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Health & Fitness

No Public Grants for Private Developers -Woodhaven et al

Woodhaven Nursing Home should certainly update their own water treatment operations, on their own grounds, with their own funds.  There is no need to build a plant down the road from our high school and our bedroom communities, to benefit future development.  Certainly the funds they seek through Suffolk County grants- is an incendiary idea.  These and other public grants, if approved, are funded from hardworking, homeowner-taxpayer vehemently opposed to the Jefferson Meadows workforce housing.  They have had to hire legal representation to oppose the Jefferson Meadows workforce housing proposal. Using tax funds to help support it through a grant for water treatment, would be tantamount to criminal.

 

The area near Woodhaven is thriving, certainly, and the workforce housing that was proposed, was done so on the premise that the area is blighted, which it is not.  There is a shiny Hess gas station, stunning office complex in the former Thomas Subaru dealership, a buyer for the former 84 Lumber, and our LA Fitness is being built as we speak.  These are clean, quiet businesses that are heavily monitored, provide the much needed jobs to the existing working population who currently reside here and who wish to stay in their homes.  These homeowners pay the taxes that beef up the town coffers.  These businesses; this particular area, does not require a water treatment facility.   The ‘evidence’ that filled out the ‘blight to light’ scorecard was found to be highly suspect. The area could have ever qualified as blighted, if truth be known as the immediate residents do.

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There is relatively no bus service in the area to support a potential workforce, and the neighbors are fine with that.  This area, while open for business, has no need for a larger work force.  Workforce housing brings down property values. The community feel as strongly about their homes and neighborhood as those in Belle Terre and Old Field, Mt Sinai, etc.  In most cases here, our homes are our sole investment, and we care a whole lot more than some, as to our home value. The support of a housing project with tax funds through a Suffolk Grant would be wrong.

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The members of the community, who were aware of the phrase, Blight to Light, over two and a half years ago when the work force housing project was presented, is zero.  There was no framework, upon which to even entertain the plan.  The implications of the presentation were unknown; we thought the presentation was made with impunity, from former Brookhaven Supe, Mark Lesko.  We thank Supervisor Romaine and Councilman Fiore-Rosenfeld, who have spoken to their constituents on this matter and have applied the brakes.

 

Joan Nickeson

Tim Granito

Sheila Granito

Terryville

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