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Dave Calone discusses the issues facing Suffolk Countyuu. 

Long Island

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I'm meteorologist Rich Hoffman, hyperlocal weather forecast. We've had some chilly weather conditions. The last 24 hours we had some snow yesterday. So the cold weather still out there with a high of 39 degrees, kind of mostly sunny to a mixture of sun and clouds. And then tomorrow mostly sunny some afternoon clouds, a high of 48 degrees and we're looking at some fifties heading towards the weekend. So a little bit of that warmer weather coming our way after the deep chill the last 24 hours, you can see feels like temperatures have been in the twenties out there for this afternoon. So cold weather running errands leaving work bundle up. You have the cold numbers, the rest that say feels like temperatures in the twenties. The evening rush hour will be dry with a temperature around 34 degrees in corm 31 at 8 p.m. and down into the twenties when you wake up tomorrow morning. So we have one more morning of the cold weather, wind chills around 20 degrees and you can tomorrow afternoon in Riverhead at one o'clock, it's around 47 degrees sunshine, dry conditions, so some nice weather with that warm up coming away on Thursday before we start to see some wet weather for Friday, a few clouds around four this afternoon, that mixture of sun and clouds, it's breezy and it's cold and you can see now we're dry today. Tomorrow, we're looking at some nice weather. Thursday afternoon, temperatures will be in the mid forties. Some clouds come in Thursday night. And then by Friday morning, we're starting to see more clouds developing not as cold Friday morning. And then for your Friday afternoon, highs will be in the fifties tracking some wet weather. Now, Friday evening, some showers coming in and they're gone rather quickly. It's about a four hour window of some wet weather highs today are in the thirties. It's sun and clouds, it's cold twenties. Four tonight. Fifties. By the time we get towards Friday now, wet weather, more rain, Sunday into Monday.

