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News 12 Staff

LIPP29B_2025-02-09-11-57-36

Welcome back to Power and Politics. Suffolk County Executive Ed Romain is back with us now answering your questions. OK, Ed, this next question comes to us from Lorraine, who's asking about MacArthur Airport, the area around it. She says the further development of the area around Islip Mac. Arthur Airport will overcrowd our area and even worse than it is now. This was forced on us by Albany. Please fight to stop it. That's Lorraine's take on the issue. What do you see as the reality on the ground? Well, I'm a partner with the town of Islip. The county is a partner with the town of Islip. Uh, there was a proposal to make Midway Crossing kind of a transportation hub for Suffolk County and to develop that area south of the tracks. I'm familiar with that area because north of the tracks is Brookhaven town and I spent many years working with Tritech to develop station yards. They're building 1450 units. The key to any development to make it work is infrastructure. Roads, parking, sewer lights. All of that you have to have a plan for that so I know 7 years ago my predecessor Mr. Balone announced. Midway crossing and um he partnered with the town of Isler in 7 years that hasn't moved forward. So after a year in office, I said to the proposed developer for which by the way, there was no formal agreement with Jones Lang La Salle, goodbye. We're gonna, we're gonna go out again and start this over. What would you like to see there? Well, it's not what I want to say. Because although the public is going to invest money in improving the roads and all the area around there so you don't have the congestion that you have right now so you make improvements so you deal with this but it's not what I want to see. And that's why we're going out we're going to look to see what the private sector work because most of this money is going to be private sector money. The public sector money is only for the infrastructure to improve the roads, to improve grade crossings so you don't have great crossings at the railroad to improve parking so you have parking garages so that you don't impact the local community and you make things flow smoothly which. Right now they're not because it's a congested area so we're working on infrastructure. What I'd like to see I'd like to see a life science building something that would do research and employ a lot of people I'd like to see. Possibly a convention center or arena or hotel, those are things that we're looking at, but you know what, it's not what I want to see. It's what is the private sector prepared to invest in because without private sector dollars this is not moving forward. OK, let's get to our next topic. It's a question that comes to us from Art who says when can county roads get cleaned up? He says he sees trash everywhere. He also wants you to reach out to the state for cleaning Sunrise Highway. He says it looks like a war zone out there, uh, county executive, what about keeping roads clean the areas around them? It's always a complaint. It's always a complaint and what we should do is what's been done in the past and we somewhat forgot it. But we had a number of people who had to do community service for whatever violations they had to do, put them out cleaning up trash on the roads, put them out, put prisoners in our jail who are getting ready to be released so that's not an incentive to escape. Put them out cleaning our county roads, put them out and same thing with social services, put them out. Cleaning the roadways that can be done. What I would want to do is do that from April through October you don't put people out in cold weather, so that's we're looking to do that and enhance the roads because too many people are trashing it and the state should be doing the same thing with the state roads. OK, we've got another question here that comes to us from John who asks, Is anything being done to make South Shore Inlets safer and more navigable, more most notable Moriches Inlet. So this is an issue that hits close to home for you. Well, I, I live not too far away from there. I can listen to the waves hit, uh, from my house. Uh, Mauritius Inlet has always been considered unnavigable. Mauritius Inlet was created in 1938 with the hurricane. Before that there was no Mauritius Inlet, so time. Every so often the Army Corps of Engineers gets up and figures out that they really should do a little bit more dredging. There's a sandbar, particularly on the ocean side. The, the Army Corps has to be more deeply involved in making our inlets navigable. A perfect example of that is the Montauk Inlet. We have the largest fishing fleet in the state of New York and now many of those are going to Rhode Island because they can't navigate the inlet at Montauk and they're talking about doing emergency dredging. A lot of our inlets. Depend on the Army Corps of engineers doing the dredging and maintaining these inlets. So yes, I am in constant contact from Montauk to Mauritius to Fire Island Inlet with the Army Corps about this. OK, we've got one more question for you in this section, and it comes to us from X. The question is what is the executive office doing to combat ticks and life altering Lyme disease? This has been an issue particularly on our east end. It is a terrible issue and we should be working to eliminate. Those that carry Lyme's disease and usually it's a tick and there's all different types of deer tick, lone star tick, etc. I've had Lyme's disease twice, so I know how serious. Second time I was in the hospital. I know how serious this can be, um, and we need, we do have an ophthalmologist in the county of Suffolk. um, we need to spend more time on eradication. One way to do that is the four poster system. Which is a system with what looks like paint rollers because the people that carry them usually mouse, uh, mice and deer, but the four poster system is they have rollers with pyritheon, which is a tick aside that deer have to put their head through to get the corn. And it, it kills the texts. We need to have more innovative solutions like this. We are working on this. It is a serious problem. Lyme's disease is something that is of grave concern. OK. Our conversation continues with Suffolk County Executive Ed Romain here on Power and Politics right after this.

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LIPP29C_2025-02-09-11-58-55

Welcome back to Power and Politics. We're with Suffolk County Executive Ed Romain taking your questions, we have another question now, and it comes to us from John, who says, can he please run for governor? I'm a Democrat that can definitely get behind this guy, a respectable Republican that actually works for the taxpayers and not a mega moron like that fool in NASA again this is from John says you don't see this guy in the press every week with nonsense because he's actually working. Would you run for governor Ed? I have no interest in running for governor. My advice to any elected official concentrate on the job that you're in. Don't look at the next job that you'd like to be in. Do the job that you're in and let everything else fall in place. I am 100% focused on being the Suffolk County executive and trying to do the right things for everyone in Suffolk County. My ears kind of perked up when I saw this. It comes to us from Tony who writes, I think he was my seventh grade elementary school teacher. Did Mr. Romaine ever teach at Saint Joaquin Catholic School in Cedar Hurst, Long Island back in the late 19. 1960s. Ed, was that you? Yes, I did. I taught in in in in the Catholic school for 2 years and then I wound up teaching in Hot Park for I think 10 years. I was a teacher for 12 years. Uh, it's a great school, uh, and, uh, very dedicated religious professionals that I taught with, so it was a pleasure to teach there and Tony, good to hear from you again. That's right. Hey, we have about a minute left here. Um, just your, your final message, I guess, to the constituents about what they can expect here in the year to come. Um, we've got to be focused on the future. We've always got to be focused on the future and what we can do to make life better for people in Suffolk County and there's no one. Magic silver bullet. It is a few little steps each and every day. Each and every day that I go to work, I try to move the needle forward for Suffolk County, try to pro provide a better climate. I know New York State has lost more people than any other state in the nation. Our goal is to create jobs, create economic opportunity, try to keep the taxes as low as possible, try to improve infrastructure and try to make people's life better and safer, safer and more affordable. If I had two words that I concentrate on every day, those are the days. So that's why we've added more police, more detectives, that's why we're focused on economic. Stimulus that will create jobs and give us a county that we can be proud of. Ed Romaine, appreciate it as always. Thanks so much, Rich. I don't know if I can reach you. I'm sure you can. Thanks for joining us. You can always reach me. That's right. And thanks for watching Power and Politics for this week. I'm Rich Perrabi. Have a great rest of your weekend.

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Suffolk County Executive Ed Romaine answers viewer questions on this edition of Power & Politics.

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Power & Politics: 1:1 with Suffolk County Executive Ed Romaine – answering YOUR questions

Suffolk County Executive Ed Romaine answers viewer questions on this edition of Power & Politics.

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