Letters to the Editor: Dirtbike track
Jamesport
Dirtbike track
My two sons have been riding dirtbikes since they could barely form sentences. Having watched them develop a passion and love for an extreme sport has riddled me with many emotions, both good and some horrified. More horrifying than watching my kids jump huge piles of dirt is the concept that anyone could be opposed to providing a safe place for those who enjoy the thrill to achieve it.
Long Island has routinely barred fun. Barring fun creates boredom, idle hands create chaos. Keeping our youth off the streets and their behinds on a bike is fundamental in ensuring the future can be brighter than probably another strip mall in lieu of a track. How many more fast food establishments or dollar stores do we need as an island?
Give the kids and their families a place to be, doing what they love, and community is created. These kids deserve a place, at minimum, to drive their bikes in circles and jump into the sky. This world is scary; having a place to find joy shouldn’t be an impossible construct.
Marisa Lohwasser
Riverhead
Riverhead board ducks ICE
Speakers at Riverhead’s Feb. 18 Town Board meeting called on members to seriously consider a resolution addressing problems associated with anti-immigrant raids by ICE and associated agencies.
The goal of the resolution, drafted by former Assembly member Fred Thiele for OLA of Eastern Long Island, was to provide the legal basis for East End police departments to engage with ICE, to confirm that masked, anonymous, militarily armed persons are who they say they are — and to have some restraining influence on their unruly and illegal behavior.
The same resolution led the Southold Board to unanimously approve a Public Safety Task Force. The Riverhead board did not benefit from preparatory education about the issue that took place in Southold. However, initial reactions were disappointing. Ken Rothwell made clear his support for the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant assault. Jerry Halpin avoided taking a position, telling a reporter that he was “listening to understand.”
ICE has a growing intrusion in Riverhead and other East End towns. When border czar Tom Homan spun the retreat of ICE from Minneapolis, he made clear that they are still committed to enforcing mass deportations, using their disproportionately immense budget, large scale emergency hiring, abbreviated training and infamous detention center warehouses. This fulfills the extremist paranoia of the White House’s Stephen Miller, whose displacement theory is the 21st-century version of earlier prejudice against Irish, Italian, Jewish, Polish and Chinese immigrants. The Trump administration’s lie that its targets are immigrants with criminal records hides the destruction of the family lives of hard working, tax-paying, well-settled neighbors with the wrong skin color and accent. Sooner or later, this out-of-control behavior could have the tragic consequences here that we saw in Minnesota.
No Kings 3 will pass by Town Hall on March 28 to demand that Riverhead seriously consider and adopt the OLA resolution. Two-thirds of Riverhead’s students are Hispanic, many immigrants themselves or with parents born elsewhere. We will support them and the local economy that depends on those who lack the documentation not required of many of our own ill-prepared ancestors.
John McAuliff
Greenport
Thank you, highway department!
Kudos to the Southold Highway Department’s response after the recent blizzard. We live at the dead end of a dead end, and they were able to get to us quickly after the storm. I can only imagine how much work they had to do, but they did not neglect us. Congratulations and thank you.
Veronica Kaliski
Westhampton Beach
Recent East Marion land sale
I am appalled to see this transaction actually happened and the land was not preserved by anyone before this purchase. One can only hope this billionaire (they usually have more than enough money to exist for thousands of years if they could) will keep it in its present state, but it looks doubtful.
Living on the south shore of Long Island, I have seen so many horrible decisions regarding vacant land and the need to develop. They are not developing for the average person trying to maintain a life here, but for the one-percenters who will only occupy the area for three to four months a year!
Seems these millionaires and billionaires are not really that intelligent when it comes to the non-monetary value of open land. It should be priceless, beyond the grasp of the greedy!
For the sake of Long Island in whole, stop the insanity!
Nancy St. John