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Weather

CALONE INTERVIEW THUMB

Extended interview: Suffolk County executive candidate Dave Calone

COLONINTERVIEW

I'd say start off. Why did you decide to get in the race in the first place? Yeah. So I decided to run for County executive because I felt like we have some really exciting opportunities here and stuff, real challenges also when it comes to safety, affordability opportunity. Um And my background is unique background for being in the county leadership. I, I have a law enforcement background. I be the first prosecutor to ever be county executive, but I also be the first person from the business community for the last 15 years. I've been helping to start and grow companies here on Long Island and around the country. And I felt like that background is a great one for looking at affordability, um and creating opportunity, good paying jobs here. But I've also been very involved in, in Suffolk County. I chaired the Planning Commission for Suffolk County, which is probably the highest non elected, you know, sort of position within the county. Uh that is non staff. And so, you know, I've been very involved in the issues affecting Suffolk County, whether it's housing, transportation, environmental protection, water quality, all those things. And so I felt like my background was a great background to uh tackle the challenges we have ahead of us in Suffolk County. Um When you look at Suffolk County right now, how would you describe it? I think it's a, it's a vibrant place, uh It's a changing place. Um And I think that is, you know, we have um new opportunities here in Suffolk County, there's gonna be uh new, new development. We have real challenges obviously with regard to making sure we have housing. And so how do we do that in a way that, that, that, that, that doesn't cause, you know, overburden our communities that meets in with our environmental challenges. Um but also provides for the next generation to be able to afford to live here. Um There's exciting opportunities coming with the um with the um development around the rock cock from a train station, for instance, how do you do that in a way that really uplifts the the community and provides what we need housing, transportation, access those kinds of things, huge investments coming in Brookhaven National Lab from the Federal government over the next decade. So I really look at Suffolk County. Um I look at it Suffolk County over the next decade and we have some real opportunities to, to tackle our challenges um with their economic growth and environmental challenges are really top of my list for me too. I've worked on these issues in Suffolk County government for the last bunch of years and we are at a tipping point here. We either decide we're gonna protect our water or we're gonna fail to do so and we need to do so if we're going for the health of our families and for this, for economic success. Yeah. Ok. Um So you mentioned the environment, you are looking at a situation where the legislature is also gonna be up for grabs. Let's say you become county executive, you have a Republican legislature. How do you work with them to accomplish some of these goals? You just laid out? Yeah, I, I think the, the nice thing about local government, I feel like is it's less about left or right. It's about how do you pro problem solve? And I've done that in the business community. I've done that when I chaired the Planning Commission for Suffolk County, we often would get unanimous votes on things by working across party lines to kind of find consensus. I did that. Actually, the County Planning Commission is responsible for putting together the comprehensive plan for the county. So it's kind of a vision statement of where we want to go for the county. We got that passed through the county legislature 18 to 0. Why? Because we brought everyone in, we made them part of the process and we worked together to figure out what our goals should be. And we found that kind of consensus. And I think that's what we need to do on the water quality issues. I'm not, you know, I think the proposal that was put together is a good proposal. If the kind of legislature feels like it should be tweaked in some way, I'm open to that. The most important thing is we give people the opportunity to a protect our water and, and then vote on that whatever package we put together. And so that's my goal is to make sure obviously I'm running with folks. I know who are pro water candidates and I hope they'll get elected and I hope we'll have a pro water legislature. Um, and if the legislature is, uh, you know, has different folks in, in charge of it, then, uh, then we'll work with them because the most important thing is that water should not be a partisan issue, protecting our environment should not be a partisan issue. And I think we got to work to make sure that's not the case. What about you mentioned, you're law enforcement. What about policing and public safety? I think, you know, by and large people seem to feel that Suffolk is a safe place, but when we talk to folks, they're very concerned about making sure they're able to keep it. Yeah. One of the great advantages of living here is that we do have a tremendous police force. They do a great job, all of our law enforcement to do a great job and they keep us safe now. That we got to be vigilant to keep it that way. And I would be the first prosecutor to be county executive. And I think that's bringing that background is really, you know, a real opportunity here in Suffolk County to focus on making sure that we have the, you know, having worked with law enforcement over the years in my, my previous positions as a federal prosecutor and state prosecutor, making sure they have the tools they need and the technology they need, we need to up the technology and our and our law enforcement agencies are are using. Uh and we need to make sure they're well funded to, to, to protect us. So, um we are blessed to live in a safe place. We need to make it to you to be safe. But there are some real challenges whether it's uh drugs, we know fentaNYL, opioids, et cetera have taken a real toll on our community. So there are definitely places where we need to make sure we're, we're putting emphasis on. And I would also mention schools, uh I think school safety is critically important. Every school district in Suffolk County needs to have a school safety plan from my perspective. So we gotta make sure our school safety officers are trained right now. There's uh no, no standard that they're held to in terms of making sure that the people who are kind of monitoring things in our schools are are well trained and prepared. Um, and so those are things I want to focus on, uh, coming from my law background. Um, how about you? Talk about homelessness and immigration and the migrant crisis and they all kind of seem to get wrapped up into one even though that's not necessarily the case. How do you look at it, I guess specifically with the migrant crisis, uh, some