TBR News Media will be out and about tonight for the 2019 Elections. Check out our Twitter @TBRNewsmedia and #TBRVotes for live updates of tonights’ election events.
Don’t forget to check our website TBRnewsmedia.com for the full results tomorrow morning, Nov. 6.
The responsibilities of the Brookhaven highway superintendent prove to be a daunting task, as it is the third biggest highway department in the state. The position oversees thousands of miles of roads and we feel that Dan Losquadro (R) is still the right man for the role. He has done an admirable job with the budget given to him in fixing roads throughout the town.
While some residents may not be fond of Losquadro, they do deserve a more transparent process and more communication on when work is being done. Putting a list of expected road work on the Town’s website as his challenger Anthony Portesy (D) proposed is a good idea to qualm residents’ questions and concerns. It would probably lessen the amount of calls and letters his office receives.
We commend his challenger, Portesy, for deciding to run again for this position, as he brought in fresh ideas and enthusiasm. We believe with enough experience down the line Portesy could make himself an attractive candidate for other offices in the town or other municipalities. We hope he continues to stay involved in the local community and politics.
It’s been 12 years since Councilwoman Jane Bonner (R-Rocky Point) first stepped into office, and we at TBR News Media say she richly deserves another term.
Bonner has been a steadfast representative for her district, and despite her years on board she remains tireless in representing the people of her district. The Mount Sinai Jetty repairs are finally coming to fruition, much thanks to her advocacy. She is a consistent friend to local civic groups such as Mount Sinai’s in its advocacy for refocusing the Mount Sinai Meadows project toward millennial-geared apartments. Her work helping to remediate zombie homes cannot be understated.
Sarah Deonarine has a good breadth of knowledge relating to environmental issues but lacks detail in her plans to deal with people leaving Long Island and addressing zombie homes. The liens placed on properties after they are demolished hinders new people buying the property, but in the end, someone has to pay for that remediation.
Last year, the town included Proposition 1 on the ballot that restricted candidates to three terms but also increased the stint of those terms to four years. Our newspapers endorsed against the proposition, which allows incumbents like Bonner to continue in office for two extra years than they had for the past decade. We do hope that will allow candidates to focus more on issues and less on campaigning, but we also wish town reps listen to dissenting voices over Proposition 1 and take those complaints into account with any future referendums.
As the Town of Brookhaven is the closest level of government to residents, the supervisor position requires a person who can look at each hamlet as its own entity, while also looking at the whole.
We at TBR News Media believe Ed Romaine (R) has done that well, and for that reason TBR News Media is choosing to endorse Ed Romaine to continue his role as supervisor.
It’s a shame Will Ferraro (D) has chosen such a candidate like Romaine to run against. We enjoyed his energy and passion and believe his head and heart are in the right place. We sincerely hope he continues to run in local elections. We see him as another one to watch in the future.
We do like some of the Democratic challenger’s plans, especially concerning a capped pay-as-you-throw system toward trash. Romaine, however, has done a good degree of due diligence in banking $12 million for when the landfill finally closes in 2024. Garbage will become Long Island’s top issue in only a few years’ time, and officials should start getting a concrete plan now, rather than later, for what Brookhaven will do with residents’ trash.
Romaine’s track record on environment and green energy issues has been commendable, and we hope his plans for the CCA program and any other future plans to reduce residents’ tax burdens will go a long way to keeping people in the Town of Brookhaven.
Despite the proliferation of news and ads surrounding the county executive race, there was one election in the District 6 area many spoke of being more exhausting than the others, and that was the race between Democratic incumbent Sarah Anker and Republican challenger Gary Pollakusky.
We at TBR News Media do not appreciate some of the methods used in this election, which happened on both sides of the isle. There were some campaign ads that Anker should have put her foot down to stop. On Pollakusky shoulders, the methods employed passing around often misleading information regarding his opponent were also not appreciated. The situation involving the last summer concert series got out of hand, and neither candidate handled it to the standard a legislator requires.
Beyond that, TBR News Media is endorsing Sarah Anker to continue on as legislator. While we appreciate the challenger’s concern for county finances, his ideas for confronting schools and their taxes don’t hold much water. While he has complaints about how much residents will spend on dealing with water quality issues, he did not have much in the way of concrete plans.
Anker has been involved in much, from opioid panels to the North Shore Rail Trail, which we hope will become a major thoroughfare for ecotourism.
