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Trump Signs Order Discounting Undocumented for Congressional Seats

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The effects of COVID-19 have made collecting 2020 census data more difficult. With delays in census operations stalling momentum and despite the census self-response deadline pushed to Oct. 31, advocates have had the tough task of dealing with these and other obstacles. 

Currently, New York lags behind other states responding to the census, ranking 38th according to state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli (D). Only 57.8 percent of New Yorkers have responded compared to the national average of 62.3 percent. On the North Shore of Long Island, numbers are better but still are slightly behind from the equivalent date 10 years ago. 

‘These communities are being undercounted and under resourced.’

—Rebecca Sanin

Brookhaven Town, as of July 20, has a total self-response rate of 66.9 percent, Smithtown has a response rate of 75.6 percent and Huntington’s response rate sits at 71.5.

Rebecca Sanin, president of the Health & Welfare Council of Long Island which has taken a leadership role in promoting the census, said when the pandemic hit, the organization had to pivot and adjust its strategies. 

“We had to spread awareness and continue to promote the census virtually, as a way to handle the current situation,” she said. “We’re hoping to resume in-person outreach soon.”

The pandemic limited what the council could do, though it did create a COVID tool kit for its partners, which include over 300 nonprofits, religious organizations, business organizations and local governments. In addition, advocates were able to hand out census material and resource packets at Suffolk County’s six testing sites and at area food banks. 

“The census may not be your first priority right now, it is so important that we get an accurate count,” Sanin said. “The current crisis has made it more clear the need for federal and state dollars for emergency response.” 

Due to the 2010 census, New York lost two congressional seats. Some fear this year’s count could lose the state one or two more. Also on the line is billions of dollars annually in federal funds that could be used for road work, school aid, grants and Medicaid funding. 

In Suffolk, some communities are harder to count than others especially those with minority populations and also parts of the East End. The Town of Riverhead, for example, has a response rate of 56 percent. Other areas with a high density of minorities, including a small section of Huntington Station, have a response rate of just 45.3 percent.

The current and past censuses have not discriminated between documented and undocumented residents, as the survey is meant to give a full count to a place’s number of inhabitants. However, President Donald Trump (R) has repeatedly moved to discount undocumented immigrants from the census, including adding a citizenship question on the survey. Those efforts have been blocked by the U.S. Supreme Court.

On Tuesday, July 21, Trump signed an executive order that would excluded undocumented immigrants from being counted in congressional districts, data which is used to divide up seats in Congress. The order argues the 14th Amendment’s definition of “persons” in regards the enumeration requirement was not defined, giving the president the authority to determine who counts on the census.

Advocates said this could have grave repercussions for Long Island’s final count.

“We are horrified by the president’s attempt, once again, to prevent an accurate census count, dehumanizing our neighbors in the immigrant community and obstructing the fair distribution of desperately needed funding,” Sanin said in a statement. “Today, the president has launched an attack against our neighbors on Long Island and across the United States who don’t have documented status, claiming that their humanity, their very existence, simply doesn’t count.”

According to data from the state comptroller’s office, small municipalities normally have smaller response rates. The Village of Shoreham, with a population of just over 500, currently has a 50 percent response rate. 

“These communities are being undercounted and under resourced,” the president of the Heath & Welfare Council said. 

An addition to the 2020 census has been the new ways people can respond. Individuals can now fill out the census over the internet, by phone or mailing in a paper survey. Brookhaven, Smithtown and Huntington have had internet response rates of 55.3, 64.2 and 62.2 percent, respectively. 

The council has been tracking internet/phone response rates in the county and for the most part the results have been positive. Though Sanin stressed that certain communities and groups of people may not have the luxury of responding that way. 

“Lots of communities will not be able to use those methods,” she said. “We will have to escalate our outreach in other ways.”

One of those ways is going to door to door. 

With the expectation of eventually restarting in-person outreach by going door to door or handing out information at public places, the council has continued to recruit census ambassadors to ensure all responses are being tallied. In the past they have given information at parks, summer concerts and other events 

“We’ve had to change our strategy, we still need to spread the importance of the census and our work and keep raising awareness,” Sanin said. “We’re really trying to keep the momentum [going].”

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Port Jefferson Village Hall. File photo by Heidi Sutton

With nine projects currently on Port Jefferson Village’s plate, the board decided July 20 to put over $2 million worth of beach, road and facility improvements into a 5-year bond anticipation note, known as a BAN, anticipating more surplus and grant funds in the following years.

