Letters to the Editor: May 8, 2025
Common sense approach
As the former chairman of the Huntington Town Zoning Board of Appeals, I worked tirelessly to balance the interests of residents, landowners and prospective applicants.
New York State Zoning Law requires that neighbors and other residents’ interests be represented in hearing applicant requests. The burden of consideration by the applicant, under the law, covers at least five explicit considerations for area variances requests: an undesirable change, feasible alternatives, substantiality, adverse effects and self-created hardship. As a board we emphasized careful review of potential undesirable changes to neighborhoods, always lending a sensitive ear to the neighbors.
You may have met me at your door during some of these applications, as I would often take the time to walk a neighborhood impacted and speak to residents instead of putting the burden on them to show up at a ZBA meeting.
Residents shouldn’t have to leave their house during a cold winter night, wait hours to speak at a public hearing to fight to defend their zoning and quality of life every time a development application comes up. That is a strict responsibility of the board; residents should not be on the defensive.
Our Town Board and the individuals they appoint have a duty and responsibility to represent us, not simply facilitate development.
The need for the Zoning Board and Planning Board’s independence in this Town is paramount if we are to restore trust in the Town’s zoning process.
Land-use rules and laws protect our most precious investment, our homes. Good zoning and land-use guidance is the most important responsibility of Town government, it is what knits our communities and neighborhoods together. Applications for exemptions from prevailing laws deserve careful review, but that review should never be at the disadvantage of neighbors and residents.
Now, more than ever, we need this balanced common sense approach.
John Posilico
Former Chairman of the Huntington Town Zoning Board of Appeals
Questioning ‘Elder Parole’ for cop killers
It’s common for politicians to send out “constituent surveys.” Ostensibly, the goal is to get feedback from local voters on specific issues. But it would be a rare survey indeed, that did not frame certain questions in ways aimed at getting politically desired responses.
Newly elected Assembly member Rebecca Kassay pretty much followed that template with her May mailer.
A couple of seemingly “feel good” proposals were the Second Look Act, and Elder Parole. Maybe state polls are looking to save some dollars on a staggering state budget that’s twice the size of Florida and Texas combined? Money aside, the goal is to give judges and parole boards the power to reconsider early release for “elderly individuals” so long as the felons have “demonstrated growth and rehabilitation.”
Here are two important unknowns. What would be the specific criteria for the above mentioned, and how it might be applied to those who’ve murdered law enforcement officers? This is especially critical because the PBA has cited 43 cop killers released by our NYS Parole Board in just the last 8 years,
As of this writing,waiting on the sidelines to possibly become lucky number 44, is David McClary. On Feb. 26, 1988, he snuck up behind rookie NYPD Officer Edward Byrne, and shot him five times in the head. The 22-year-old was guarding a witness waiting to testify against a notorious drug lord.
Edward’s brother Ken spoke to ABC News. “Referencing the murder he said, “’It was a horrible scene, we were in shock. It was just beyond devastation.…’ “This is always a difficult process because every two years with the parole board we have to reive everything.” It’s that family’s eighth time.
Who has had the most sway in picking and managing the group tasked with deciding which felons will be freed? That would be former governor Andrew Cuomo, and his Democrat heir, Kathy Hochul (D). This board is a direct reflection of their views on policing and made up of a majority of fellow Dems.
One of the members would be Tana Agostini, who was appointed by Cuomo in 2017. She married convicted killer Thomas O’Sullivan while he was still in prison. Tana used her influence as a staffer of the state Assembly committee overseeing prisons in 2013 to advocate for the parole of O’Sullivan. His stint in prison included an escape and biting off part of an inmate’s nose. It’s hard to see much “growth and rehabilitation” there.
Imagine the unrelenting heartache, revisited every 24 months by long “suffering NYPD families, who are sitting in front of an NYS Parole Board that has released an average of five cop killers yearly since 2017. We can bet these kinds of “feel good” proposals feel anything but good to them. Let’s remember and help protect slain, heroic police officers and their grieving loved ones,
Hard “No” on survey query number 7.
Jim Soviero
East Setauket
