The Village Times Herald - March 9, 2023

Clockwise from upper left, Steve Englebright, Anthony Figliola, Jonathan Kornreich and Gary Bodenburg

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Part II: Legislative races ramp up across levels of government

BY RAYMOND JANIS EDITOR1@TBRNEWSMEDIA.COM

Local legislative elections are shaping up, with candidates across levels of government gearing up for county, town and village races. Suffolk’s 5th District

Suffolk County Legislator Kara Hahn (D-Setauket), whose 5th District encompasses Port Jefferson, Port Jefferson Station/ Terryville and Three Village, is termed out due to 12-year term limits for county legislators. To fill the open seat, former New York State Assemblyman Steve Englebright (D-Setauket) and former congressional candidate Anthony Figliola have stepped up.

Before receiving his party’s nomination, Englebright had previously occupied the seat from 1984 to 1992, after which he entered the state Assembly. He described this year’s bid as “coming home.”

“It’s been some 30 years in Albany, but my heart is always here in the community,” he said. “There’s a lot of work to be done.”

The core issues facing the 5th District, Englebright contended, are those related to the environment and public health. He stated his core priorities are protecting Long Island’s

sole-source aquifer and its coastal waters.

“Science has advanced, and the connection between our drinking water and our tidal waters is more explicitly understood now,” the former assemblyman said. “The challenges are awaiting a legislative response to the science, so I’d like to be a part of that. I think I can make a meaningful contribution.”

He said he hoped to continue working toward preserving open space if elected and also emphasized protecting the Setauket and Port Jefferson harbors from contamination. He viewed restoring the county’s information technology systems, promoting affordable housing and limiting sprawl as central.

Figliola was the third-place finisher in 2022 during the GOP primary for New York’s 1st Congressional District. Among his professional credentials, he has served as deputy supervisor of the Town of Brookhaven and is currently executive vice president of a government relations and economic development business. A resident of East Setauket, he will represent the Republican Party in this year’s 5th District contest.

“With Kara leaving, we need someone who has a plan for the future of our district to make sure that we represent everybody,” he told TBR News Media. “I’ve done a tremendous amount of work with small business, with the environment and volunteerism in this community.”

He added, “I just jumped at the opportunity to be able to represent the people that I live and work with.”

Like Englebright, Figliola stressed the importance of water quality in the Setauket and Port Jeff harbors. He said he would also explore opportunities for more sewers, addressing electrification of the Port Jefferson Branch line of the Long Island Rail Road as an area of concern.

“I want to continue the work that I’ve been doing on a volunteer basis for almost seven years, which is to help bring the electrification of the Port Jefferson rail line here,” he said.

He added that supporting small business districts, preserving and developing parks, and encouraging community-based planning will be in focus.

Brookhaven’s 1st Council District

Incumbent Town of Brookhaven Councilmember Jonathan Kornreich (D-Stony Brook), the sole elected Democrat in the town, is up for reelection this year. He entered the Town Board after a special election in March 2021 to replace former Councilwoman Valerie Cartright (D-Port Jefferson Station), who had won a seat on the state Supreme Court.

“Serving this community is something I’ve been doing for almost two decades through service on the [Three Village] school board,

the [Three Village] Civic Association and other nonprofits like the Boys and Girls Club,” he said. “Community service is really my life’s passion.”

Kornreich stated that land use would remain a top-level interest if reelected, expressing concerns with Gov. Kathy Hochul’s (D) housing proposal for Long Island.

“One of the big looming policy issues that we’re facing is this potential threat from the governor’s office about seizing zoning control and handing it over to bureaucrats in Albany who don’t understand our communities,” he said.

The incumbent added, “We do have an affordable housing crisis — it’s just very difficult for people to find affordable places to live, and we have to address that. But we have to address it in a thoughtful way that’s sensitive to the makeup of these communities and the built environment where they currently exist.”

He also touched upon the quality of life issues that affect his constituents, such as overdevelopment and sprawl. He pledged to focus on building viable downtowns and parks while protecting the environment.

Carrying the Republican Party’s nomination in the race for CD1 is Gary Bodenburg, a special education teacher who ran for the Comsewogue Board of Education last year.

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A Suffolk-forward vision to increase housing options

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Perspective

The cost of housing is among the most crucial issues facing Long Island’s future, and it is an issue I have personally worked to address. As chair of the Suffolk County Planning Commission, I eliminated red tape and helped to get shovels in the ground for housing developments. Now, I have serious concerns about an Albany-centric, one-size-fits-all plan to increase housing options, but I am confident that we can address our housing needs if we employ a Suffolk-centric approach. We need more housing options to allow working families to thrive, young people to stay and seniors to comfortably retire in Suffolk County. However, the existing piecemeal approval processes have left us with too little housing which, due to simple supply and demand, costs too much. With a median home price of $545,000 and few rental units available in Suffolk County, our young people are compelled to move away. This exodus imperils our future and places Long Island businesses at a competitive disadvantage when needed workers cannot afford to live here.

By Dave Calone

Commission — a representative body made up of members from each of Suffolk’s 10 towns and two from its villages — we should create a regional housing plan designed to maximize the needs, capacity and desires of each part of the county. In such a plan, we will identify areas for future housing development and encourage the redevelopment of underutilized properties. To execute such a plan, we need New York State to partner and deliver the incentives needed to facilitate development. For instance, the state can offer funds to municipalities that contribute most toward the countywide goal, that most quickly approve housing and that create housing for a variety of income levels. Moreover, it can provide necessary infrastructure investments that will allow future growth in municipalities that want to develop.

The housing crisis has grown over decades and needs to be addressed with urgency. However, the proposed solutions from Albany don’t make sense for Long Island, and Suffolk County in particular.

One-size-fits-all mandates that ignore local realities and discretion would be both ineffective and counterproductive on Long Island. Suffolk County is home to 1.5 million people spread across more than 40 municipalities. Requiring each municipality to increase housing by 3% over a three-year period cannot be done without seriously undermining other regional goals like waterquality protection and traffic mitigation. A state commission overriding home rule — Albany usurping zoning power from localities — due to a failure to satisfy this often unreachable mandate is a nonstarter.

Instead, we can set and achieve regional goals that meet the moment and maintain local governance, with the state serving as a crucial partner providing incentives and resources to help us reach those goals. Here’s how.

First, we organize and plan locally. Through the Suffolk County Planning

In addition to organizing a regional effort, the county must play its part by seeking innovative solutions to address our housing needs. For example, Suffolk County, our largest landowner, should audit all of its properties and determine which could be repurposed to develop housing at a reduced rate for our taxpayers. Moreover we must seek avenues to eliminate red tape, and specifically for homes that are consistent with the regional housing plan, the county Department of Health Services must streamline and prioritize the review and approval process. The county should also increase regional capacity for housing creation by helping to form other development tools, like land trusts, as well as providing planning resources and guidance to municipalities.

With major investments and opportunities coming to Long Island, this is an exciting time for our region, but we must act to capitalize on our opportunity. To support working families, provide local businesses with employees, and secure countywide safety and prosperity, it’s imperative that we address the housing needs across our region — and the best solutions will start here in Suffolk.

Dave Calone, a former prosecutor, business leader and previous chair of the Suffolk County Planning Commission, is a candidate for Suffolk county executive.