The nine projects are worth $2,364,216, though all are in various phases of development and the end costs on several could change. With grants and the use of otherwise existing funds, the village anticipates it will need to pay off $1,241,416 over time.

Denise Mordente, the village treasurer, said a BAN is a 5 year loan that has lower interest rates than a normal bond, with this one being at 1 percent. In that time between when a BAN becomes a bond, the village is anticipating to have paid off significant portions of what they owe through the grant funds or other surpluses.

Projects include:

• $118,562 for the Highland Boulevard retaining wall project

• $519,745 (with a $450,000 grant) for an expansion of Public Works Facility and creation of a emergency command center

• $399,250 for the East Beach retaining wall

• $711,150 (with existing $350,000 bond and $350,000 grant) for Station Street project

• $141,056 (with a $49,000 grant) for Rocketship Park bathroom renovations

• $125,603 (with a $73,800 grant) for Village Hall bathroom renovations

• $180,000 for the Longfellow Road drainage project

• $814,069 (with an existing $300,000 bond, $200,000 grant and $314,069 in parking funds) for Barnum Parking Lot project

• $230,000 for the digitization of planning department records

For this year’s budget, Port Jefferson’s $9,992,565 in appropriations was a 3.19 percent decrease from last year’s total amount. Not only that, but Port Jeff’s settlement with LIPA over the assessed tax value of the Port Jefferson Power Station meant the village will need to raise $6,451,427 from taxes, a near $50,000 increase from last year.

Mayor Margot Garant said in previous years the village has had its surplus carried over from year to year, which has been used to fund these projects, especially when grants often take a significant amount of time before the village can be reimbursed on said projects. This year, with the loss of revenues from the first and second quarters due to the pandemic, the village anticipates much less of that surplus into next year.

“We have a lot of projects in the works, but what we don’t have is a lot of surplus money,” she said during the livestreamed July 20 meeting. “We are three years into the LIPA glidepath and last quarter losing $350,000 due to COVID, we still closed last year’s budget with a surplus, but it’s just not the money we used to have.”

The village is currently working to pay off two other existing bonds, while one other BAN on the village books will be made into a bond this August. That original $1,480,000 BAN was created in 2016 to finance the purchase of a vehicle for the department of public works, renovate Rocketship Park and purchase the dilapidated structure on Barnum Avenue that will soon become a new parking lot. As the BAN becomes a bond, that $1.4 million has been lowered down to $720,000, and will be a 2 percent interest rate. The first payment of $85,000 will be due in 2021.

The two older debt services the village is paying off include a 2011 and 2013 bond with a total outstanding debt of $4,040,000, which are expected to be paid off in 2029. Both of those bonds were refinanced in 2019, which saved the village about $37,000 a year, according to Mordente.

The village currently has an AA bond rating.

The board also tackled the difficult question of potential future staff layoffs due to the loss of funds this year. Trustee Bruce D’Abramo suggested the village makes active strides in its budget and potentially even borrow money to reduce layoffs.

“I would like to see us make up for the projected revenue from the courts, from parking and from the Village Center — I’d like to see us borrow that money and make our 2020-21 budget whole for the rest of the year and not lay any of our good employees off,” D’Abramo said.

Both Mordente, in speaking with the village’s financial advisers, and Village Attorney Brian Egan argued that current municipal finance laws wouldn’t allow for Port Jeff to borrow in that way. 

“Everyone’s in the same boat, they’re up against that same issue,” Egan said, who added the village will monitor bills in Albany that would allow municipalities to gain access to additional funds.

D’Abramo confirmed the village should be thinking about such in the future.

“I would like the board to think about this, so we can keep all of our employees,” he said.

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By Nancy Marr

The year 2020 in New York State began with excitement about voting access and modernization. Governor Cuomo had signed the bill for 9 days of early voting in November 2019 and New York voters embraced it.

We synchronized federal, state and local primary elections to reduce costs and encourage greater turnout. Young people can pre-register at ages sixteen and seventeen with automatic registration when they turn eighteen. Voters who move within the state will have their registration go with them seamlessly. We also closed the LLC Loophole, meaning that an LLC’s political spending was limited to the same amount allowed to corporations, $5,000 annually. We expected to see the fruit of these efforts this year.

Then, starting in March, we saw the threat of the pandemic on voter safety. After declaring a state of emergency, Gov. Cuomo ordered the presidential primaries postponed from April 28 to June 23 (already the date of state and local primaries) and then ordered Boards of Elections to send Absentee Ballot (AB) applications to all voters in New York State eligible to vote in a primary.

