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Port Jeff

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Port Jefferson Middle School has a new interim principal. Photo by Caroline Biondo

A familiar face will guide Port Jefferson Middle School as the district searches for a new principal.

At a school board meeting on Tuesday night, members approved Leonard Bozza to serve as interim principal effective July 1. The board resolution stipulates that Bozza will be in the role for no more than 100 days, and will be compensated $600 for each day.

According to a Wednesday letter from Superintendent Ken Bossert, Bozza was previously an interim assistant principal in the district and an interim high school principal. Before stepping into those roles at Port Jefferson, he had retired from his position as the Longwood High School principal.

The district is searching for a permanent replacement for outgoing Principal Antonio Santana, who announced earlier this month that he would not return for the 2015-16 school year, instead going to work for a Nassau County high school beginning in July.

Santana’s news came about three months after the high school principal, Matthew Murphy, announced his own departure at the end of the current school year, saying he was going “to pursue other educational opportunities.”

Murphy and Santana had been hired together three years ago to jointly replace Roseann Cirnigliaro, who had served as principal of both the middle and high schools.

Despite the pair’s coinciding resignations, the district has said the two schools will retain separate principals. Officials have already filled Murphy’s spot — Christine Austen, the Pre-K to grade 12 assistant principal, will take the helm of the Earl L. Vandermeulen High School.

Until a permanent middle school principal is chosen, parents can reach Bozza at the school’s main office, at 631-791-4431.

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Max Scandale maintains possession with an opponent on his hip in a game this season. File photo by Desirée Keegan

The Port Jefferson boys’ lacrosse team capped off its inaugural season with some prestigious individual and team honors.

Three players, Max Scandale, Brian Mark and Connor Fitterer, were selected as members to the League IV All-League team.

Scandale also made the All-County team, and Mark was selected as the League IV “Rookie of the Year.”

As a team, the Royals were the recipient of the “Crosse Award,” for which a team is nominated by the Suffolk County Lacrosse Coaches Association as being the most improved squad from the beginning to the end of the season.

“I really could not be more proud of what this team accomplished this past season,” Port Jefferson head coach Taylor Forstell said. “Being a first-year varsity lacrosse program in Suffolk County is hard enough. To make it to the playoffs in our first season is a true testament of this program’s growth and progression.”

Senior Jake Myhre was also recognized by the Port Jefferson Village Lacrosse Association as being the first recipient of the “Stick With A Goal” scholarship at the annual Booster Club Dinner.

This scholarship, a $1,000 prize, recognizes a college-bound senior for their hard work, dedication and commitment to their team.

“When approached about this scholarship, I knew right away we had a perfect match,” Forstell. “Jake is a three-sport athlete that commits countless hours to improving his craft in all three sports. It has been an honor to coach him the past three years and we all wish him the best of luck next year at the University of Pittsburgh.”

Looking ahead, Forstell is excited for the next season with his athletes.

“Our journey has just begun,” he said. “We look forward to continued success in the coming years through hard work and commitment to the lacrosse family.”

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The district’s newest policies were brought forth by the school board’s policy committee, which is headed by Trustee Bob Ramus, above. File photo

Port Jefferson’s school board approved district policy changes on Tuesday night that mostly regulate student behavior.

After having a first reading of the 14 new or updated policies at a meeting two weeks ago, the board of education finalized the new language regarding the dress code, substance abuse, and student conduct and discipline, among other areas, at their meeting this week.

With the adoption of the new policies, the board also deleted five old ones — the outdated versions of some of them.

One of the most significant changes is in the district’s policy on school building visitors. Previously, visitors had to report to the school office and get a visitor’s permit. And “whenever possible, entrance to the school buildings shall be restricted to entryways most effectively supervised by building staff.”

But under the new policy, visitors will be allowed inside during classes only “through the designated single point of entry, have a clear purpose and destination, and report to the designated visitor sign-in area.”

Those visitors will have to surrender their photo identification while they are in the building and wear a school-issued badge at all times.

The student dress code policy has been changed from the original to specifically list inappropriate types of clothing, leaving the language less open to individual interpretation.

“Extremely brief garments such as tube tops, net tops, halter tops, spaghetti straps, plunging necklines … and see-through garments are not appropriate,” the policy now reads. “Underwear [must be] completely covered with outer clothing.”

Previously, the policy said only that clothing could not be too revealing, a health hazard or obscene in any way.

The restriction on obscenity will remain, as the updated policy bans vulgar or obscene items on the clothing, and things that denigrate others or promote illegal activities like drug use.