New York Press Association

SBU’s Pikitch, others ‘optimistic’ about the U.N.’s High Seas Treaty

BY DANIEL DUNAIEF DESK@TBRNEWSMEDIA.COM

Determined, passionate and committed representatives to the United Nations, including the United States, spent over 20 years trying to hammer out an agreement to protect 30% of the world’s oceans by 2030.

This past Saturday, after extending a deadline, representatives of 193 countries in New York verbally agreed to terms of a High Seas Treaty designed to reduce pollution, protect biodiversity and share ocean resources.

While individual countries still have to ratify the treaty, scientists like Ellen Pikitch, endowed professor of Ocean Conservation Science and executive director of the Institute for Ocean Conservation Science at the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences at Stony Brook University, praised the agreement.

“It’s fantastic,” Pikitch said. “It’s been needed for so long.”

Lisa Speer, a marine scientist and the director of the International Oceans Program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, has been working to educate and encourage government leaders to understand what’s at stake and how to protect the oceans.

“This is a big step forward for biodiversity conservation on a global level,” said Speer.

“This provides me with a lot of encouragement.”

In addition to the educational and advocacy work she did over the years, Speer spent much of the last 36 hours at the U.N. surrounded by others who had slept on the floor or in various rooms and hallways amid the effort to get this treaty across the finish line.

“Everybody was really emotional,” she said, with spontaneous applause and cheers continuing for a long period of time. “A lot of us have been here since the beginning. There were celebratory hugs and thanks and tears of joy for the efforts of so many people” including some who were not in the room but had worked for decades on this treaty.

The view of the importance of biodiversity in the oceans has changed considerably over the last few decades.

“For most of human history, the high seas have been viewed as an empty wasteland,” Speer said. Now, however, people recognize that it’s “probably the largest reserve of biodiversity left on the planet.”

This treaty, Pikitch and Speer added, can and should help ensure that humans can explore and discover some of that biodiversity before it might otherwise disappear.

Speer is hopeful that United States senators, who will have a chance to vote on the treaty, recognize that the country has “a very strong interest in making sure it has a voice in

decisions affecting half the planet. It’s in our interest to be full participants in that process.”

Pikitch, who is an expert in the field of Marine Protected Areas, suggested that the process of coming up with a framework to protect 30% of the world’s oceans by the end of the decade involved considerable back and forth with various interest groups within each country.

“It’s not that easy to determine how this area would be managed,” Pikitch said. Various groups have “concerns that differ among different parts of the global community.”

Pikitch pointed out that a Convention on Biological Diversity late last year agreed that the world would protect 30% of the lands and waters by 2030.

Kindergarten Registration for the 2023-2024

School Year

Pikitch said such a goal was unattainable without this High Seas Treaty, which addressed the parts of the ocean that had previously been off limits to such protections. The treaty and the establishment of marine protected areas will be “huge for biodiversity,” Pikitch said.

Piktich suggested that the commitment over two decades and the increasing public awareness of the importance of ocean resources offers her hope that this treaty, for which numerous details are still in the works, will offer effective protection.

“There’s a huge amount of passion and commitment by countries of the world to work this out,” she said. “They did not give up.”

e ree Village Central School District o ers a full-day Kindergarten program for district residents. In order to be admitted to Kindergarten in September, a child must be ve years of age, on or before December 1st, during the school year in which they enter Kindergarten. A proof of residency (a lease, deed, tax bill or signed contract) must be provided, along with the child’s original birth certi cate, and a copy of their immunization records at the time of registration.

Children must be registered with the Registrar’s O ce at the North Country Administration Center prior to Kindergarten screening. e registration process has been moved online and can be started at the Student Registration page of the ree Village website (threevillagecsd.org). Choose Student Registration under the “District” drop down menu, or type the following address into a browser: https://tinyurl.com/3VStudentRegistration

Additional information can be obtained by calling the Registrar’s o ce at 631–730–4555.

is year’s Kindergarten Screening dates are:

ARROWHEAD: 5/11 - 5/12

MINNESAUKE: 5/15, 5/16, 5/18

MOUNT: 5/24 - 5/25

NASSAKEAG: 5/17 - 5/18

SETAUKET: 5/15 - 5/16

Kindergarten Screening information is located on the ree Village CSD website under Parents & Community menu.

The U.N.’s High Seas Treaty aims to reduce pollution, protect biodiversity and share ocean resources. Stock photo

Local officials call for MTA to replace Sheep Pasture Road Bridge in Port Jeff

spending money on.”

The following incidents have been reported by Suffolk County Police:

CAUGHT ON CAMERA

TOWN

Local officials gathered for a press conference on Friday, March 3, at Brookhaven Town Hall to call for the Metropolitan Transit Authority to replace the Sheep Pasture Road Bridge in Port Jefferson with a span that can adequately handle increased motor vehicle traffic on the top roadway.

The new bridge construction would also allow for future third rail electrification expansion below on the LIRR right-of-way and reconfiguring the roadway above to reduce the severe traffic angle.

Brookhaven Town Supervisor Ed Romaine (R), Highway Superintendent Dan Losquadro (R), Councilmember Jonathan Kornreich (D-Stony Brook) and New York State Assemblyman Ed Flood (R-Port Jefferson) attended the press event.

The railroad bridge, constructed in 1906, is the responsibility of the MTA, while the town is tasked with maintaining the vehicle roadbed.

The town has applied for a $15.8 million grant to repair the roadway structure through the BridgeNY Program. The LIRR is also interested in developing a second track along the existing railroad, according to town officials.

“At 117 years old, the Sheep Pasture Road Bridge needs to be replaced with a new one that can handle the vehicle traffic load of today, not 1906 when it was built,” Romaine said. “This is the type of project that the MTA should be

Elections

Continued from A3

at all levels, so I plan on continuing the mission and vision of [Brookhaven Town Supervisor] Ed Romaine [R] in maintaining fiscal responsibility by controlling taxes and spending, addressing environmental concerns and also keeping a close eye over the overdevelopment of our suburbs,” Bodenburg said.

The Republican candidate addressed other policy concerns, such as streamlining services within the town government to “provide better value for our tax dollars.”

Losquadro decried the lack of public investment from the MTA in the local area.

“Long Island, specifically Brookhaven Town, has been repeatedly shortchanged by the MTA when it comes to capital infrastructure investment,” he said. “It is imperative that the MTA expend the necessary funds required to replace the Sheep Pasture Road Bridge.”

Kornreich expressed similar sentiments. He stated that MTA should go further than maintaining existing infrastructure, advising the agency to explore electrification of the Port Jefferson Branch line.

“Unfortunately, for many people in my community, it feels like the MTA is taking us for a ride,” he said. “We pay an increasing share of the burden and don’t see it coming back in terms of improvements in service and infrastructure.”

The councilmember added, “Public transportation is incredibly important, and although we are hopeful we’ll receive this major grant from New York state, my constituents are calling for a more consistent and substantial commitment to local rail service. We want the MTA not just to repair and maintain structures like the Sheep Pasture Road Bridge but to move forward on electrification and improve schedules on the Port Jefferson line.”

“Specifically, I think it’s important that we address a 25A corridor study,” he said, adding, “I also look to finalize plans with Lawrence Aviation, as well as better enforcement of housing codes for problems with off-campus student housing.”

Bodenburg said that reducing the impact of traffic and improving town parks and marinas would also be on his agenda.

This is the second of a two-part story. To read about the races for Suffolk County executive, Brookhaven town supervisor and Port Jeff Village mayor, see story, “Suffolk County exec race prompts turnover across local government,” at tbrnewsmedia.com.

