What’s Wrong With this Town Government Picture?

Over the past few weeks there have been a terrific series of articles, and great photographs, in The Observer, which is the weekly newspaper covering primarily Northport and East Northport.

The topic has been the demolishing, without proper consideration or citizen input, and with questionable Town Board governance, of the central archway of the buildings at Crab Meadow Beach.

While the regional press, Newsday, and the other local paper, The Long-Islander (covering primarily Cold Spring Harbor, Huntington village, Centerport, and Greenlawn) and its sister publication The Record (covering primarily Northport, and East Northport, and Elwood, and Commack), have had some relatively brief information about these stories, it has paled in comparison to the revelations in The Observer.

In fact, as a subscriber to both The Observer and The Long-Islander (since The Record is like a poor cousin in its Town coverage), I can confidently say that the Long-islander group of newspapers has become much less of a home for true journalists since its 2006 sale to (I believe) a group affiliated with Congressman Gary Ackerman, Democrat of Queens and Nassau.

In contrast, The Observer has been a consistent home for investigative journalism, with Rob Morrison having done a terrific job for the first few years after I was “freed from the bonds of 70 to 80 hour work weeks,” and Publisher David Ambro now doing double duty as a first class investigative reporter.

It is Ambro’s determination, as a resident of the Crab Meadow area who witnessed what was happening, and as a journalist who understood where the Town Government was cutting ethical corners (if not, in fact, violating the law), which embarrassed our monolithic, in-lockstep, no-open-discussion, no-significant-disagreement, Town Board.

There was a series of court battles, which you can read about if you go to the library to read back issues of The Observer, but this was one of those damage-already-done battles, where truth and justice play second fiddle to what cannot be physically reversed, namely, the Town’s destruction of that archway.

The only concession, as far as I can determine, is that the Town will now do some kind of rebuilding of the central archway area; but this was an unnecessary action, which demonstrated that the current Town Board, much as I like some of them as individuals, did not respect the residents of the Town of Huntington, and was arrogantly doing what they did, because they felt they could get away with such cavalier action.

This is a sad experience for the people of this Town, including all Elwood residents, many of whom have taken their own kids to Crab Meadow (as my wife and I did when they were young), and all of whom have a stake in returning true democracy, and respect of law, to Town government.