There was great confusion since some voters had already mailed individual AB applications, and those were different from the mass-mailed applications. The NYS Board of Elections announced cancellation of the Democratic presidential primary due to pandemic fears. Then a court declared that cancellation invalid, and the primary was back on. This caused the absentee ballots to be on two pages (presidential on one, other offices on another page) resulting in some  eligible voters not receiving both ballot pages.

A huge number of people in Suffolk County applied for Absentee Ballots (more than double the in-person number of voters) and counting mailed in ballots could only begin on July 1 and was expected to end on July 9. Our media didn’t help either; readers were told which candidates were “leading” after the relatively small number of in-person votes were counted on election night (in CD1’s Democratic primary, about 15,000).

As if that amount of confusion couldn’t be any worse, due to the virus a very large number of poll workers chose not to work on election day, regular polling sites refused to be hosts and the Suffolk Board of Elections reduced the actual number of polling places on June 23 by almost two-thirds.

Letters were mailed to voters just before election day, but chaos resulted, including removing neighborhood polling places in communities where transportation was a challenge as well as communities of color. Signage was poor or non-existent in new locations and many places were hard to find. 

Voters in New York State have traditionally felt that although we had antiquated aspects to our elections (no early voting, no “no excuse” absentee ballots, no same-day voter registration, and terrible voter turnout) we were in pretty good shape compared to other states that were suppressing the vote. Our blinders have now been removed and much work needs to be done, quickly and thoughtfully, in order to assure a fair, secure, auditable, inclusive and clear process on Nov. 3.

Your voice counts as much as your vote. The New York State Legislature has already closed its session, but the Governor can bring them back. We need money allocated to the Boards of Elections to ensure the Nov. 3 elections are perceived by all voters as valid and reflective of all those who voted.

Study media writeups of the June 23 results during July, learn from them, and in the fall help spread nonpartisan communication about the process. The League of Women Voters’ voter information website, www.VOTE411.org. is a great starting point to see if a voter is registered, learn who is on their ballot, and understand election law and changes in their state.

Threats to the viability of the United State Postal Service will be an issue if the November election is deemed not safe enough for in-person voting. Congress must act immediately to fix the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act (PAEA) which required the USPS to create a $72 billion fund to pay for the cost of its post-retirement health care costs, 75 years into the future. This burden applies to no other federal agency or private corporation.

Nancy Marr is first vice president of the League of Women Voters of Suffolk County, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that encourages the informed and active participation of citizens in government and influences public policy through education and advocacy. For more information, visit www.lwv-suffolkcounty.org or call 631-862-6860.

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John Flanagan and his father in the assembly circa 1972. The photo is one that the former state senator kept in his office. Photo from John Flanagan

New York recently ended its 48-year streak of having a John Flanagan representative in the State Assembly or Senate.

“I thought about him when I was fighting for school aid for the entire state.”

John Flanagan Jr. retired from public service June 28, after spending 16 years in the Assembly and 18 years in the Senate, which included three years as Senate majority leader. When his political career began, Flanagan Jr. succeeded his father, John Flanagan, who served for 14 years in the state Assembly until 1986.

The younger Flanagan was 25 years old when his father died. Within a week of his father’s death, Flanagan, who, like his father is a Republican, was campaigning for his seat in the Assembly.

“It was a whirlwind of a time,” Flanagan said. “If my father had died a week later, based on what the law was, he would have been on the ballot as someone who was deceased.”

When he started campaigning, he was attending law school at night. When he won the election, he was sworn in in January and got married 10 days later.

Flanagan attributes his ability to stay grounded and deal with all the changes in his life at the beginning of his political career to a collection of people who loved his father and supported and guided him.

Throughout his over three decades in public service, Flanagan often thought of his father, who he describes as his “hero. If I’m going to be like anyone, I wanted to be like him.”

Flanagan sees similarities in their approach to public service, which is something his father and mother emphasized when he was young.

Both Flanagans were passionate believers in education. The senior Flanagan was a teacher for 10 years, while his son chaired an education committee.

“I thought about him when I was fighting for school aid for the entire state,” Flanagan said.

They also shared a commitment to swift and consistent justice for criminals and advocating for victims’ rights.

The younger Flanagan, who is 59 and is a divorced father of three, said he still has energy left in the tank and is eager to embrace his new role as vice president for government affairs at Northwell Health.

“I didn’t leave after 33½ years so I could go back,” Flanagan said.

He is, however, allowed to interact with state agencies and to work locally to help build the brand name in Suffolk County.

