upbeat, the crowd was hundreds strong and their bodies nearly filled every inch inside Mulcahy’s Concert Hall in Wantagh. The event attendees were all out there celebrating the life of McNaughton’s son James, an NYPD officer and army reservist who while stationed in Iraq was killed by sniper fire in 2005. He was 27.

“You know what it is, even though we’ve been doing this for years, this is like the first every time,” Bill McNaughton said. “It’s nice, but it brings back everything. And you know everybody else goes home tonight, but it stays with us.”

Pictures of his son, known to most as Jimmy, were hung out on the dance floor and on televisions around the room. Every year since January 2006, half a year from when he was killed, family and friends have come together to celebrate his life and raise money for veteran aid groups.

Friends Eric Wiggins, Anthony Palumbo, Vinny Zecca and Danny Leavy​ celebrate the life of their childhood friend. Photo by Kyle Barr

“Jimmy, he’s still helping guys today,” McNaughton said. “That’s what this is about, he’s still helping his men. All those people out there shows how he touched so many lives, and as a father you can’t ask more than that. It is an honor to see it.”

The annual event honoring James McNaughton hosted its 13th anniversary Jan. 27. The donations from sponsors helped raise money for nonprofit Wounded Warriors Project and PTSD Veterans Association of Northport.

Jimmy McNaughton graduated high school in 1996, and having early enlisted, immediately joined the army. When he returned home after being honorably discharged, he joined the reserves and the NYPD, where both his dad and stepmother worked as officers. He helped in aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and was sent oversees with the reserves in 2004 and 2005. He was killed in August of that year.

The event was created by the veteran’s childhood friends, including Vincent Zecca, who worked to ensure the memory of his friend was never lost.

“We tried to think of something that he would want,” Zecca said. “He wouldn’t want us to be somber and hold a traditional benefit, he would want something that everyone could enjoy.”

“Jimmy wouldn’t want people to cry in the corner, that’s just not how Jimmy was.”

— Michele McNaughton

McNaughton’s stepmother Michele agreed it’s a celebration that further strengthens her son’s memory and memorializes his story.

“Jimmy wouldn’t want people to cry in the corner, that’s just not how Jimmy was,” she said. “He always had a goofy smile on his face. I’m not going to say it’s easy for Bill or myself or even his friends — it’s hard to keep yourself together, and it doesn’t get any easier with time — but Jimmy was a really fine and funny kid, always laughing, he was never down in the dumps. This is how we remember that.”

The deejay, Michael Paccione, was a childhood friend of McNaughton’s. One of the bands who played two sets, Plunge, has donated its time for several years. The band was joined by New York Shields Pipes & Drums, which played Taps on ceremonial bagpipes.

Attendance at the event has remained consistent at the 1,000-person mark over the last few years.

Eric Wiggins, another longtime childhood friend, saw McNaughton as one of the most loyal people he ever knew.

“He would do anything for you,” he said. “We’re all one big group of friends, and doing this like this, with this party, and how many people come, just shows us returning that loyalty.”

The band Plunge has donated time to perform at the James McNaughton Foundation fundraiser for the last few years. Photo by Kyle Barr

Lou Puleo makes the photo slideshow, and mixes them up every year.

“He was the selfless type,” Puleo said of his old friend. “He was the type of guy that when he was overseas, he would get care packages, but if there was something good, he would give it out to everybody.”

Brothers Mike and Ross Burello grew up across the street from the McNaughton’s. They remember their neighbor as the youngest kid of the group, always up for playing outside.

“I don’t get to see these guys too often,” Ross Burello said. “So I love coming here every year. The montage and slideshow at the end brings it all back. It shows just how much he did for our country.”

Bill McNaughton said not a day goes by he doesn’t think about his son. He has Jimmy’s face tattooed on his arm so when he shakes a person’s hand, they just might ask who he is. His name and likeness are also stenciled in both his large army Humvee and his ‘69 Chevelle.

“I remember that Colonel walking on my lawn,” he said. “That’s my way of dealing with it. I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, I don’t do any of that stuff. You know how I deal with it? I take that Humvee and I drive.”

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Downtown study results suggest improving existing parking, better storefront signage and promotion

Larisa Ortiz, planner and principal of Larisa Ortiz Associates, presents the study results Jan. 25. Photo by Sara-Megan Walsh.

Kings Park’s downtown is going to need more efficient parking, better walkways and a facelift if it wants to experience a revitalization, according to the latest studies.