Lake Ronkonkoma chiropractor arrested Suffolk County Police arrested a chiropractor on March 3 for allegedly forcibly touching three female patients at his Lake Ronkonkoma business in 2021 and 2022. Three women contacted detectives to report Ronald Bernardini, a chiropractor at Lake Chiropractic, located at 201 Portion Road, allegedly forcibly touched them during their appointments between February 2021 and October 2022. The victims came forward after Bernardini was arrested in October 2022 for sexually abusing a teen at his practice.

Fourth Squad detectives charged Bernardini, 65, of Smithtown, with four counts of Forcible Touching. Detectives are asking anyone who believes they could be a victim of Bernardini to contact the Fourth Squad at 631-854-8452.

Setauket teen bicyclist killed on Route 347

Suffolk County Police Sixth Squad detectives are investigating a motor vehicle crash that killed a bicyclist in Setauket on March 2. David Zerella was driving a 2015 Dodge Charger westbound on Route 347 at Wireless Road when his vehicle struck a bicyclist who was crossing Route 347 at approximately 6:30 p.m.

The bicyclist, Qamat Shah, 14, of Setauket, was transported to Stony Brook University Hospital where he was pronounced dead. Zerella, 36, of Port Jefferson, and his female passenger were not injured. The Dodge was impounded for a safety check. Detectives are asking anyone with information to call the Sixth Squad at 631-854-8652.

Merchandise stolen from Target in Selden

Wanted for Port Jeff Station burglary

Suffolk County Crime Stoppers and Suffolk County Police Sixth Squad detectives are seeking the public’s help to identify the man who allegedly burglarized a Port Jefferson Station restaurant in January. A man broke a glass door to enter Chick-fil-A, located at 5184 Nesconset Highway, on Jan. 20, at approximately 12:05 a.m. He allegedly took several iPads from an office, and then fled in a sedan.

Arrests made on murder of PJS man on Greenway Trail in June of 2021

Following an investigation by Homicide Squad detectives, Jose Martinez-Vazquez and Tiffany Diaz-Cabrera were arrested on March 5 for the alleged murder of Benjamin FloresMendez, who was found stabbed to death on the Greenway Trail, near Clifton Place, in Port Jefferson Station on June 17, 2021. MartinezVazquez, 24, and Diaz-Cabrera, 20, both of Port Jefferson Station, have each been charged with Murder 2nd Degree.

Human remains found on Shirley beach

Do you recognize this man? Photo from SCPD

Suffolk County Crime Stoppers and Suffolk County Police Sixth Precinct Crime Section officers are seeking the public’s help to identify and locate the man who allegedly stole assorted merchandise, including a Dyson vacuum, from Target, located at 307 Independence Plaza, on Feb. 25 at approximately 10:10 a.m. The stolen merchandise has a value of approximately $575.

Suffolk County Police Homicide Squad detectives are conducting an investigation after human remains were found on the beach at Smith Point County Park in Shirley on March 6. Smith Point County Park employees called 911 at 1:35 p.m. after a woman reported to them she had located what appeared to be a human bone. Police responded and located the bone in the sand. The remains were taken to the Office of the Suffolk County Medical Examiner for autopsy to determine the cause of death and to make an identification.

— COMPILED BY HEIDI

SUTTON

Suffolk County Crime Stoppers offers a cash reward for information that leads to an arrest. Anyone with information about these incidents can contact Suffolk County Crime Stoppers to submit an anonymous tip by calling 1-800-220-TIPS.

Ronald Bernardini

Do you recognize this man? Photo from SCPD

The Sheep Pasture Road Bridge in Port Jefferson. Photo courtesy the Brookhaven public information office

Chicken fishing, baseball, Jake the Crow and ‘Rubber on the Brain’

BY BEVERLY C. TYLER DESK@TBRNEWSMEDIA.COM

“Chicken Hill!” Where is it, or if it no longer exists, where was it? Why did it happen? Why was it called Chicken Hill? Did chickens live there? Did people live there? How many people? Who were they? Where did they come from? Did they all get along?

HISTORY CLOSE AT HAND

Let’s begin our story with just the first stanza or verse of: “Rubber on the Brain - A Parody by J.B. Mount - Air - “Oil on the Brain”

Men talk of undiscovered wealth, Of regions filled with gold; Or railroad princes made from naught And buccaneers of old.

To profit in some sudden way, Setauket folks have aimed; And now the heads of all display Rubber on the brain.

CHORUS - Stocks par, stocks up Stocks on the gain; Everybody’s troubled with Rubber on the brain

In 1876, a group of men, investors hoping to make money, were presented with the idea that the abandoned, four-story, steampowered, piano factory on the hill just west of the Setauket Methodist Church might be converted into a factory producing rubber boots, shoes and winter clothing as well as rubber belts, car springs and other rubber products needed by a growing numbers of businesses and industries.

With the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia showcasing the gigantic Corliss steam engine and the display of other American inventions over the past decades, American were awestruck with the progress made in the United States and the potential for unlimited growth. Almost 10 million people visited the exposition that included more than 30 other countries and featured recent inventions, including the telephone, typewriter, mimeograph and telegraph, the sewing machine, dishwasher and other home labor-saving devices, Heinz Ketchup and Hires Root Beer, the bicycle, a steampowered locomotive and car on a monorail and the right arm and torch of the Statue of Liberty, the latter on display to raise funds for construction of the statue’s base.

At various times over the next 25 years, the Setauket rubber factory was a success. At one point there were 500 men, women and children working in the rubber factory. A few local Americans, people from all walks of life: from England, from Ireland, from Africa and Indigenous Native Americans went to work in the factory. However, more workers were needed and New York had thousands of immigrants who came to America, the land of promise in the 19th century, to escape war and hunger in both Western and Eastern Europe. Those who came to Setauket to work included Russians, Ukranians, Poles, Lithuanians, Rumanians, Irish and Italians. The religions of many of these immigrants resulted in the building of a Jewish synagogue and a Roman Catholic church which added religious diversity to the Presbyterian, Episcopal, African Methodist Episcopal and Methodist churches already in Setauket.

Did all these people from different countries, speaking different languages, having different religious practices and with different socioeconomic backgrounds get along?

There were conflicts. “According to one Long Island newspaper violence flared in 1882 when long-time African American residents defended themselves and their homes with shotguns against the attacks of Irish workers.” (Marc J. Stern “Long Island’s Rubber Industry,” Long Island Historical Journal, Fall 1991, p32.)

The approximate one-mile area around the Setauket Methodist Church included at least 50 houses built by the rubber factory organization and rented to workers. To help them exist on low pay and high rent, many family members worked in the factory. They also planted gardens, raised chickens that wandered all over the area, helped each other with child care, attended each other’s baptisms, bar mitzvahs and other important events.

Community baseball games were family events. It is one of the few local sports shown in early photographs. Baseball was also the main sport in school. A picture of students at the West Setauket school on the Village Green about 1890, shows many of the boys with a bat in hand. In the Chicken Hill exhibit at the Three Village Historical Society History Center, a trophy reads, “Suffolk County Baseball League Championship1957 - Setauket AC.”

Stories, like Chicken Fishing and Jake the Crow, are an important part of Chicken Hill’s history and folklore. As the story goes, a young man, living on the second floor of a factory house on Chicken Hill was hungry. He hadn’t caught any fish down at the harbor for a few days and he had an idea. He took his fishing rod and line, put a kernel of corn on the hook and lowered it out the window. When one of the many chickens looking

for food came by and grabbed the corn, he plucked up the chicken and had a nice supper. This was the first successful Chicken Fishing in Setauket.