areas of New York consider themselves sanctuary places. Others do not. Suffolk County is not right now. Where do you stand on that? Yeah. Under County Executive Bone's leadership, Suffolk County has not been a sanctuary county and under my leadership, it won't be either. I strongly believe that Suffolk County should not be a sanctuary county. I've spoken to the governor about this directly and said that the problem with the, the, the migrant situation is a problem of the federal government of not being able to handle our borders and that's obviously on them and it needs to be fixed by the President and Congress. Uh, it's a problem with the border state governors bussing people up here. Um, and, um, you know, that and, and, and shame on them for doing that. And then New York City has this, you know, uh shelter law that they can't fulfill. Um, and I know they're trying to get out of that and, but that is right now, that's, that's the law. And so that's, uh, you know, that's on, on them, you know, this isn't Suffolk County and create these problems. It's those three groups, whether it's the federal government that the border states in New York City that are, you know, responsible for it. And we're not gonna be part of that solution. Honestly, we have, uh we're stretched quite thin here in terms of providing social services for our residents. And we do need to do a better job when it comes to our, you know, folks who are experiencing homelessness who live here as it is. And we don't have the resources to, to be part of that solution for the folks. Uh, you know, for the migrants, I feel badly that they're being treated, treated like political balls and passed around and obviously those who are here legally who are seeking asylum, whether they're from Ukraine or Central America or South America or wherever they've obviously been, been, been treated like political footballs and, and I certainly feel for them, but Suffolk County isn't where the solution lies. How do you stand out in an election cycle where you don't have congressional races or presidential race at the top? Um And it seems like more than ever people say D or R and whatever team they're on, they check the box. How do you cross get through that, I guess. Yeah, I, I think, I think the local elections are a little bit more about who the person is and you've seen this stuff. I can Suffolk County kind of goes back and forth between the parties. Right? I mean, Steve Malone has won re-election by double digits. Democratic county executive for 12 years. We have a Democratic sheriff in Suffolk County. We, uh, had a Democratic D A now we have a Republican D A. Uh, the congressional seats have gone back and forth. So Suffolk County is kind of this quintessential swing area in, within the United States. In fact, in the presidential election, we had 375,000 people vote for Joe Biden and 375,000 people vote for Donald Trump. I think we were the closest county in the entire country that of any significant size, you know, 200 votes between them. So Suffolk County is this is this place where I think there's a lot of independence and that means that people are looking for the right candidate. And I believe that that works well for me because I have a unique background from being county executive, whether it's my background in as a prosecutor, which we've never had before. My background from the business sector, which we've never had before. And I couple that with someone who's been involved in county government. In fact, I've won a national award for Suffolk County for cutting red tape in Suffolk county government. So I'm very involved in the county as well, but bring these other skill sets. And I think quite frankly, people are looking for new voices new vision, new ideas, new energy to lead our county and our region forward. Is that part of the process is to contrast that against Ed Romayne who's touting himself essentially as the candidate with the experience to lead the. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think that at the end of the day, people will decide. I mean, I, I believe that someone with a different background and a different vision who has been very involved in the county, but also brings each to their skill sets, uh private sector background, ability to look at budgets. And from a new perspective, contrast pretty well with someone who's been in politics for, you know, 40 years really is a career politician. And um I think people are looking for that and I think, you know, when you look at people like, like, like Ed's raised taxes in Brookhaven, eight years in a row, my perspective is that's the wrong approach, particularly in a high cost area like Suffolk County. Um I propose cutting taxes because we have surplus at the county level. We should return that some of that to the taxpayers through tax cuts. Um And I wanna look at the budget from a business person's perspective. How do we become more efficient? How do we work, run this county better? But it's also how do you take on our bigger regional challenges? My perspective on that is like, you know, look at hasn't done this in 40 years. He's not gonna do it in the next four. And that is how do we create a better environment for our small businesses? How do we provide them with the support they need because they are our job creators, right? How do we, you know, tackle the affordable housing issue, working with the towns and villages? We need a regional approach to do that um in conjunction with our locality, the local towns and villages. So this real need and an environmental issue, the water quality issue. It doesn't matter what town you're in or what village we all share the same water. All we all drink the same water, the water that's underneath our feet. So I feel like we need kind of a, someone who's got the kind of vision if you will for the future. Uh And that's really important as we look for where, where do we need to be in the next 10 years? And how do we get there as a region lastly for you? Um What are the States here? What does it mean for? You're raising a family here on Long Island? You grew up on Long Island and it's more than just politics. Right. Yeah, it's personal and look, I, I, I have three school age kids. I wanna make sure that the future of Suffolk County is, is bright for them and they can afford to live here that there's good paying jobs that we're protecting our environment and the water that we drink. And that also makes us a special place to live the water that surrounds us and drives our economy. Um So for me, it is personal, my wife, my wife and I, I chose, you know, to, to live here. I grew up here, of course. And, um, you know, after being away for a few years in different law enforcement positions and moved back here and, uh, you know, we're blessed to live in a wonderful place, but we need to keep it and we need to make sure that it, uh, we, we tackle the challenges that it's facing over the next decade and I look forward to doing that.

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