Larisa Ortiz, urban planner and principal of downtown planning firm Larisa Ortiz Associates, presented the results of a market analysis study focused on what’s needed to revitalize downtown Kings Park at a Jan. 25 Smithtown town board meeting. While getting funding to sewer downtown Main Street has been a long-term priority, there are several key points business owners and the town could begin working on, according to Ortiz.

“What we found is that you don’t have just one downtown,” Ortiz said. “Kings Park is actually three distinct areas.”

The study broke down King Park’s downtown into the three areas: “restaurant row,” including Park Bake Shop, Cafe Red, Relish and Ciro’s; “the civic heart,” the area near Kings Park library and the Long Island Rail Road station; and “car-centric retail,” which revolves around Tanzi Plaza and Kings Park Plaza shopping centers.

In a survey of residents and business owners, Ortiz said one of the most common complaints was the lack of parking for customers in the downtown areas.

“There’s more than enough parking at the civic node where we have a municipal lot,” she said, with similar findings in the other two areas slated for revitilization. “It feels like it’s tight, but when we look at the parking ratio there’s sufficient parking there.”

Rather, Ortiz said the study suggested the municipal lot is inconveniently located far from restaurants and stores, and that several parking lots could be restriped to fit more vehicles for better efficiency.

“If I had one surprise, I thought there would be a lot more parking required than what was recommended by the market survey,” Smithtown Supervisor Ed Wehrheim (R) said. “ We need some, but not as much. In that analysis, there were some parking areas, municipal and commuter parking lots not being 100 percent utilized.”

Ortiz said her firm’s analysis showed Kings Park shoppers have a difficult time crossing Main Street, particularly at the intersection with Church Street near the Kings Park branch of The Smithtown Library.
“If people can’t cross from the library to Main Street, you have lost customers,” the urban planner said.
Ortiz’s other suggestions were to improve sidewalks and pedestrian crossings, and consider relocating the farmer’s market held in the municipal parking lot — 60 percent of whose customers are from out of town — to a new location on the south side of Main Street.

“It was exciting to see that the Kings Park farmers market creates stronger economic spillovers and benefits our local businesses,” said Linda Henninger, president of Kings Park Civic Association and founder of the farmer’s market.

Other suggestions for downtown improvement included encouraging business owners to upgrade the look of their facade, changes to town code to allow for better signage for businesses and creation of a restaurant group for group marketing and greater exposure.

“This market study is another tool which will be useful in our continued effort to revitalize Kings Park’s downtown,” Henninger said.

Next, Wehrheim said Kings Park Chamber of Commerce and civic association will work to combine the market study results with the revitalization plan previously made by LI Vision to come up with a final conceptual plan.

The full presentation made before Smithtown Town Board can be viewed on the Kings Park Civic Associations website at https://www.kingsparkcivic.com.

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Shoreham-Wading River’s Gay-Straight Alliance Club members get excited about positivity week. Photo from Rose Honold

A student-run club at Shoreham-Wading River High School that aims to create a safe space for LGBT students and supporters recently got funds to expand its mission.

The Gay-Straight Alliance, launched in the 2014-15 school year as a localized version of a nationwide
program, received a $500 grant from the Long Island Language Arts Council (LILAC) to purchase books promoting awareness and compassion for people who are different. The yet-to-be-selected books will address challenges that gay and transgender youths face in the educational system and will be used by club members for group discussions and a large project during the club’s annual Positivity Week events in April. During the week, the club, which is made up of 20 members with a 50/50 balance of gay and straight students, extends its reach to educate other students in an effort to help others be more inclusive.

“We can expose our members to diverse experiences to bridge the empathy gap and foster acceptance and understanding for diverse individuals.”

— Alana Philcox

The club’s co-advisors — English teachers Alana Philcox and Edward Storck — developed the idea for the books and wrote a proposal to LILAC to be considered for its annual grant.

“As English teachers, we understand the critical role that literature can have in starting a dialogue,” Philcox said. “By integrating bibliotherapeutic strategies into instruction and selecting texts with authentic depictions, we can expose our members to diverse experiences to bridge the empathy gap and foster acceptance and understanding for diverse individuals.”

Philcox and Storck said they are still in the process of choosing books depending on the students’ interests, as the texts will be matched to the needs of individual club members. The teachers said they hope the books provide students with protagonists and characters that help he or she better understand themselves.