As detailed in the Chicken Hill exhibit, “For the better part of the 1930s, Jake the Crow was a fixture at Hymie Golden’s general store and gas station. He sat on the gas pumps outside and when a customer arrived, flew into the store, making a racket to alert Hymie … At his demise, O.C. Lempfert, founder of the Stony Brook Museum, had him stuffed. When this museum became the Stony Brook Carriage Museum (now the Long Island Museum of American Art, History and Carriages), Jake went along. Jake’s residence again changed with the transfer of Lempfert’s taxidermy collection to the Long Island Natural History Museum at Stony Brook University.”

Now Jake looks over visitors, for a time, at the TVHS Chicken Hill exhibit.

Beverly C. Tyler is a Three Village Historical Society historian and author of books available from the society at 93 North Country Road, Setauket. For more information, call 631-751-3730 or visit www.tvhs.org.

Above, the Setauket Baseball Team, circa 1951. Below right, Jake the Crow, pictured in his natural environment. Below left, Suffolk Giants Juniors on the Chicken Hill ballfield in 1947. Photo bottom right by Mari Irizarry; all others from Chicken Hill exhibit.

Emma Clark announces ninth annual picture book award winners

SUBMITTED BY EMMA S. CLARK MEMORIAL LIBRARY

Emma S. Clark Memorial Library announced the winners of the Helen Stein Shack Picture Book Award, an annual contest for junior high and high school students residing in the Three Village Central School District:

First Prize (Grades 7–9 category): “Boston Santa” by Julia Hou (Ninth grader at Gelinas Junior High School)

First Prize (Grades 10–12 category): “Sleeping Till Spring” by Celia Gordon (Homeschooled 11th grader)

Second Prize (Grades 7–9 category): “Cutie the Duck” by Caroline Qian (Eighth grader at Gelinas Junior High School)

Second Prize (Grades 10–12 category): “Lily’s Snowman” by Amelia Grant (12th grader at The Stony Brook School)

“Cutie the Duck” by Caroline Qian has brightly colored graphics and is a lighthearted and fun tale about two duck friends and their adventures over the course of a day. “Boston Santa” by Julia Hou tells the story of a beautifully illustrated bunny whose dad finds a job in Boston. What will Christmas be like without dad? Will he make it home in time to celebrate the holiday with his family? “Sleeping Till Spring” by Celia Gordon

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follows Rosie, a girl who is tired of the winter. She imagines herself as many animals that hibernate until spring. “Lily’s Snowman” by Amelia Grant is about a girl who lives in Llano Verde, where the sun is always shining. The girl dreams about snow in this bilingual book.

Contest winners will be celebrated at a private awards ceremony on April 24 at 7 p.m. Each First Prize award recipient will receive a $400 scholarship, and each Second Prize award recipient will receive a $100 scholarship.

The newly bound books — made into hardcover by the library — will have the honor of being added to the library’s Local Focus Collection, and winners will also receive copies of their books to cherish in their own home libraries. Light refreshments will be served at the reception, and desserts are being donated by The Bite Size Bake Shop, a local Three Village business.

Past ceremonies have had library trustees, teachers and top school district administrators, as well as elected officials from New York State, Suffolk County and the Town of Brookhaven, all in attendance to honor the winners. Emma Clark library is delighted to once again hold a special ceremony honoring these talented young authors and illustrators and to add their original books to the library’s collection of local authors.

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The Helen Stein Shack Book Contest called for teens in grades 7 through 12 who live in the Three Village Central School District to create a children’s picture book. Each entry could be the work of a single author/illustrator or a collaborative effort of an author and an illustrator. The contest was divided into two grade categories, grades 7 through 9 and grades 10 through 12, with one First Prize Winner and one Second Prize Winner selected from each group.

This award is given in memory of Helen Stein Shack by her family, who have established a substantial endowment with the library to cover the cost of the prizes. As a teacher, Shack was committed to the education of children, and she especially loved literature written for them. She was a frequent visitor to Emma Clark library where, even in retirement, she kept current with the latest children’s books.

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Last year’s first place winners in the grades 10-12 category, Anna and Amelia Grant, receiving their award from Ted Gutmann, library director, left. Photo from Emma S. Clark Memorial Library

Online scammers swindle locals, disturb downtown Port Jeff

BY RAYMOND JANIS EDITOR1@TBRNEWSMEDIA.COM

Internet fraud, a worsening cybercrime phenomenon, has reached downtown Port Jefferson.

Through various tactics, online scam artists have successfully targeted storefronts and events throughout Port Jefferson, scoring hundreds of dollars in profits.

During the 4th annual ice festival in late January, scammers sold eight fake tickets for a mac ‘n’ cheese crawl organized by the Greater Port Jefferson Chamber of Commerce. On the day of the event, victims presented their fraudulent tickets.

The tickets “looked very official,” said Barbara Ransome, the chamber’s director of operations. However, when chamber staff asked those presenting these scam tickets when they had purchased them, their response revealed that something was out of place.

“They said, ‘We got them two days ago,’ and that’s when I realized this was a scam because we had been sold out … for at least a week and a half,” Ransome said, adding that the popularity of the event created an opening for scam artists. “My speculation is that this person saw that these tickets were sold out, saw that people were looking for them and created this whole fraud situation.”

At Theatre Three on Main, a similar practice has gained traction. Although the theater sells tickets at $35 per seat, online ticket scammers have capitalized by selling back-row seats at enormous markups.

Douglas Quattrock, the theater’s director of development and artistic associate, reported one such incident where a couple spent nearly 10 times the going rate. “We had a couple that paid $672 for a pair of tickets,” he said.

Although only “a handful” of theatergoers have fallen prey to these ticket scams at Theatre Three, Quattrock considered the practice disruptive to operations.

“Being a smaller not-for-profit, we try to keep our prices very family oriented,” he said. However, he added that “scammers see this market as very attractive.”

But online scams are not limited to ticket sales. Jena Turner owns the Port Jeff-based gift shop Breathe, which offers nontraditional healing remedies and psychic readings.

In an interview, Turner reported that multiple phony social media accounts have emerged, using her photos and business name to solicit payments from unsuspecting patrons.

“Right now, I know that there are five accounts that stole my photos and are pretending to be me,” she said.

Social engineering

Nick Nikiforakis, associate professor in the Department of Computer Science at Stony Brook University, said internet fraud is

SOCIAL ENGINEERING

becoming a growing concern for small business sectors, which are increasingly vulnerable to malicious cyber activities.

He contends that online criminals have shifted their sights on smaller boutique organizations because large corporations are investing more resources into cybersecurity systems.

“Effectively, you have cybercriminals who are customizing their attacks toward small businesses,” he said.

Turner’s case, according to Nikiforakis, represents a common social engineering scenario.

A social engineer “makes an online account for a company with a brick-and-mortar presence and then tries to take the recognizable name and the good faith that the business has built,” the associate professor said.

He added, “They are targeting online users, pretending to be the person running this business,” tricking their victims “to send them money, divulge information or in some way get people to participate in a scam.”

A downtown dilemma

Turner said she has reported her digital imposters but has received no relief in removing these scam accounts from the Instagram platform.

“I had reported it to Instagram several times — and by several, I can say probably more than 20,” she said. “Instagram hasn’t done anything about it.”