As for his work in the Legislature, Flanagan is proud of his efforts on behalf of people who live in group homes, which are, as he put it, “public policy issues that won’t always be on the front page” but are important.

Flanagan felt that taking care of children with special needs was the “ultimate reflection of who we were as a state.”

As a public servant, he felt it was his responsibility to help people feel that the government is there for them and is operating on their behalf.

He is “extraordinarily proud” of the work he did in education, where he felt the need to advocate for children across the state. He said he was “not afraid to mix it up” on anything, in rural, upstate, downstate, urban, suburban or other areas.

Flanagan is also pleased with the work he did to encourage organ donations through Lauren’s Law, which required the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles to ask anyone applying for a license to answer the question of whether they would like to be an organ donor.

“There’s not enough legitimate discourse on things the way they should be.”

“We have a lot more work to do and a lot further to go,” Flanagan said. “That’s something I’m going to continue to work on in my new endeavor.”

The greatest part of his political career, he said, was the people. He appreciated meeting the direct care workers, the hospice care workers and the staff with whom he felt privileged to work.

The part he misses the least is the backbiting and not having people always be honest and forthright with him.

While he has seen a collection of people who have left political office in the last few years, he said he can only speak for his retirement.

“Social media and changes in technology have made the economy better, [but] it’s a sound bite world of the highest order,” he said. “There’s not enough legitimate discourse on things the way they should be.”

He also said he doesn’t miss the drives to Albany, which he did for so many years that he’s convinced he went at least a million miles.

Before he left office, he walked around the state capitol, where he took in the architecture and made videos of pictures and paintings and narrated a description he “wanted to share with my family.”

While he said he’s going to miss 90 percent of his working life, he appreciated the joy of being “in the game. Doing the stuff I did, I felt like I was playing for the Yankees and I was in the playoffs. I got to be the majority leader.”

To those who believe he left because the Republicans lost the majority, he says that isn’t the case. He felt like he had a “very good run” and wanted to do other things. He considers himself a part of a select and small group of people who served in the Legislature, in both houses, and who became the majority leader.

He prides himself on his ability to work with so many people and on his consistency.

“I didn’t change my stripes,” he said.

He said he went public with his battle with sobriety. He appreciates the support of people who stood with and by him through those challenges. The low point of checking into rehab also helped bring him to a higher point in his life and career, he said.

Flanagan wanted to ensure that every child, no matter what their community, demographic, background and history had the same opportunities his children had.

Children with special needs have an Individual Education Program, which provides a personalized plan for their specific strengths.

“If education is being done properly, every child should have an IEP,” Flanagan said.

He is pleased with the work he did with Sen. Ken LaValle (R-Port Jefferson), who is also retiring this December, to secure millions of dollars for programs at Stony Brook University.

As for modern politics, Flanagan has mixed feelings about President Donald Trump (R).

“I wish he weren’t on Twitter,” Flanagan said. “He’s done strong things for the economy all across the country. The dialog on both sides should be at a better level.”

Flanagan, who earned his bachelor’s degree from the College of William & Mary and his law degree from Touro Law School, tried never to engage in insults.

“People have a right to expect from elected officials, whether trustees or school board members, to act a certain way,” he said.

“People have a right to expect from elected officials, whether trustees or school board members, to act a certain way.”

When he texts, Flanagan uses full sentences, correct grammar and punctuation and doesn’t use emojis. He believes politicians should use the English language to the greatest effect and to serve as educational role models for their constituents.

Flanagan is a fan of Chairman of the Suffolk County GOP Jesse Garcia, who has “done a great job of being a standard bearer for the party.”

Flanagan mentioned the Town of Babylon supervisor and chair of the county Democratic committee Rich Schaffer as one of his favorite Democrats.

“He and I don’t have to agree,” Flanagan said. “I respect who he is, his work ethic and his experience.”

In his office, Flanagan kept a a 2×7-inch placard that was in his house and also in his father’s office. It read: “God so loved the world that he didn’t send the committee.”

Flanagan said he believes that the saying suggests that “we have a tendency to overcomplicate things.”

For the current public servants just starting their political careers, Flanagan urged them to “be who you are. Do not forget the people you represent. They are the ones who are your bosses. Never lose sight of who you should be representing.”

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Northport power plant. File photo

The Northport-East Northport school district has come to a proposed agreement with the Long Island Power Authority on a settlement that would resolve the 10-year tax case between the two sides.