We hope that if Anker wins another term, she reaches out to some who have been vocal about feeling unheard. District 6 needs a person who can bridge that divide, and we believe Anker can increasingly fill that gap
Five-term Suffolk County Legislator Sarah Anker (D-Mount Sinai) is once again facing Republican challenger Gary Pollakusky, a Rocky Point business owner and head of the recently remodeled Rocky Point Sound Beach Chamber of Commerce. The candidates challenged each other in 2017, but while many issues remain the same, such as county finances, coastal water issues and opioids, the campaign season has been even more contentious than two years before.
Many of the Republicans running for county Legislature this year have made county finances a major part of their campaigns, and Pollakusky made it a point when he ran two years ago.
“The $4 billion plan is unrealistic — it will come down to taxpayers, people who are leaving the Island, to take on this burden.”
— Gary Pollakusky
In a recent in-house debate at TBR News Media offices, the Republican challenger pointed to the recent report from the New York State comptroller, Thomas DiNapoli (D), which called Suffolk one of the most fiscally stressed counties in the state, Pollakusky adding the county now has junk bond status. He said small businesses have a hard time opening in Suffolk County, that it takes two to three years when it should, at most, two to three months. He said the county should have done more to bring in retail giant Amazon.
Though the largest percentage of residents’ tax bills are due to school districts, the challenger said Suffolk should look to work with both the state and local school districts to reduce the number of administrators, even creating a “chancellor of education” to oversee that cause.
Anker, who first came to the Legislature in 2011 during a special election, argued that the county is not in as much fiscal stress as Republicans have said. She argued that the county’s Baa2 bond rating by Moody’s shows a different picture of the county’s financial shape. She said finances have improved significantly since when she was first elected.
The incumbent argued that instead of looking to bring in Amazon, the North Shore should look to become an “ecotourism hub,” with amenities like the new North Shore Rail Trail and Tesla Science Center.
“Instead of making a right to go pumpkin picking and wine tasting, take a left to downtown Rocky Point, so we can revitalize it,” she said. “So many stores have gone out recently.”
The Republican challenger criticized Anker for removing Rocky Point from the county sewer list and called Suffolk’s prototype septic system program a “toilet tax.” Though residents can get grants from New York State that pay most or all of the installation, Pollakusky argued there are fees attributed to landscaping or regular maintenance.
“As far as runoff, the $4 billion plan is unrealistic — it will come down to taxpayers, people who are leaving the Island, to take on this burden,” he said.
Anker called Suffolk the “most proactive agencies in government that addresses this issue,” adding she supports the prototype septic systems as well as the county water authority’s multibillion dollar plans to reduce 1,4-dioxane in wells throughout the county.
She added the reason she removed Rocky Point from the sewer list came from a request by the Rocky Point Civic Association whose members said they did not want to pay an additional sewer tax.
Anker currently chairs the Suffolk County Heroin and Opiate Epidemic Advisory Panel, which was created in 2017. She said the panel has already borne fruit with one recent example being Suffolk County police’s new mass spectrometer, which can identify previously undetectable substances. She said the device came from a suggestion on the 24-member panel. She added the county’s lawsuit of pharmaceutical company Purdue and the Sackler family may bring in millions of dollars of revenue to the county.
“Instead of making a right to go pumpkin picking and wine tasting, take a left to downtown Rocky Point, so we can revitalize it.”
— Sarah Anker
Pollakusky argued that while some county statistics say the opioid epidemic has plateaued, he hasn’t seen an example of that in the district, claiming there is a glut of “drug dealing homes” all across the North Shore. Like in 2017, he criticized his opponent for voting to close the Foley Center in Yaphank, saying it could have been used for bed space and as a treatment center.
Anker came back saying the county should look toward public-private partnerships in creating new treatment space.
Though the candidates talked about the ongoing issues, they were also asked how they felt about their opponents campaign tactics during this contentious season. The challenger’s voice rose during the debate as he criticized Anker for mailings published by political advocacy group People for Political Responsibility, depicting him in photoshopped, unflattering images. He claimed Anker had been disbursing campaign material at functions like the Downtown Rocky Point Summer Concert Series and advocating for herself over radio.
Anker fired back that she had nothing to do with the mailings and had not handed out campaign material at these functions, instead handing out informational pamphlets for services provided by the county. She said her radio show was not sponsored at all by her campaign and only talked of work being done in the Legislature.
Both have continuously blamed the other for politicizing an incident several months ago at the final summer concert series event, when chamber members were barred from entering the concert. Chamber members said they had permission from the local Veterans of Foreign War post, which participates in putting on the concerts, but Anker said she had only received word that they wanted to attend the day before, and that they did not have space for them. The chamber was allowed a single table at the concert, she added. Pollakusky said it was unfair she was able to attend and “campaign” at the concert while disallowing others.