Nikiforakis noted that there are considerable technical limitations for social media companies

in policing social engineering activities. While they could theoretically verify with storefront owners whenever a platform is created in their name, online scammers often find creative ways to circumvent such safeguards.

“Things can be done, but this is inherently a cat-and-mouse game,” he said. Social engineers “are not attacking a security vulnerability. … They are abusing people’s faith and trust in institutions and recognizable brands.”

Lacking assistance from Big Tech, Turner said she took matters into her own hands, creating a video in which she wrote out her authentic social media handle by hand.

“I made that video, and I just keep reposting

it on my story and on my Facebook so that people aren’t falling for it,” she said. “That’s been really helpful.”

But, she added, “We have over 8,000 followers, so not everyone has seen the video. Unfortunately, the scam is still ongoing.”

To respond to the number of ticket scam incidents, Theatre Three similarly released a statement on its website condemning thirdparty ticket vendors. “The only place to buy tickets from us should be www.theatrethree. com,” Quattrock said.

Still, he encouraged patrons to remain on guard for potentially inflated ticket prices and to approach online transactions cautiously. For those who may suspect a ticketing scam, he implored them to call the theater directly before completing the transaction.

“If it looks suspicious to you, just call the theater and verify that they’re on the right website,” he said.

As online fraud persists throughout the local area, businesses and customers are not without recourse. Nikiforakis indicates that awareness of the typical social engineering strategies can help users protect themselves from participating in online scams.

“There are standard social engineering tactics, such as giving the victim a sense of urgency or taking advantage of their appeal to authority,” he said. “For both patrons and companies, by actively resisting this, you can slow down and potentially defend yourself against an attack.”

“There are standard social engineering tactics, such as giving the victim a sense of urgency or taking advantage of their appeal to authority.”

— NICK NIKIFORAKIS

Pixabay photo

Town of Brookhaven joins energy revolution

BY RAYMOND JANIS EDITOR1@TBRNEWSMEDIA.COM

Community choice aggregation, a revolution in energy procurement, is making a splash throughout Long Island.

Starting in May, the Town of Brookhaven will launch a CCA program, contracting with England-based public limited company Good Energy for a fixed rate for natural gas consumers over the next two years.

In an interview, Town of Brookhaven Councilmember Jonathan Kornreich (D-Stony Brook) explained how the program would operate. Under the longstanding method of natural gas delivery in the town, National Grid — based in the U.K. and northeastern U.S. — purchases the supply and delivers the gas. CCA alters this dynamic.

“CCA is just a method of purchasing a commodity on a communitywide basis,” he said. Under the program, “all of the customers of National Grid in a certain area are getting together to say, ‘We’re going to jointly purchase fuel cooperatively from a different source.’”

That source, Good Energy, has agreed to supply gas at a fixed price of 69.5 cents per therm. “That locks in the price for all customers” for two years, the councilmember said.

National Grid, which still operates the delivery systems, will continue to bill customers for those services. The only section of the bill affected by the changes will be for energy supply.

An August report from the U.S. Energy Information Administration states that the natural gas market saw record volatility last year due to demand changes, storms and geopolitical unrest.

Given the many variables that contribute to fluctuations in gas prices, Kornreich suggested Brookhaven homeowners and businesses would be less beholden to the volatility of the market under CCA. “We’re going to pay just one price for the next two years,” he said.

The town is also hedging that the market price of natural gas will rise over the next two years. If that happens, CCA will deliver discounted gas to Brookhaven ratepayers throughout the contracted period.

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“The expectation that I have, as given to me by the corporate representatives with whom I met, is that there’s going to be a savings to the customers,” Kornreich said. “My hope is that this price is competitive over a two-year period.”

He added, “Based on the models that they’ve shown me, this price will — over the long term — on average be lower than what they would have paid if they had just rode that market price.”

CCA: An energy revolution

Community choice aggregation first came about in the 1990s as a model of procuring energy whereby a municipality can pool the buying power of its residents to negotiate favorable energy contracts.

Gang He is an assistant professor in the Department of Technology and Society at Stony Brook University, whose research focuses on energy and climate policy.

The assistant professor regarded the traditional relationship between energy consumers and suppliers as heavily skewed in favor of suppliers, referring to consumer protections under CCA as correcting the power imbalance.

“When utilities deal with residents, residents have no power,” Gang He said. “It’s a monopoly, and it’s heavily regulated by regulators. A CCA can play a role in helping the residents to have more negotiation power.”

Paul Fenn, founder and president of the Massachusetts-based CCA firm Local Power, drafted some of the original enabling legislation for CCA in Massachusetts, California and throughout the U.S. In an interview, he traced the history of CCA.

Fenn said vertically integrated investorowned utilities have historically operated as monopolies and cartels, given their guaranteed rates of return by state regulators and energy market deregulation. CCA, he said, seeks to rectify this.

“The basic definition is that CCA is a model of energy supply that is neither a monopoly nor a cartel,” he said.

He likened the energy model to Costco. “The reason that large users achieve cheaper services is like going to Costco,” he said. “If you’re buying 200 rolls of toilet paper instead of 20, you pay a lower price.”

CCA applies this framework to the energy supply, giving the small consumer the perks of a bulk purchaser by pooling the buying power of entire communities.

“It’s a way for small users ... to gain the economic buying power enjoyed by the largest corporations,” he said, adding, “The aggregations are designed to deliver the benefits to the user and not to the supplier.”

Two factors, according to Fenn, have contributed to the rise of CCA nationwide. On the one hand, the economic model has been tailored and perfected to benefit individual users over large suppliers. On the other hand, renewable technologies have progressed to the point where they are now competitive with fossil fuels.

Fenn characterized CCA as a revolution for capitalizing on the convergence of cheap renewable energy and consumer protections for utility power.

Promoting renewables

Anne Reynolds is executive director of Alliance for Clean Energy New York, a group of private companies and nonprofits partnering to expand green energy opportunities throughout New York state. Reynolds indicated that CCA could be interpreted in two ways — as an economic model or as a way to promote green energy.

CCA “can be purely an economics choice,” she said. “You can think of it as a collective buying co-op,” but “most of the examples in New York state are when the community also wants to get a renewable energy product.”

Reynolds stated that CCA is not the main objective of ACE NY as CCA “hasn’t been the primary way that renewable energy products are getting built in New York, which is what we focus on,” she said.

Her organization instead emphasizes the construction of large-scale, grid-connected renewable energy projects through long-term contracts with the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority.

Under the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, the state must procure 70% of its energy from renewable sources by 2030 and 100% by 2050. When asked whether CCAs offer a pathway toward a greener future in New York, Reynolds responded that there must be a mix of largescale and small-scale projects.

“To get there, we’re going to need an unprecedented construction of renewable energy projects — offshore wind, wind, solar, batteries,” she said. “To get that done, these projects need to have a guaranteed market for their power, what they refer to as offtake agreements.”

She added, “Having those offtake agreements with the State of New York is one way to do it. Having the offtake agreements with communities in New York is another.”

One way CCA can promote new development in renewables, Reynolds said, is through community distributed generation, often referred to as community solar.

“Community choice aggregation programs

‘A CCA can play a role in helping the residents to have more negotiation power.’

GANG HE

‘I like the idea of moving away from monolithic energy sourcing.’

— STEVE ENGLEBRIGHT

can be a great tool for getting community solar built, paid for and delivered to people,” she said. “For the state to meet its goals, and for Long Island especially, it’s going to require a little bit of everything.”