The school board has approved a deal which would reduce LIPA’s annual tax bill on the Northport power plant from $86 million to $46 million by 2027. Under the proposed settlement, LIPA will make several upfront payments to the school district, totaling $14.5 million, that would help offset tax increases to residents and businesses.

In addition, LIPA and National Grid would forgive the collection of in excess of $800 million in taxes and interest that they claim are owed. National Grid owns the Northport power plant, and has been a party to the tax challenge case. The plant’s output is distributed through LIPA’s Long Island electric system.

The proposal ensures that LIPA would pay in excess of $460 million in taxes to various jurisdictions in the Town of Huntington over the first seven years of the settlement, including $312 million to the school district, according to Town Attorney Nicholas Ciappetta. It also includes the likelihood of a five-year extension with the authority.

In a letter to the district community on July 10, Robert Banzer, school superintendent, said the proposed settlement comes as the court ruling in the tax certiorari case against the Town of Huntington appears to be imminent, adding that “the very real possibility of a court ruling against the town could result in drastically reduced tax revenue from LIPA to the school system and create significant hardship for our community.”

The settlement would also protect residents from having to pay retroactive tax payments of $10,000 to $25,000 per household in addition to significant increases to property taxes, according to Banzer.

The deal still must be approved by the Huntington Town Board and Northport school board. The school district will host a virtual workshop this week to answer questions and concerns from community members. The school board is expected to vote on the settlement at a July 20 meeting. The Huntington Town Board has until Aug. 11 to approve the settlement. The town plans on holding informational meetings and answer any questions that residents or others may have regarding the settlement framework and its impact.

“LIPA’s latest settlement proposal is, by far, the best offer presented to the Town to date — and that includes any municipality that has negotiated with LIPA over legacy power plants on Long Island,” said Huntington Supervisor Chad Lupinacci (R) in a statement. “That’s not my opinion; it’s a fact. The town’s ability to negotiate such terms is due in large part to the substantial resources devoted to the defense of the case and the zealous advocacy of the town’s attorneys.”

If the settlement is not approved by both the school board and the Town Board, LIPA has advised that the settlement offer will be withdrawn and will not be revived.

Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone (D) responded favorably to the news.

“I have said from day one that it is critical for the parties to come together to settle this litigation and avoid a court decision that could be catastrophic for the community,” he said. “I commend all parties involved and particularly the community leaders whose advocacy helped produce a far better outcome for Northport residents.”

LIPA settled similar suits with the Town of Brookhaven/Port Jefferson over taxes for the Port Jefferson plant back in December 2018.

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From left: Nassau County Executive Laura Curran (D), Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone (D) and former Congressman Steve Israel. Photo from Bellone’s office

During the initial months of the pandemic, Long Island lost jobs at a faster rate than New York City, New York state or anywhere else in the nation, according to a new report from Nassau and Suffolk counties with city-based consulting firm HR&A Advisors.

Long Islanders suffered the twin blows of the public health impact, and economic destruction. Long Island lost 270,000 jobs, or 21.9 percent of non-farm payroll employment, compared with a rate of 20.1 percent for New York City.

“This pandemic has caused hundreds of thousands of Long Islanders to lose their jobs, shuttered businesses and turned our local economy upside down,” Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone (D) said in a statement. He and Nassau County Executive Laura Curran (D) held a press conference in Melville July 9 where they cited this report, which “makes clear that federal aid from Congress is necessary if our region is going to rebound and recover from the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression,” Bellone added.

The impact was particularly brutal for people with low-paying jobs, lower levels of education and among the Hispanic population.

The worst, however, is not over, as total job losses on Long Island are expected to reach 375,000 compared to pre-COVID levels. Net job losses are expected to continue through 2021 as well, albeit at a slower pace.

More than two out of three jobs lost were in sectors that pay less than the regional average annual wage of $61,600.

The area that lost the highest number of jobs, across Suffolk and Nassau, was hospitality, which shed 82,000 jobs. Health care and social assistance lost 59,000 jobs and retail lost 52,000.

The job decline in hospitality was especially problematic for Hispanic workers, who are disproportionately represented in those businesses. Hispanic workers represent 27 percent of the hospitality field, while they are a smaller 17 percent of the overall Long Island workforce.

Although workers with a high school diploma or below constitute 62 percent of the workforce, they represented 73 percent of the viral-related job losses, reflecting the disparate effect of the virus.

The overall effect of these job losses will result in a decline of $21 billion in earnings for Long Island workers and $61 billion in economic activity throughout the area.