This post has been amended from how it appeared in the Village Beacon Record to clarify Anker’s position on informational material for services provided by the county.
Brookhaven Town Councilwoman Jane Bonner (R-Rocky Point), a longtime civic leader and six-term council member since 2007 is facing a challenge from Democratic Sarah Deonarine, a marine biologist out of Coram with years of working in state and local government.
In an October debate at the TBR News Media offices, candidates went back and forth over questions of development on the North Shore, clean energy initiatives and keeping young people on Long Island.
“What I’m hearing is that people want to stay in their homes — age in place.”
— Sarah Deonarine
Deonarine said she sees Brookhaven at “full carrying capacity” in terms of development and is calling for a study on capacity to see if the town is at “full build-out.” She added that another issue which leads to the Island’s brain drain is a lack of affordable or millennial housing, compared to states like Colorado.
“What I’m hearing is that people want to stay in their homes — age in place,” she said.
Other issues for her is the lien put on a property after a derelict house is removed, making redevelopment expensive. She asked that the list of zombie homes in town be made public, as well as refocus Brookhaven Code Enforcement Division which she called aggressive in “trying to make money for the town.”
Bonner instead cited the Route 25A corridor study, and which started in the first years of her first term, which she boasted has been picked up by the Town of Riverhead and continued by Councilwoman Valerie Cartright (D-Port Jefferson Station) in the Three Village area. The study led to “massive rezonings” which limited further build-out. She said all current large-scale developments were grandfathered in before the outcome of the study.
One of those includes the senior living facility development going up along Route 25A in Mount Sinai, which came about after the Mount Sinai Civic sued the town to stop another “Ranches style” development. The Mount Sinai Meadows project was reconfigured from retail space into majority millennial-geared rental/part commercial.
“Mount Sinai Meadows is going to change the face of Mount Sinai,” Bonner said. “It’s also going to stimulate the [Mt. Sinai] shopping center that’s right next to it.”
She disagreed with Deonarine’s statement on code enforcement, saying the division was more focused on the well-being of people in their homes. She said Suffolk County police asked the town not to publicize the list of zombie homes.
The town has boasted of its clean energy initiatives, including solar farms and wind farms at Town Hall in Farmingdale. Bonner called the solar farm developments in Shoreham a way of reducing the impact of farms and grass products on the aquifer while growing green energy in the town. She mentioned the electric car charging stations at sites like Heritage Park in Mount Sinai.
“We’re doing our part to reduce our carbon footprint.”
— Jane Bonner
“We’re doing our part to reduce our carbon footprint,” the incumbent said.
The Democratic challenger said she thinks it’s time Long Island as a whole moves away from being hesitant on new green energy initiatives, especially with complaints over aesthetics.
“People are afraid of their views being blocked — it’s a time we need to move past that, and it’s time to think about the environment and move away from fossil fuels,” she said.
If elected, Deonarine said she would bring a different viewpoint to the board, six of whom are Republican with one lone Democrat. She also pushed her opponent on proposition 1, the referendum given the green light by voters last November, saying it had been poorly worded, giving town council members term limits while at the same time extending terms from two to four years. She said the Republican members of the board largely supported it, and though Cartright had at first supported it, she later pulled back her support.
“The current board makeup, and current Republican Party makeup, it is very biased,” she said. “With only one Democrat on the board, that’s not a representation of the Town of Brookhaven.”
Bonner said the board has been bipartisan in getting things done, with no lack of ability or willingness to cross party lines and help each other in daily duties. In terms of proposition 1, “we all supported to go to referendum for the four-year terms,” she said. “It was overwhelmingly supported by nearly 60 percent.”
Two familiar faces are vying for the Town of Brookhaven highway superintendent seat. Incumbent Dan Losquadro (R), who has been superintendent since 2013, is seeking a fourth term come Election Day. Democratic challenger Anthony Portesy, a private attorney, is once again running for the top highway department position. He ran against Losquadro in 2017.
The town highway superintendent’s role is responsible for overseeing more than 3,300 lane miles of town roads, making it one of the largest highway departments in New York State. The candidates joined in a debate at the TBR News Media office
“Compared to other positions I’ve held, this has given me the ability to see tangible results of my efforts.”
— Dan Losquadro
Losquadro has spent 16 years in elected office, previously serving as Suffolk County legislator and New York State assemblyman.