“We’re hopeful that this will give students empathy as it relates to all diversity,” Philcox and Storck said in an email.

The district’s Gay-Straight Alliance was formed after LGBT students and their friends said they felt there wasn’t an outlet to express themselves in school. When the club was established in Shoreham-Wading River, it had already been successful in multiple districts across the county, including Riverhead and Mattituck.

“Wherever you look, there will be opposition, but also, there’s a lot of beauty and acceptance among people.”

— Rose Honold

“Generally, we talk about ways to better our school in the ways of acceptance of the LGBT community,” said Rose Honold, a Shoreham senior who became president of the club as a sophomore. As a lesbian, Honold said she was searching for her place in the school, and found it immediately upon joining the club. “In Shoreham, it’s very mixed. Wherever you look, there will be opposition, but also, there’s a lot of beauty and acceptance among people. The administration especially has been wonderful in terms of acceptance towards the students. The only thing that I hope to change is the way some of the other students treat students in the club.”

Honald said she would like the inclusive books to one day be part of the school’s regular English curriculum.

Her friend Alyssa Hernandez, who was a member of the Gay-Straight Alliance as a junior in 2016, said after Honold came out to her, she joined the club to “learn more about how to be a good, supportive friend.”

“I had other friends in the group that were gay too, and I just wanted to be able to understand them more, because I didn’t know a lot,” she said. “In high school, you only know what you see on TV. For the most part, Shoreham-Wading River is a really good district when it comes to being accepted for who you are.”

On the Gay-Straight Alliance and its recent grant, district Superintendent Gerard Poole said he likes how the club supports a well-rounded education.

“[The club] prepares students for the world around them,” he said. “[It teaches] tolerance, perspective, advocacy and collaboration. I hope it promotes peace in their lives and in our schools and communities.”

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The Bridgeport & Port Jefferson Steamboat ferry company is temporarily operating with a significantly scaled down schedule. File photo

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) made some waves that could be seen from the shore in Port Jefferson during his State of the State address earlier this month, specifically regarding plans for infrastructure spanning the Long Island Sound.

During his Jan. 3 speech, Cuomo revived the decades-old idea of building a bridge or tunnel that would connect Long Island to New England.

“We should continue to pursue a tunnel from Long Island to Westchester or Connecticut,” he said. “New York State Department of Transportation has determined it’s feasible, it would be under water, it would be invisible, it would reduce traffic on the impossibly congested Long Island Expressway and would offer significant potential private investment.”

In December 2017, the DOT released a final draft of a Long Island Sound Crossing Feasibility Study that examined the potential of building a bridge or bridge-tunnel combination at five different sites. The 87-page study concluded that it could be economically feasible at three different locations: Oyster Bay to Port Chester/Rye; Kings Park to Bridgeport, Connecticut; and Kings Park to Devon, Connecticut.

State Assemblyman Mike Fitzpatrick (R-St. James) and Suffolk County Legislator Rob Trotta (R-Fort Salonga), whose jurisdictions each include Kings Park, voiced vehement opposition to the plan.

Stakeholders in Port Jefferson are also unsure if the governor’s grand plan would be a good idea.

“In the back of every ferry operator’s brain is the possibility that a bridge or tunnel could replace a ferry route,” said Fred Hall, vice president and general manager of the Bridgeport & Port Jefferson Steamboat Company. “Given the complexity of a project such as the governor envisions, I think there will be some environmental concerns and some ‘not in my back yard concerns.’”

Hall stopped short of saying the hypothetical tunnel or bridge would harm ferry business, though he said he’d like to know where exactly the infrastructure would go before being completely for or against it. It’s far from the first time projects like this have been floated in the past, a point reiterated by state Assemblyman Steve Englebright (D-Setauket) whose district includes Port Jeff.

“I’m not sure about a bridge or tunnel, but an enhanced ferry service — invest in it, make it more efficient,” he said. He also said he would be concerned by the possible impact a massive infrastructure project like this would have on the ecosystem of the Sound.

The DOT feasibility study concluded the department should move forward with the next step: A five-year environmental evaluation process looking at the impact construction and the bridge would have.

“Gov. Cuomo has directed DOT to conduct additional engineering, environmental and financial analysis to determine the best path forward for this transformative project,” DOT spokesman Joseph Morrissey said in a statement. “DOT will closely examine any potential impacts as well as benefits to the local communities as part of the process.”

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