Town of Huntington - Highlights
9/18/2015 - Petrone Addresses Vision Long Island’s Smart Growth Working Group
Farmingdale – Huntington Supervisor Frank P. Petrone joined a panel of federal, state and local government officials in discussing Long Island infrastructure projects at a September 17 meeting of Vision Long Island’s Smart Growth Working Group.
Supervisor Petrone spoke about pending and proposed infrastructure projects that are important to Huntington’s future. They included an extension of the Southwest Sewer District north along Route 110 to include portions of Huntington Station to allow for redevelopment of the area; widening the Walt Whitman Road overpass over the Long Island Expressway in Melville; the possible addition of parking structures in Huntington village and at the Cold Spring Harbor train station; the addition of a long haul rail spur in East Northport to ease the off-Island transport of ash and solid waste; and an ongoing feasibility study of forming a microgrid linking Town Hall, Huntington Hospital and other needed emergency facilities to speed power restoration in the event of widespread outages.
The Supervisor also received considerable favorable response in discussing his comments about how the State Tax Cap has made it difficult to undertake projects such as open space acquisition and major infrastructure investments. The Supervisor has suggested that expenditures that were the result of a referendum such as an Open Space Bond Act or formation of a parking district not be counted against the tax cap limitations because they represented instances in which residents had directly voted to tax themselves. The Supervisor noted that he has already spoken to local state legislators about possible revisions to the tax cap to exempt those expenditures from being counted against the cap.
Also on the panel were: Adrienne Esposito, executive director of the Citizens Campaign for the Environment; Kyle Strober, Long Island representative for U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer; New York State Assemb. Todd Kaminsky; Islip Town Councilman Steven Flotteron; Nassau County planning official Sean Sallie; Deputy Suffolk County Executive Peter Scully; and Denise Carter from the private firm Greenman Pedersen.
Vision Long Island created the LI Smart Growth Working Group in 2007 to plan and implement statewide policies that will affect smart growth on Long Island. The group meets several times a year to tackle issues related to transportation, sewers, economic development, demographics, land use regulations and downtown redevelopment projects. The meeting was held at the Sustainability Institute at Molloy College.
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