The report suggested that economic recovery would occur in several waves, with some industries showing an increase in jobs much more rapidly than others. Finance and insurance, management of companies and enterprises, professional and technical services, government and information jobs will likely see 95 percent of jobs return within six months, by the first quarter of next year.

The second wave includes jobs in real estate, retail, administrative and waste services, agriculture, construction and utilities, education, health care and social assistance, manufacturing, wholesale trade and other services. Within a full year, 85 percent of those jobs will return.

The third wave will take the longest and will bring back the fewest jobs. Accommodation and food services, transportation and warehousing, and arts, entertainment and recreation will take two years to restore 75 percent of the jobs on Long Island that predated COVID-19.

Half of all businesses in Suffolk County closed temporarily during the virus. An estimated 1 percent of those businesses closed permanently.

One-third of industrial businesses on Long Island are at risk of closing.

The report also projects that earning and spending losses may be even higher in 2021 from a slow recovery within some sectors and from expiring unemployment benefits.

Along with the two county executives, the report urged the federal government to pass the HEROES Act, which provides $375 billion in budgetary relief for local governments. The act passed the House, but the Senate has yet to address it.

The report urged an extension of benefits for workers and businesses and an increase in federal infrastructure funds. The report also sought federal relief for small businesses, while supporting new business development and helping businesses recover. Finally, it seeks assistance for states and counties for workforce development, job training and equity initiatives.

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Local businesses will now have more time to apply for Paycheck Protection Program loans as the aforementioned program has been extended until Aug. 8. 

President Donald Trump (R) signed a bill into law July 4 that ensures the loan program’s  application deadline will run for another five weeks. The bill’s passage allows the U.S. Small Business Administration to resume approving PPP applications, as the agency previously stopped processing forms on June 30. At that date, the SBA had approved nearly 4.9 loans with total funds over $520 billion.

In New York state, close to 324,000 PPP loans had been made, totaling $38.3 billion, according to SBA data. Despite that, the SBA had approximately $130 billion in unallocated funds when it momentarily shut down.

“The surprise for us and a lot of regional bankers is that there is still so much money that remains in the program,” said Bernie Ryba, regional director of the Small Business Development Center at Stony Brook University. “We had seen a huge surge of applications coming in before, but it has stayed flat the past few weeks. It’s been a complete reserve.”

Due to the changes the administration made to the program back in June, businesses that are seeking to qualify for loan forgiveness now have 24 weeks instead of the previous eight weeks to spend PPP funds. The portion of the loan that must be spent on payroll has been reduced from 75 to 60 percent. Businesses won’t be penalized if employees who have been offered their jobs, including same pay and hours, don’t return. 

The SBDC regional director said, with the updated terms, businesses who didn’t choose to apply initially could now decide to do so now.  

“The terms are better, that’s a real positive,” he said. “Some of the companies we’ve been working with said they felt constrained during the original eight-week period. It is a welcomed change.”

Ryba said in some cases he has heard of local and regional banks reaching out to businesses who still haven’t applied for the program. 

“It’s puzzling to them, like, ‘Why aren’t more of these businesses taking advantage of these terms?’” he said. 

The federal program loans up to $10 million with an interest rate of 1 percent and a five-year term. Ryba expects to see a mini-surge in application submissions as the Aug. 8 deadline gets closer. 

“There are some businesses who might think they can skate through this and don’t need to apply,” he said. “As the deadline looms they might change their minds.” 

In addition to Trump’s extension this past holiday weekend, a group of U.S. senators from the Senate Banking Committee tabled a bill that gives automatic forgiveness to businesses. 

Sens. Bob Menendez (D-New Jersey), Kevin Cramer (R-North Dakota), Thom Tillis (R-North Carolina) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Arizona), introduced the Paycheck Protection Small Business Forgiveness Act, which would forgive PPP loans of $150,000 or less if the borrower submits a one-page attestation form to their lender.

According to the group, approximately 85 percent of PPP loans would be eligible for this simplified loan forgiveness process. The cost of applying for forgiveness for a PPP loan of this size is $2,000 for the small business and $500 for the lender. The senators say the bipartisan legislation could save small businesses $7.4 billion and banks nearly $2 billion.

With the updated terms, the application to have PPP loan forgiveness has been simplified. Ryba said the application requires fewer calculations and documentation. It has helped quell some of the concerns owners have had. Small businesses have until Dec. 31 to file their forgiveness applications. 

“The process has been simplified, but there still continues to be a lack of clarity of how to treat certain expenses,” he said. “We hope that gets cleared up, we are trying to stay informed as possible and give our clients the best guidance.”