“Compared to other positions I’ve held, this has given me the ability to see tangible results of my efforts,” he said. “Instead of debating, now I can allocate funding and I get to see those projects to their completion, that is very gratifying to me.”
Portesy said he shares some of the ideas Losquadro has. His ideas have come from talking to thousands of voters since he lost in 2017.
The challenger detailed what he called a “worst to first” initiative he’d like to implement if elected. The priority list would be publicly posted on the town’s website, so residents can see when their road is going to get reconstructed.
“I think if we create a road map of when the work is going to get done with expected time line completion dates it would clear things up,” he said. “The voter frustrations are based off the in-house metrics. No one knows how they decide which roads are done and which ones are not done.”
Losquadro said there are many factors that go into selecting roads for work, and that it sometimes hinges on weather conditions.
“This winter was different because we had so many freeze-thaw cycles,” he said. “Every day it seemed like during the day it was 45 degrees and then at night it went down to 18 degrees.”
The incumbent said during the winter they used a combination of cold patch and hot mix to battle potholes.
“We used more cold patch but it never quite fully hardens, so that meant after the winter it breaks up and we had to go back all throughout the spring and summer to fix the potholes that were already fixed,” he said. “It is a battle that you have to keep fighting.”
For next year, Brookhaven Supervisor Ed Romaine (R) has allocated $15 million to the highway department. Both candidates agreed that the funds are needed to fix roads that are past their life expectancy.
Losquadro said that every penny should be going to roads and mentioned his own high priority list. When pressed on why he doesn’t give more details on when residents can expect work done on their roads, Losquadro said there are multiple factors that decide when a road can be done, and much is out of his hands.
“I think if we create a road map of when the work is going to get done with expected time line completion dates it would clear things up,”
—Anthony Portesy
He stressed that he is working with a finite budget and assured residents that they have a plan in place.
“We are getting there — I will never say work will be definitely done by next year, it could be done in two or three years,” he said. “Winters change things.”
Portesy said that’s the crux of resident’s frustration and he wants to make the process more transparent to them.
“They know there’s only so much money in the pot, they just want to know when their road is going to be fixed,” he said.
Another area the candidates differ is on how the department uses contractors for most of its work.
The highway superintendent said he would love to have more workers, but the department tries to be mindful of its spending.
“The town used to have its own pavement crew, but it is just not feasible to hire multiple employees and buy our own materials,” he said.
The challenger said he believes within the confines of the budget the department could have room to hire between 12 to 20 additional employees over the course of three to five years.
“I think we can lessen the reliance on contractors — I think creating an apprenticeship program could be a good idea,” he said.
The race for Town of Brookhaven supervisor sees one candidate with years of electoral experience facing a young newcomer who says he’s representing those in town who have been ignored by government the past several years.
Seven-year town Supervisor Ed Romaine (R) is facing Democratic challenger, first-time candidate and Selden political activist Will Ferraro. While the incumbent cites his efforts over the past seven years, including his work on getting control of Brookhaven’s budget and the push toward clean energy, Ferraro is pushing hard on recycling and trash issues, as well as keeping young people on Long Island.
Romaine said the town has made huge strides toward clean energy in the past several years, including incorporating wind and solar technology at Town Hall in Farmingville.
“You had a year, a year and a half, where that market had been collapsing and the town just waited.”
— Will Ferraro
Recently, a new offshore wind project, Sunrise Wind, has plans to create an offshore wind farm off Montauk, and plans to have a home base in Port Jefferson Harbor. Romaine claimed he had been a big proponent of that project and will have a large impact on it going forward.
“I’m not a proponent of fossil fuel,” Romaine said.
Ferraro criticized the town’s movement on the Caithness II plant, which has since stalled, though Romaine said he had voted against the plant.
More eyes have turned toward Brookhaven’s waste management and recycling since the market crashed in 2018, leading the town’s recycling contractor, Green Stream Recycling, to void its contract. Brookhaven has switched from single-stream to dual-stream recycling and has asked residents to drop glass off at 21 points in the town instead of picking it up at curbside.
The Democratic challenger criticized the supervisor for not seeing the writing on the wall when it came to the recycling market and single-stream recycling.
“Where I find problem is that [the Town] waited and tried running out 20-plus year contract with Green Stream,” Ferraro said. “You had a year, a year and a half, where that market had been collapsing and the town just waited.”