Much like the dress code policy added specific banned clothing, the updated policy on substance abuse adds language to the district’s list of prohibited substances.

The list already contained substances like alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, LSD, cocaine, PCP, heroin and steroids, and now it also lists synthetic versions of those substances, regardless of whether they are illegal.

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Parking spots in the Brookhaven Town Marina lot were given to Port Jeff Village as part of a 2015 agreement, but the deal alienated parkland, according to the AG's office. Screen capture

Port Jefferson Village could add 50 more spaces to its metered parking arsenal, drawing them on asphalt in the town’s marina lot.

The village is leasing the spots as part of an agreement with Brookhaven Town regarding the historic First National Bank of Port Jefferson building at the corner of Main and East Main streets.

Town officials are selling the former bank — and the attached building on East Main Street that used to house the Brookhaven tax receiver’s office — to local developer Agrino Holdings LLC, which has approval from the Port Jefferson Planning Board to put retail space on the first floors and apartments above. The developer plans to renovate the tax receiver’s office and restore the bank building, a historic landmark.

But downtown Port Jefferson has a perennial parking problem, with a constant space shortage that can make it difficult for new developments to meet requirements in the village code. To offset the lack of spaces at the site of the mixed-use project, the town has been working with the village for more than a year on a parking space swap — leasing to the village some spots at the town-owned marina lot two blocks away.

The original plan involved the roughly 30 existing spaces that wrap around the old Suffolk County Water Authority building across West Broadway from McDonald’s. But Trustee Larry LaPointe explained at Monday’s board of trustees meeting that it would have involved “a spaghetti of easements and curb cuts.”

Instead the village will get land on the western end of the marina lot, near Beach Street, that it will restripe and meter. LaPointe said the size of that section will allow the village to create 50 new parking spaces, whereas the previous arrangement would have merely transferred ownership of 30 spots.

Revenue from the village’s other parking meters will cover the costs of restriping and adding the new meter.

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Trustee Bruce Miller says despite a vote in favor of the document on Monday, he opposes the village’s comprehensive plan. Photo by Elana Glowatz

After years of work and arguments, Port Jefferson’s controversial village development plan has become final.

The board of trustees unanimously adopted the comprehensive plan at a meeting on Monday, but Trustee Bruce Miller said in an interview the following morning that he plans to retroactively change his vote at the next board meeting.

Miller said he got “bogged down” during the board’s discussion about its agenda items, and didn’t mean to vote in favor of adopting the plan.

The comprehensive plan is a guideline for future development in Port Jefferson Village, largely focusing on the waterfront commercial area downtown and the short but troubled uptown corridor that runs between North Country Road and the Long Island Rail Road tracks. It aims, for instance, to revitalize upper Port by making it more pedestrian-friendly and bringing in more apartments. Downtown, the plan includes adding recreational and green space near the water and widening Main Street.

Residents and former members of the Comprehensive Plan Advisory Committee, with the support of Miller, have long sparred with the administration over the plan, citing fears that it would add too much density to what they want to be a quaint village, snarl traffic even further on busy roads and bring in more cars than there is space to park them.

Miller echoed those concerns on Tuesday, and said he also opposes adopting the plan for procedural reasons — he said he hasn’t yet seen a findings statement, which is a document certifying that the village met the requirements of the State Environmental Quality Review Act in its study of the plan’s environmental impact.

The village board approved that findings statement at Monday’s meeting.

Still, there have been voices of support for the plan, including from the other four board members and from other residents. And recent approval from the Suffolk County Planning Commission was the final stamp the village needed before adopting it.

While the commission issued a list of recommendations relating to the plan’s impact on traffic, density, taxes and parking, the village sent a response letter in which it disagreed that more study was required on most of those items. To the Planning Commission’s suggestion, for example, that the village conduct “an analysis of the impacts of increased rental housing” in Port Jefferson, the village responded in May that “it is unclear how the type of ownership status of housing units alone would impact community character, and the suggestion that because a property is a rental property that it would then have a negative impact on the community is unfounded.”

The village’s response also noted that the apartments would likely serve single adults and couples without children, which is “the same demographic that … Long Island is seeking to retain, as the young contribute to our workforce and the [retirement-aged residents] continue to enjoy recreation and spend using their discretionary income.”

Suffolk County Planning Director Sarah Lansdale wrote in an email later last month that the village gave the issues “proper procedural review” and took “a hard look at the issues raised by the commission.”