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A Port Jeff parking ambassador sanitizes a parking meter. Photo from Port Jefferson Village

As Long Island started with Phase 4 opening Wednesday, July 8, Port Jefferson village is active in debating a number of topics both related to the pandemic and not. Here are a few updates from the village’s July 6 meeting.

• Metered parking started up again in Port Jeff July 1. Monday through Wednesday will remain free parking, and parking ambassadors are going around on heavily trafficked days to disinfect meters. Some meters have been converted so people can pay with their phones by tapping their devices with either Google or Apple Pay to the meters.

Main Street remains open for curbside pickup only on Saturdays from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Otherwise it is open for 1 hour parking only during those same times.

• Village officials agreed to pay Andy Fortier Fine Woodworking and Design $10,857 to finish up the last designs for the Harborfront Park stage. This includes permanent railings up to the stage and postings at the edges of the stage footprint which will handle the decorative sails meant to cover over the stage. The sails will be rigged up like on a sailboat so they can lift and cover the stage. The money is coming out of the Farmers Market Trust Account, which is made up of the fees merchants pay the village to set up their stalls. 

• Texaco Park in Upper Port is open, though the basketball hoop was taken down to dissuade contact sports. Reopening other parks in the village is a little more controversial. 

The trustees debated opening up Rocketship Park, with Mayor Margot Garant and trustee Stan Loucks concerned with the amount of traffic the park gets. Trustee Kathianne Snaden argued that beaches are already open with kids playing there as well, and that the village could try and open it to “see how it goes.” 

The village parks department is said to be spraying down benches and other equipment in the mornings as a kind of “routine maintenance,” according tovillage administrator Joe Palumbo. 

Officials also talked about adding free-standing hand-sanitizing stations to park entrances or potentially limiting park hours and capacity while having a person on staff monitoring how many people are in the park at a time.

• Garant said the village is working to codify a new rule setting a moratorium on any new parades for the foreseeable future. This comes after this past week when a right wing Facebook group Setauket Patriots filed a permit for their own parade for the Fourth of July weekend after the fire department canceled its annual event. That parade was in part a political response to a Black Lives Matter march that came through Port Jefferson two weeks before. Village officials approved that march, though officials also had reservations about that event. 

While the village still has to set up a date for a public hearing on a moratorium, Garant said they are adding an emergency order for village employees to put any new parade applications under stay, for the time being. 

“I think we made a mistake, and we need to just stop now and be careful about how we’re moving forward,” the mayor said.

At the July 6 meeting, the board also retroactively publicly approved the Setauket Patriots parade after having been polled on the decision remotely. All approved the parade except Garant, who had previously recused herself from that original decision.

• The village re-upped its contract with Social Butterfly, a web and social media agency based in Port Jefferson for $2,000 a month. Garant said the agency does posts to the village’s Facebook page and establishes events for the page. They also work with Port Jefferson and the country club’s website regarding events. Snaden asked if the agency can give more up-to-date statistics for page views and offer ways to work with Facebook’s algorithms so more people can see village posts.

• Port Jefferson approved at a monthly cost of $1,000 Garland Industries for IT services for the operation and maintenance of the Foreup system software. Foreup is software for managing tee times and other marketing for golf clubs. Brian Macmillan, the general manager of the Port Jefferson Country Club, said it will streamline current services and send out emails to market country club membership. The village capped the services for four months through October, with a chance to reevaluate the program after that time. 

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Nursing homes have become a hotbed of discussion over the large percentage of their residents who have died from COVID-19 while in New York facilities. Stock photo

When the initial COVID-19 surge occurred in New York State, nursing homes were the site of rampant infections and deaths. According to a New York State Department of Health report released earlier this week, the infection was spread by community transmission and asymptomatic staff members. 

The agency aimed to study the impact of the state’s March directive that nursing homes could not refuse admission or readmission to patients because of a confirmed or suspected coronavirus infection. The directive was meant to free up space in overcrowded hospitals as the pandemic intensified.

The number of nursing home staff reporting COVID-19 symptoms peaked March 16, 23 days prior to the peak of nursing home fatalities, which occurred April 8. 

“It is likely that thousands of employees who were infected in mid-March transmitted the virus unknowingly — through no fault of their own — while working, which then led to resident infection,” the report states. 

Critics of the directive argue that it allowed infected patients to return or come into these facilities and in turn spread the virus to other individuals. The findings of the study show 

37,500 workers — one in four of 158,000 nursing home workers — were infected with COVID-19 between March and early June. 