The Southampton model

Brookhaven is not the only municipality in Suffolk County implementing CCA. In the neighboring Town of Southampton, local officials are exploring a different posture, with an energy plan geared toward electricity instead of natural gas.

Lynn Arthur is the energy chair of Southampton’s volunteer sustainability committee and the founder of the nonprofit Peak Power Long Island, a consultancy group that services municipalities and their constituents on renewable energy technologies.

Arthur said there are currently two CCA administrators operating on Long Island, Good Energy and Bedford Hills-based Joule Community Power, Southampton’s CCA administrator. She notes that the difference in administrators has placed the two municipalities on separate trajectories.

In Southampton, the Town Board is working toward obtaining electricity from 100% renewable energy sources by 2025. Arthur said that goal is coming into focus.

“It’s only natural that we would try to get a power supply contract for 100% renewables for electricity,” she said.

To meet this task, Arthur suggested CCA would play a pivotal role. She is now advocating for the Southampton Town Board to submit a request for proposal to supply electricity from 100% renewable sources.

Brookhaven vs. Southampton

Weighing Brookhaven’s CCA against Southampton’s, former New York State Assemblyman Steve Englebright (D-Setauket) suggested that Southampton has the upper hand.

“I think Southampton’s model is the better one,” he said. “Electricity is the future. We should be moving away from natural gas.”

But, he added, “to the extent that the Town of Brookhaven can get started with [CCA] is promising. I think the inevitable success of what Southampton is doing will compel their nextdoor neighbor, Brookhaven,” to follow suit.

Despite Brookhaven’s gas-exclusive CCA, Fenn did not say that gas aggregation was inherently brown and electricity aggregation green. Rather, he said promoting renewables through CCA is a matter of how a program is implemented.

He objected, however, to the limited scope of Brookhaven’s CCA initiative. “This program is defined narrowly as a discountonly program, and I think that’s not a particularly good idea,” he said. “It’s hard to argue against stabilizing people’s rates, but it won’t help the environment if that’s all they’re doing, and it may hurt it.”

Creating competition

Fenn regarded municipalities as sometimes prone to short-term thinking. While gas aggregation is a step toward unshackling ratepayers from the market’s volatility, he said it is incomplete.

Instead, he advised Brookhaven leaders to explore fuel switching, that is, transitioning residents from natural gas to electricity. The heat pump, for example, constitutes one way in which a home’s heating can be fulfilled by electric power instead of gas.

“Apart from the climate crisis, which says stop burning this stuff, there are so many reasons” to transition off fossil fuels, Fenn said. By fuel switching, “you’re adding electrical load when you do that, but you’re deleting gas demand.”

By creating a separate program for electrical aggregation, Fenn said Brookhaven could correct course, providing gas customers with greener options for heating.

Asked whether the Brookhaven Town Board could add a second CCA administrator for electricity, he responded affirmatively. “Just deliver both, and you can,” he said.

Arthur emphasized that municipalities can have separate CCA administrators for gas and

electricity. She suggested Brookhaven add a second administrator for electricity to further competition.

“Fundamentally, if competition is good, and if you want everybody to go to electricity and get away from gas, then you should have [CCA administrators] compete with each other,” she said.

Local vs. centralized intervention

Fenn noted the decline of municipal power since the Civil War, which he said had rendered local governments impotent compared to their state and federal counterparts. He criticized the tendency of local officials to outsource services to third-party vendors.

“Part of the problem is the dependence on third parties cripples the governments by making them intellectually captive to those service providers,” he said. “We believe municipalities should have skin in the game and should use the power that they have.”

Fenn attributed the climate and garbage crises in the United States to the decline of municipal powers and the failures of centralized government. He encouraged local policymakers to embrace programs like CCA to counteract these downward movements.

“There has to be knowledge, responsibility and therefore control” vested in municipal government, he said. “CCA uses contractors to provide services, but they’re firmly under the control of the municipality.”

While CCA proposes a local solution to a global climate phenomenon, questions remain about the best forms of intervention.

For Reynolds, tackling the climate crisis requires a centralized intervention from the higher levels of government, with local governments doing their part as well. “We absolutely need both,” the ACE NY executive director said.

For the state to reach its aggressive emission mandates, “you’re going to need larger power projects, too, like offshore,” she said. “But it shouldn’t be an either or question.”

A sustainable future

Gang He viewed the growth in renewable energy, evidenced by over $1 trillion in worldwide investment last year, as a turning point in energy history.

“Renewables have gained momentum,” the SBU assistant professor said. “The challenge is how do we maintain the momentum to deliver the outcome that we desire?”

Arthur recommends CCA to local officials as a way to do so. “It’s so clear that this is such a great opportunity to move the needle on renewables and, at the same time, lower costs for their constituents,” she said. Asked whether Brookhaven’s CCA could spur interest in a similar program for electricity, Kornreich expressed optimism that the town’s program would foster better energy stewardship.

“I hope that it does open people’s eyes to the possibility and to get people more comfortable with the concept of being a more conscious consumer of utility power,” he said. “Whether it’s gas or electric, people can understand they can choose and that their choices will have an impact on the environment.”

Though acknowledging some of the drawbacks to the Brookhaven program, Englebright expressed encouragement about moving away from the preexisting procurement structure.

“Great journeys are made a step at a time,” the former assemblyman said. “I like the idea of moving away from monolithic energy sourcing.” He added, “A more distributed power system is to our advantage, ultimately — more competitive, less monolithic and more responsive to the public.”

For more details on the Town of Brookhaven’s Community Choice Aggregation Program, visit the website brookhavencommunityenergy.com.

According to the website, “Eligible customers will soon receive additional information in the mail regarding product features, including information about the renewable energy option.”

‘Community choice aggregation programs can be a great tool for getting community solar built, paid for and delivered to people.’

— ANNE REYNOLDS

‘It’s so clear that this is such a great opportunity to move the needle on renewables and, at the same time, lower costs for their constituents.’

— LYNN ARTHUR

Indu Kaur was destined to rise from the ashes.

Kaur, who runs The Meadow Club banquet hall in Port Jefferson Station and the Curry Club at SāGhar in Port Jefferson, was born in Afghanistan and survived a series of tragedies to become the woman she is — dedicated to family, exuding confidence and poised to solve the next problem.

In the early hours of July 14, 2018, as she watched flames

Port Jeff business owner brings hard-won resilience to North Shore hospitality industry

earthen home in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, she shared with her parents, grandmother, great grandmother, aunts and uncles. Life felt simple inside the multigenerational Sikh home.

the family’s lifestyle improved. They had running water, raised wooden beds and a proper school, but also a backdrop of fear, with unpredictable fighting and bullets flying.

to pretend she was a cushion.

“My grandmother sat on me to hide me,” Kaur said, and she

remembered listening with horror to the threats and demands of the mujahideen.

“They beat my dad up, big time.”

shoot from the roof of The Meadow Club, Kaur made a promise. “‘The tragedy that happened to us will not happen to anybody else,’” she recalled saying to her father and business partner, Kulwant Wadhwa, thinking about the christening and wedding they were scheduled to host that day. “‘We will make sure everybody’s celebration goes on.’”

And she did, together with her father and sister Kiran, the club’s creative director. Within hours, they secured a new venue and redirected staff members and guests.