He advised the town should look into a pay-as-you-throw program, which would lessen the cost of people’s trash bill for those who turn out less trash. He said he would cap the cost of people’s bills to where it currently sits at $350, enticing people to throw out less. He added he would want to return to glass pickup once every two weeks or once a month.
Romaine said such a program might work in the long term, but believed it would lead to illegal dumping, which he added was already a huge problem in Brookhaven.
The town’s landfill has long been a hot spot for controversy. The landfill currently only accepts ash and construction debris. All garbage is taken to a plant outside of town, while the ash is returned to the landfill. Current plans see Brookhaven capping the landfill by 2024. Romaine said closing the location will be a net loss for the town but suspects they will not take a large hit. Otherwise, Brookhaven, along with other townships that dump their ash at the Brookhaven landfill, still needs to decide where that trash will go once the last landfill on Long Island is closed.
“This is not a Brookhaven problem, this is a regional problem,” Romaine said.
People around the landfill have long complained about the odor from it, and many claim they have experienced negative health effects from living close to it. Ferraro criticized the town for not doing more to research what could be causing such effects or doing air testing during an odor event and called for an air quality task force for the area.
Romaine said a New York State Department of Environmental Conservation does testing every day, and they have no research that qualitates the landfill has resulted in these negative health effects at the nearby school district.
“Health to me is the most important thing,” Romaine said. “If we knew there was something, we would have stopped.”
Recent years have shown people, both young and old, moving off the Island due to high property taxes. While both candidates agreed the majority of taxes come from the local school districts, Ferraro said the most important thing is to attract industries that provide jobs, while working on town infrastructure to get people to those jobs. He suggested that Brookhaven should look into some sort of limited public transportation system, similar to Huntington’s Area Rapid Transit system.
“Health to me is the most important thing.”
— Ed Romaine
He agreed with Romaine on a lack of multifamily housing but said some residents are being heard more than others.
“A lot of NIMBY [not in my backyard] is being pandered to,” the challenger said. “A lot of their concerns are valid, some are not … We need a comprehensive approach. It’s one thing to have $1,800 rent, but when you talk about transportation costs, other factors than just rent that play into that.”
Romaine said he and fellow council members have done a good job in securing large industries to the town, such as Amneal Pharmaceuticals, which brought a facility to Yaphank with several hundred jobs earlier this year. He added the Brookhaven Industrial Development Agency has been key in bringing jobs like these to the area. He also cited intent to lessen the cost of gas and electricity by allowing the town to purchase those resources on behalf of its residents through a Community Choice Aggregation program.
Ferraro said many of those jobs created through the IDA were temporary construction jobs. Though some residents have complained about some of the tax breaks some of these developments have received, such as the Engel Burman-owned senior facility currently going up in Mount Sinai for only providing around 50 full-time employees after the facilities finally open. Romaine agreed that the IDA should avoid multifamily housing unless its “affordable.” He said he was opposed to the IDA giving tax breaks to the Heatherwood apartment complex in Port Jefferson Station and South Setauket, which were ultimately rejected.
It is a three-man race for the Suffolk County executive seat this year. Incumbent Steve Bellone (D) is vying to secure a final term after coming into office in 2012. Suffolk County Comptroller John Kennedy Jr. (R) and Libertarian candidate Greg Fischer, from Calverton, are looking to unseat Bellone in this year’s election.
Some topics discussed were the county finances, the opioid and MS-13 situations and Suffolk’s water quality.
Suffolk County finances
The status of the county’s finances continues to be a pressing issue since Thomas DiNapoli (D), the New York State comptroller, released a report saying Suffolk was under the most “significant fiscal stress” of any county — with Nassau — in the state in 2018 for the second year in a row. Suffolk had an operating deficit of about $26.5 million and a general fund balance deficit of $285 million.
“When I came into office in 2012 the county was on the brink of bankruptcy, we had a $500 million accumulated deficit.”
— Steve Bellone
Bellone touted since he took office seven years ago, he has made the county government more streamlined, fully eliminated the existing operating deficit and has helped achieve an operating surplus for two consecutive years.
“When I came into office in 2012 the county was on the brink of bankruptcy, we had a $500 million accumulated deficit,” he said. “The county government was completely dysfunctional. Everyone was saying we were heading in the same direction as Nassau County, we were going to have a control board. I told them that was not going to happen, and we made the tough decisions.”
Since Bellone took office, the county government has cut close to 1,300 municipal jobs looking to reduce expenditures.
Kennedy, who has been the county comptroller for the past five years, said his office has been auditing aggressively, has saved the county upward of $56 million and helped refinance its pipeline debt. He said the county is currently $883 million in operating debt and has a $91 million general fund balance deficit.
