The Riverhead Central School District and other districts across Long Island are congratulating themselves for staying under their tax caps, but is that really good enough? READ
Columns
It started with flowers. We don’t know if it was a single bloom, a bunch of wildflowers picked at a roadside, a 19th-century floral arrangement called a “posy” or a bouquet from a formal garden. But it started with flowers. READ
This is the sixth spring I’ve looked out my office window at a small open-sided metal box under the eaves with a stiff wire protruding from it. Picture a little gray model of a theater’s stage and you’re close. READ
The Town Board is likely to make a choice Wednesday evening, with major impact in Riverhead for decades. A contentious months-long process will conclude with a vote on whether the Ghermezian family is deemed qualified and eligible to purchase 1,600 acres of land at EPCAL. READ
Entertainment-starved East End residents rejoice! Our elected Suffolk County officials are pushing a brilliant plan to bring a 17,500-seat arena to Ronkonkoma as part of a massive development of the area, currently home to a Long Island Rail Road parking lot. READ
A voice rang out amid the crowd of revelers surrounding Betty Negro.
“Betty, are you speechless?”
Betty nodded her head, saying not a word.
“I’ve never seen her speechless!” the woman remarked. (more…)
A strange wailing noise startled Elizabeth O’Reilly at her East Marion home late Saturday afternoon. She walked back on her deck, with a few neighbors, and looked up toward a tree, where she spotted something that looked at first like a plastic bag. But as she looked closer, she could see it was an osprey. READ
Suffolk County’s visionary farmland preservation program has just achieved a triumph. The state’s Appellate Division last month rejected a ruling by a state Supreme Court justice in 2016 that hamstrung the program. Conceived by County Executive John Klein, the program, begun in 1974, is based on the brilliant and then novel idea of purchasing development rights. Farmers are paid the difference between the value of their land in agriculture and what they could get for it if they sold it to a developer. In return, the land is kept in agriculture in perpetuity. READ
