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News 12 Staff

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Our comprehensive plan was approved last year. We are now looking at a transit oriented development at our Glen Street Station. We're discussing the zoning change currently so we have so much going on. We just completed a 300 unit project right next to the train station. Of course in the village of Hempstead we have the Long Island Railroad, we have the Rosa Park bus station, uh, and Hempstead is the hub. Uh, I know Nassau County tried to steal that from us, but we are, we are the hub. Hempstead Village Mayor Waylon Hobbs and Glen Cove City Mayor Pamela Panzenback on the new development projects taking hold in their communities. Welcome back to this special edition of new shows Power and Politics from the Crest Hollow Country Club. Here in Woodbury at the 2025 Long Island Smart Growth Summit, as you can see, people are coming and going. There are over 1000 people at this event, more than 20 speakers in different breakaway workshops all trying to solve one problem affordability and specifically now let's take a look at the impact of New York state policy laws and regulations and how it's impacting your bottom line with us now. Is Oyster Bay town supervisor Joe Saladino. Joe, you spoke passionately about some of the challenges that local municipalities are dealing with when it comes to the state government. Is that what's driving what has been an affordability crisis here on the island, Rich? The reality is you can have everything that's called affordable, but the infrastructure costs as you add more and more people is wildly expensive to. Tools, sanitation, sewage, energy needs, and the state really has to step in and pay for those. They're paying less and less percentage of the cost, which means the property taxpayers have to pay a larger and larger portion. It's outrageous. It's not fair, and it's not being talked about enough because that's what's making it so expensive. Our healthcare costs in the town go up. 30% a year, the state should step in and level that off so those costs don't go up by subsidizing just that alone would make a big difference. You've spoken, you just spoke about the idea of Long Island becoming its own state. You'd love to see it happen. Are you serious about it? Do you think it could happen? Well, it would be a huge savings. The state legislature would never want to be embarrassed. They wouldn't pay for that. Besides, we're their ATM. We pay an enormous amount to the state. We get very little back. That means New York City gets the lion's share and other parts of the state, mostly New York City. It's not fair. It's wrong, and Long Islanders are being taken advantage of fiscally each and every day. Another issue that town leaders say is creating challenges for them now. Cannabis sales which were designed to bring in tax dollars, but now even officials who opted into the state program say it's creating headaches. It was a view of the board to put adult use cannabis into the same zoning category as other adult uses in the town, which is the L1 light industrial zone, and it's working fine. There are places all around the town until. All of a sudden, the cannabis control board, 5 people, I think there's 1 vacancy, 4 of them. Are now starting to override the town of Brookhaven's zoning, so any town, if you haven't opted in, don't opt in because it is an absolute quagmire that we have because they allowed in quorum in a J6 zone they issued a license overriding the town zoning. In Lake Ronkonkoma backing up to two residential homes in a residential community on the border of Islip, which is opted out, another license issued over the objections of the town. We've heard a little bit about how state policy is affecting affordability here on Long Island a man knows about that state senator Jack Martins, appreciate your time Senator. We're talking affordability today uh what about those challenges that local. Governments are facing as a result of unfunded mandates and the like from the state government. Well, it's it's been a problem for years, frankly, the idea that state government should get out of the way, help where it can, but certainly not impose more mandates you know one of the issues we have in Albany is everyone's got a great idea and then that idea comes at the expense of someone else. And so if we took the opportunity to cut back on those mandates, worked with our local governments, provided them with support. At the end of the day we have a $250 billion budget. We have the resources to help, but we shouldn't be imposing additional obligations on local government that they just pass on to taxpayers, and those taxpayers are struggling. You certainly know all about it. You're hearing from constituents, but here on Long Island it's getting tougher and tougher to survive, especially when you see some of the real estate values too. You have a lot of people are saying, why wouldn't I sell my house and move to a more affordable place? I'm gonna make a pretty penny on that sale as well. They will. and certainly we see our property values increasing and that's a good sign, but certainly you're not going to have the same quality of life anywhere else in the country or anywhere else in the world that you have right here. What we have to do is stick together and work through these issues. Let's take energy for example. There is a huge push among certain people to transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy. OK, a great goal. I think most people would agree that over time that that would make a lot of sense. But not all at once, and that's so we're forced to absorb those costs all at once as well and we're seeing energy prices skyrocketing. They're spiking right now because of the policy shift rushing to transition to renewable energy or to electricity, you know, people push back on. Things like transitioning from gas stoves to electric stoves. Well, let's take that to a larger degree. We don't have a grid that has the capacity to heat all our homes during the winter. We need natural gas. We need to have access to natural gas. So as long as policymakers. Show a little bit of restraint and understand that we're not here to save the world in one day. We're here to work with our local constituents and make sure that affordability remains key to everything we do in Albany. OK, so we've heard a lot of different opinions and thoughts and ideas. How to make Long Island more affordable now how do you take all of that talk and turn it into action? Coming up we're gonna talk about next steps in dealing with the affordability issue here on Long Island. You're watching a special edition of New Souls Power and Politics from the Crest Hollow Country Club. We'll be right back.

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The special edition of Power and Politics. We have seen this room change over the course of the half hour and for good reason. Joining us right now, Eric Alexander from Vision Long Island. They put on this event. Eric, we've heard so many different opinions, so many different ideas. What happens now moving forward? Sure, so what we do is we're collecting all the ideas from all the different sessions. We're videotaping everything, so we get ideas, we're getting ideas online, we're getting ideas by text, and we're gonna put them together. And it's just a rough set of recommendations broken out by issue areas on housing, energy, uh, helping small businesses. Uh, we heard today about solid waste, the real concerns about cost drivers tied to solid waste, not my expertise, but again, a lot of these issues aren't, but what we're gonna try to do is put, put them all together and then we're gonna take them. We have a multi-level group of, uh, you know, civics and chambers and environmentalists and labor that go to Albany each year and we're gonna take some of these ideas to Albany with us, but at the very least we're gonna get some, you know, letters out and get. Of our federal officials, but also some of these recommendations might tie themselves to talking to corporations or talking to just particular villages or particular towns and following up so and and and it's not really about us in the sense that we're we're just a vessel to some degree we need key constituencies to be on board with making changes, you don't just say change this and it's changed, you know, so none of this stuff is easy, uh, but the key is to try to put a compendium together with some of these things that can. Life easier for folks. Uh, lastly, what's your message to Long Islanders who just want that problem solved, the affordability issue, getting it solved for them one way or the other? Decisions are made by those who show up, I think you and you have to be persistent and, and you, you know, you have to be positive too, uh, you know, give people time and space to get something done and work collaboratively with others. Sometimes it's not we we wanna go online and yell and scream and get mad and be frustrated, but organize with others, you know, in your neighborhood and. Sometimes I found in the local communities, um, if you get your civic, your chamber, your fire department, your school district and all the key local leaders together on something they can't say no to everybody so the key is to, to kind of get a unified front and that's when you get attention and that's when you see changes happen. Well, Eric, we appreciate you having us here appreciate uh the access to the people in the room who were, uh, gonna make this happen and hopefully help solve the problem. Thank you. You're a big part of it today. Thank you. That's all for this special edition of New South Power and Politics. We want to thank all of our guests as well as Vision Long Island and the Crest Hollow Country Club for having us. I'm Rich Brabi. Thank you for watching and we'll see you again right here next week.

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Rich Barrabi was joined by leaders across Long Island who discussed the issue of affordability. 

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