The longtime Suffolk politician argued that the county would probably have to cut back at least $50-60 million from the current operating budget.
“There’s things in life, you have your wants and your needs — that’s where we are at [right now],” he said. “We have departments that are not running properly, we have to consolidate.”
Kennedy said he would look to implement percentage decreases across the board for contract agencies and in some cases suspend services, similarly to what the county Legislature did in 2008 in the midst of a recession.
“I am running based on the 15 years of public service — I think I can put us back to balance,” he said.
Fischer put it simply that the county is no different than a big bankrupt company.
“We are rated lower than Nassau County, which has financial control boards,” he said. “We can’t rely on the state for anything right now.”
If elected, Fischer would freeze further increases in spending immediately as well as freeze future hiring and begin cross-training county employees.
“This is something that has to be done now,” he said.
Opioids/MS-13
On opioids, Kennedy said the county has had an addiction issue long before oxycodone was ever cooked up, mentioning morphine, methadone and crystal meth that have been a concern since the late ’80s.
He said treatment for addicts is one of his main concerns.
“We have fewer treatment beds in Suffolk County than five to 10 years ago,” Kennedy said. “Availability of treatment beds is the most pressing need right now.”
“I am running based on the 15 years of public service — I think I can put us back to balance.”
— John Kennedy Jr.
Many Republicans have criticized the Bellone administration for the closure and sale of the Foley Center in Yaphank, which they contend would have helped in the fight against the opioid crisis.
The county comptroller said that the governor has to be more proactive in helping the county. In addition, he said law enforcement needs to be more effective.
Fischer said he lost his brother to heroin and is acutely aware of what is going on in the fight.
“This is horribly addictive stuff — I believe in ‘scared straight’ programs, bringing in junkies into schools and scaring the crap out of kids,” he said. “I do want more treatment and prevention not just more cops.”
The county executive maintained a comprehensive approach is the only way to solve the opioids crisis.
He agreed with Kennedy and Fischer that local law enforcement plays a big part, but that prevention is just as important.
Bellone touted partnerships with community-based groups and schools and opening DASH, a substance abuse and mental health center in Hauppauge, that is seeing patients 24/7.
“The inability to provide adequate treatment has been a failure of our country,” he said. “Once you become addicted it is very hard to extricate yourself from it. We have made progress — the state has helped us.”
He also mentioned that the county has decided to sue the people responsible for the opioid epidemic.
“Though we can’t restore the lives lost, the Sackler family [which controls Purdue Pharma] should be made to pay,” he said.
On MS-13, Bellone said the Suffolk County Police Department has led the fight against the gang and has helped in getting the lowest crime rate in the history of the county.
Kennedy and Fischer contend that it is the federal government’s involvement that has swayed the tide in the fight. Though all three candidates agree that while strides have been made, there needs to be continued law enforcement efforts from both the local and federal levels.
Suffolk’s water quality
Bellone called water quality “the most significant issue of our time in Suffolk County.”
“Climate change will have certain impacts, but if we don’t address water quality, we are sacrificing the future of the county — we cannot sustain what this place is without protecting water,” he said.
Bellone said water quality is not only vital for the county’s economy but also to local tourism which brings in billions of dollars each year.
“It is one of the reasons why people live here and for the quality of life,” he said.
The county executive defended his septic improvement program which he launched in 2017, saying it has allowed homeowners to replace outdated septic systems and cesspools. He also mentioned that it has helped reduce contaminants in the groundwater.
“We have departments that are not running properly, we have to consolidate.”
— John Kennedy Jr.
Kennedy said his main concern is to continue to identify any suspected contaminants in our groundwater. He supports the Suffolk County Water Authority’s efforts to identify and remove 1,4-dioxane.
“We need to raise funding to install 31 wells [throughout the county],” he said.
Another of his concerns is stormwater runoff prevention, which he said, to him, the jury is still out on the advanced septic system, adding that four to six systems are not working properly.
Fischer said he would propose a “100 projects in 100 weeks” plan if elected, adding there are some things the county could implement right now.
“I would put a sizable fee or ban on high nitrogen fertilizer — this is dangerous stuff,” he said.
The Libertarian candidate criticized Bellone’s advanced septic system program, calling it a complete failure and needs to be put into moratorium until it is fixed.
Fischer also proposed changes to water codes, mentioning gray water — or the water that comes out of baths, sinks and other appliances — and setting certain mandates for new construction.