A number of elected officials took issue with the guidance given to nursing homes by the state. U.S. Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY1) disputed claims that the state was simply following the federal government’s guidance. He said the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the federal regulator for nursing homes, had previously issued guidance stating that not only should nursing homes only accept patients for which they can care for, but that nursing homes should focus on “prompt detection, triage and isolation of potentially infectious residents.” 

Zeldin also called on the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and CMS to launch an investigation into New York State’s adherence to appropriate health and safety guidelines within nursing homes and long-term care facilities.

In a statement following the release of the NYSDOH report, Zeldin reiterated his stance. 

“An internal review by the State of New York is OK for them to initiate, but this is not a situation where the state is going to be able to objectively investigate itself,” he said. “These facilities should not have been required to accept patients who were diagnosed at the time with coronavirus, especially if they did not have the ability to protect the rest of their vulnerable population. It was also a fatal policy to prevent nursing homes from administering coronavirus tests to patients returning from hospitalization. Our seniors and their families deserve answers, and an independent investigation is clearly necessary.”

A statewide nursing home survey conducted by NYSDOH shows that between March 25 and May 8, a total of 6,326 COVID-19 hospital patients were admitted into 310 nursing homes. Of those facilities 252 already had either confirmed or suspected positive patients, confirmed or presumed fatalities or infected workers, prior to admission of someone with the coronavirus. 

Stephen Hanse, president and CEO of the New York State Health Facilities Association said at the onset of the pandemic, nursing homes and assisted living facilities were not the top priority. Bolstering hospital resources and ramping up hospital bed capacity were. 

“Policymakers now know that the men and women residing in nursing homes and assisted living facilities are the most at risk of infection from the COVID-19 virus,” Hanse said in a statement. “Consequently, it is essential that nursing homes and assisted living providers receive the full support and assistance from elected officials and policymakers to ensure they have the necessary resources to defeat this virus and safeguard their residents and staff.”

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Sound Beach Civic Associaiton President Bea Ruberto speaks during the Veterans Day ceremony at Sound Beach Veterans Memorial Park. File photo by Desirée Keegan

How high is the hill we have yet to climb? For the last several months we followed the guidelines: We stayed home, we wore masks when we needed to go out and we maintained social distancing, and it worked — we flattened the curve. The economy is reopening, and we’re all looking forward to resuming our lives, but from a health perspective and economically, it may be a long road back.

Suffolk is a populous county and has been severely affected by this virus, and the region’s ability to recover from the costs incurred by the pandemic depends on what happens next. As I understand it, Suffolk County is requesting $1 billion in federal aid, a fraction of what we send to Washington in taxes. In addition, Long Island sends more dollars to Washington than it receives in return. According to the Suffolk County COVID-19 Fiscal Impact Force Final Report, for most years sales tax collections account for approximately half of county revenues while an additional quarter comes from property taxes. The task force is currently projecting a $329 million shortfall in sales tax collections and a 4.9 percent shortfall in property tax collections. And, although the county is budgeted to receive $314 million in state aid, the State of New York has announced that, without federal reimbursements for the COVID-19 expenses it has incurred, there will be potential cuts of 20 to 30 percent. According to this report, the full impact of the lockdown is expected to bring steeper decline in the economy, the GDP and sales tax revenues. Again, as I understand it, without federal aid, the recovery could be extended out for a decade if not longer.

We did what we were told — we shut down the economy — and we hope that now what we hear from the federal government isn’t, “Thank you for following the guidelines; now you pay the cost of the response.” The pandemic is no different than any other natural disaster, and the federal government must provide the relief it would provide during any natural disaster. The state and county budgets are hurting, yet the message we’re getting from Washington is that there’s nothing to worry about and local governments should solve “their own problems.” 

This is a pivotal moment for the region. We need to recover as soon as possible. The financial impact should not be borne primarily by taxpayers nor should we accept cuts to services provided by our first responders, police and other essential workers, but this is exactly what will happen: An already fragile economy will tank without help from the federal government.

To this end, the Sound Beach Civic Association is spearheading a letter-writing campaign reaching out to our federal representatives without whose support the taxpayers of Suffolk County will suffer — both financially and in reduction of services. We encourage everyone to join us and contact Representatives Lee Zeldin (R-NY-1), Thomas Suozzi (D-NY-3) and Peter King (R-NY-2) and U.S. Senators Charles Schumer (D) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D). If you don’t want to write your own letter, you can download one at www.soundbeachcivic.org.

Bea Ruberto is the president of the Sound Beach Civic Association.

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