Long before Kaur was running hospitality businesses, she was a small girl gathering eggs for breakfast outside the

Kaur remembered the whole family eating meals together, sitting on traditional hand-sewn floor mattresses. After dinner was the real treat: “The whole family would do this beautiful dance, and then smile, laugh, just be free,” she said. Outside the home, things were not so free or peaceful. In 1979, when Kaur was a toddler, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. The United States supported the antiSoviet rebellion of the Afghan mujahideen guerrilla fighters.

Kaur’s ancestors had immigrated to Afghanistan from India several generations before, and Kaur’s father, Wadhwa, who took over his own father’s job as pharmacist and family provider at age 15, remembered the nation with affection. “The country was very safe before the Soviet Union,” he said, recalling there were even buses of American tourists. “It all changed.”

Smaller communities like Jalalabad became hotbeds of fighting, so in the early 1980s, Wadhwa decided to move his family to the relatively safer capital city of Kabul, where his pharmacy business thrived and

“Seeing our parents not smiling or not dancing after dinner was something we really missed,” she said.

Worse, stray bullets twice hit close to home: One bullet struck a girl at Kaur’s school, and another killed her cousin Harpreet, who was only a couple years older than Kaur. “It could have been me,” she said.

Kaur’s grandmother shielded the children as best she could, trying to bring fun into daily life. “I used to look forward to coming home and wash ing dishes,” Kaur said, re membering her grandmother would let dishes pile up so the two of them could wash up together after school. “I enjoyed getting wet in the soapy water, and then she would get the hose and, you know.”

In February 1989, the Soviet soldiers withdrew from Afghanistan, and for nonMuslim minorities, life worsened further. Wadhwa remembers the mujahideen, predecessors of the Taliban, told the Sikh community, “‘You guys have three options: You guys either leave the country, or die here, or you can work to be a Muslim,’” he said. “They wanted a nation of only Muslims.”

Wadhwa made plans to uproot the family once again, but not before they faced danger one more time.

Early one morning while everyone was still asleep, mujahideen soldiers came into the house, and Kaur was too far distant to reach the basement hideaway she usually crowded into with the other women and children when soldiers came around. While her father stalled the men, her grandmother laid her on a bench, Kaur recalled, and covered her with a blanket

From Afghanistan to India and the U.S.

When safely in India, the family’s lifestyle improved again. Wadhwa restarted his pharmaceutical business and was more successful than in Kabul. They would once again, Kaur said, “rise up stronger.”

Kaur, 13 years old when she arrived in Delhi, attended a British school to fill gaps in her education and learn Hindi and English. She also learned what it meant to be a “country girl” refugee wearing big bows and flowery clothes, among young teens who had an eye for glamor. The bullying was brutal, and Kaur said she did what many adolescent girls around the world do — she plucked her eyebrows and changed her style to fit in. One bright spot was “a beautiful British teacher in a sari,” who inspired the confident posture Kaur still holds today, and also taught her what turned out to be a helpful survival tool — the British “stiff upper lip.” She remembered, “Always, spine straight, look straight, perfect expression.” No matter what emotion, “I could take control and just figure it out.”

This skill was vital when, at age 19 in 1994, she arrived at John F. Kennedy International Airport as a new bride in an arranged marriage, a common custom in Indian culture. The day the marriage offer came, Kaur remembered Wadhwa asking if she was OK with it. Kaur reflected on how Wadhwa had led the family so far, and told him, “Whatever you do is always good for us, so [I’ll follow] whatever decision you make.” She faced settling into life in the United States the same way she faced that first meeting with her future husband at JFK: When things were overwhelming, she went with the flow. “I was very good

Delaware and then in Virginia, Kaur built skills, first in retail and computers, and then in banking, working her way up from teller to commercial loan inspector within a couple years. “I was a thriver, I wanted to learn,” she said. “I was eager and hungry for education and doing well.”

at smiling and keeping it quiet and having a stable face,” she said. “Emotions were always very internal.” Internal, but not gone. Kaur is a woman who feels deeply but acts decisively. When she tired of feeling lonely in

Kaur’s parents and younger sisters immigrated to Suffolk County as asylum seekers soon after Kaur’s wedding, once again leaving everything behind. Wadhwa built a completely new career in 1996 as a restauranteur serving Indian cuisine at The Curry Club’s first location in East Setauket, powered by family connections and the entrepreneurship he’d learned restarting his pharmaceutical business twice. But in the fall of 2000, tragedy came again, when Kaur’s mother Amargeet was walking the dog and suffered a brain hemorrhage, falling onto the tracks at Port Jefferson railroad station. A departing train severed her arms and one of her legs, but — incredibly — she survived.

Kaur remembered her father running to her when she arrived, devastated, in the waiting room. “He hugged me, and he said,

‘We are done, we are done. I’m destroyed. We are not going to live anymore,’” she recalled. “His heart just poured on my shoulder.”

The whole family was heartbroken by the accident, but they were not done. Everyone banded together to keep the family business running, care for Amargeet and raise Kaur’s youngest sister Kiran, who was only 11. Kaur drove nine hours from Virginia every weekend to help.

This back and forth continued for several years, but eventually the pull of family was too strong to resist.

In 2013, Kaur moved to Long Island and cared for her mother full time. When her father presented the opportunity to take over The Meadow Club with her sister a year later, she was up for the challenge. Kaur remembered feeling nervous since her two children, Sahiba and Sartaj, were still young. Wadhwa told her, “Well, we have each other.”

With Kiran’s contemporary, Americanized vision and Kaur’s practical determination, The Meadow Club was a success. Then, in 2018, it went up in

flames. During construction and permitting, Kaur continued to find venues for her clients and attend events to be sure clients were well served.

Meanwhile, when the COVID-19 pandemic forced restaurants to shut down in 2020, Kaur’s family survived as they always had, together. Kiran created a donationbased meal delivery service to

hospital workers, Kaur drove the delivery van and her father oversaw food packing. Kaur said they delivered hundreds of meals a day.

When The Meadow Club finally reopened in January 2021, no scars of the fire were visible. The sisters had crafted a modern, classy, better-thanever venue.

“It’s a blissful, blessed

feeling of knowing that, yes, everything is up and running,” Kaur said. “But the best part is that we are together.” And together is how she plans to weather any future storms. “I just keep going, just like my dad,” Kaur said. “We wake up in the morning: All right, it’s a beautiful day, sun is up, what’s next? What do we have to tackle now?”

Indu, left, with her family in India

Indu, right, celebrating Christmas with her sister Kiran and her mother several years after the train accident.

Indu, in chef hat, with her managers and sister. Indu runs the omelet station at brunches.

Indu, left, with sister Kiran Wadhwa at The Meadow Club’s new garden area.

Indu, third from left, with her father, center, and sister Kiran, third from right, at the first anniversary of the Port Jefferson location of Curry Club at SāGhar, last month.

Photos from Indu Kaur

Indu, center left, with her sisters at Kiran’s wedding.

Indu at her wedding

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Guitar,Piano,Stringsandmore IntroductoryRatesfornewstudents,AlsoPianoTuningand Repairs. Stringsoundstudios.com

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WE’REHIRING! TECHNICALMANAGER

Thesuccessfulcandidatewillbe avitalmemberoftheProduction DepartmentattheStallerCenter fortheArts,reportingtothe ProductionManager.TheTechnicalManagerwilldirectlyoperateandoverseetheatrical equipment,events,andproductionrequirementsintheMain Stage(1000+seatconcerthall/ prosceniumtheater),Recital Hall(375+seatconcertvenue), andthePaulW.ZuccaireGallery.

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WE’RE HIRING! TECHNICAL MANAGER

The successful candidate will be a vital member of the Production Department at the Staller Center for the Arts, reporting to the Production Manager. The Technical Manager will directly operate and oversee theatrical equipment, events, and production requirements in the Main Stage (1000+ seat concert hall/proscenium theater), Recital Hall (375+ seat concert venue), and the Paul W. Zuccaire Gallery.

Bachelor’s Degree (foreign equivalent or higher). In lieu of a Bachelor’s degree, an Associate’s Degree (foreign equivalent or higher) and two (2) years of work experience in performing arts may be considered. Two (2)

in Theater. Three or more years of work experience in performing arts. Experience managing student and professional stagehands. Comprehensive understanding and performance operation of current theatrical systems and programs.

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Choose community choice: It’s sound economics

Community choice aggregation is a nationwide revolution in energy procurement with transformational implications for Long Island.

The benefits of CCA are threefold. It offers ratepayers an avenue for lower energy costs. It introduces competition into the energy marketplace, incentivizing public utilities to deliver a better product. And it places entire communities down a path toward 100% renewable energy.

The popular fiction is that fossil fuels are cheaper and more efficient than their expensive and immature renewable counterparts. CCA proponents challenge this thinking, stipulating that renewables can outperform fossil fuels with the proper economic structure, a structure supporting energy consumers instead of suppliers.

Classical economics indicates that one company controlling the entire supply of a given commodity constitutes a monopoly. Since the Industrial Revolution, vertically integrated utilities have exercised exclusive control over the supply of energy, setting prices arbitrarily and controlling the market at will.

CCA seeks to flip this dynamic on its head, introducing competition into the energy market using the bulk-buying power of a community of people. Though they are opted in automatically, ratepayers can opt out at any time at no expense. More importantly, CCA gives municipalities a choice over the energy source, with the option to select renewables over fossil fuels.

Competitors’ cheaper, greener power may incentivize utility companies to deliver a better product. If consumers want affordable and renewable energy, the utility’s rational choice would be to invest heavily in renewables and reduce rates. Competition spurs innovation and growth, benefiting all parties.

Here at TBR News Media, we hold that local governments must be highly active and potent and challenge the centralized bureaucracies in Albany and Washington when those fail to deliver meaningful results for our communities. For too long, state-regulated utilities have not done enough to counteract the effects of climate change.

A U.S. Energy Information Administration report notes, “In 2021, renewable sources and nuclear power, together, supplied 54% of New York’s total in-state generation from utility-scale and small-scale facilities.” For New York state to reach its energy goals under the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, the report indicates that figure must climb to 70% by 2030.

To meet this task, local governments must do their part, negotiating on behalf of their residents for 100% renewable energy. CCA offers our local officials the means to fulfill this end.

The Town of Brookhaven recently instituted a CCA program for a two-year fixed rate on natural gas prices. Given the volatility of today’s international gas markets, Brookhaven’s program has potential cost benefits.

However, the town has only dipped its toe into the greater CCA dialogue. A gas-exclusive program offers merely the financial rewards of the CCA model without the reduced greenhouse gas emissions. We encourage Brookhaven leaders to study the Town of Southampton’s model, where electricity may soon be procured from 100% renewable sources.

In the meantime, other municipalities should take a close look at CCA. The portside Village of Port Jefferson — already grappling with the hazardous effects of coastal erosion and worsening flooding — could send a strong message by joining this effort. Other municipalities, such as the towns of Smithtown and Huntington, could do so as well.

CCA is a cost-effective, market-friendly and environmentally sustainable policy. For residents and the natural environment, it is time for all our local leaders to take it seriously.

Letters to the Editor

Nuclear energy is the last refuge of climate-change deniers

Almost every week, lately, George Altemose shamelessly unloads another batch of right-wing obfuscation. In “How to tackle carbon dioxide emissions” [The Village Times Herald, Feb. 23], he starts out saying every rational person wants to cut CO2 emissions. This is news, because for years he has been peddling climate-change denial in this forum, with the usual Big Oil playbook:

1. Global warming isn’t happening.

2. If it is, it’s sun output variation or something, and won’t last.

3. Maybe it’s CO2, but not from fossil fuel use — cows, maybe?

4. OK, it’s fossil fuels but renewable energy is so terribly uncertain and expensive, so let’s go nuclear — and while waiting five to seven years, at least, for new plants, keep on burning.

Repeated clear refutations don’t stop him.

In his Feb. 9 letter, “Sign of our times,” Altemose cited a for-hire consultancy, Anderson Economic Group, as (1) highly respected, and (2) having proved that a car owner paid less at the gas pump than an electric car owner had to pay for electricity to drive 100 “useful” miles (3% less, at $11.30). Altemose didn’t mention that to get this result AEG “assumed” that EV owners had to drive 960 “useless” miles per year looking for commercial charging stations that charged an arm and a leg. At current Suffolk prices, a mid-range EV car would cost about one-third less for fuel. And of course, we sweep environmental costs under the rug.

Nuclear energy is the last refuge of climate-change deniers, and claiming it is “clean” is sophistry. Building a nuclear plant is enormously expensive. Remember LILCO’s Shoreham boondoggle at a cost of $5.5 billion after an original projection of $65 million — and roughly 11 years to build, 1973-84? And run for one day, just enough to shift the white elephant burden from the stockholders to consumers. France’s nuclear park is 40 years old and being pushed to run for another 20 years, with costly, tricky repairs that keep about one-third of the plants offline regularly, because in the best of circumstances it will be very costly to decommission a plant, since operation makes almost everything

inside intensely radioactive. Superradioactive “spent” fuel rods have to be kept cooled in water for decades and guarded forever. And then we have Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima. What could go wrong?

Arnold Wishnia Setauket

Democratic policies and pols bleeding NYS dry

Right after the personal political interests of New York state’s most powerful elected Democrats, the rest of us come “first.” Too harsh? Ask yourself if any of today’s top Dem “leaders,” along with their downballot groupies, have publicly argued against the failed policies largely responsible for NY’s last three major crises.

New Yorkers have suffered through a catastrophically mismanaged pandemic, a huge spike in violent crime and now a flood of illegal migrants. The first two came while the state was under single-party Dem rule, while the border “surge” came right after President Joe Biden [D] was sworn in.

No worries if you’re having trouble recalling Gov. Kathy Hochul [D] forcefully addressing any of these calamities as lieutenant governor or governor. She did nothing memorable or consequential. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer [D], who holed up in D.C. while senior living facilities were recording hundreds of COVID-19 deaths and NYPD officers were being attacked within blocks of his Brooklyn office, has remained MIA. Newly installed Brooklynite House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries [D-NY8] has mirrored Chuck’s 0 for 3 on the crises. Former NRA favorite Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand [D], who notably bragged about sleeping with a gun under her bed, has remained typically invisible and thus consistently inconsequential.

But what would you expect from a political crew whose party’s programs

have been widely responsible for the Empire State’s dramatic downturn. Albany’s deadly push to fill nursing homes with COVID patients along with criminal-friendly cashless bail “reforms” have proved disastrous. And now a wide-open southern border is taking its toll on New Yorkers.

After Dem politicians proudly declared the Empire State a sanctuary, New York City alone has been flooded with almost 50,000 illegal immigrants, creating problems we’re not prepared to solve. Those would include infrastructure overload, violent cartels peddling deadly fentanyl, a further decline in our quality of life and a financial burden amounting to billions of dollars we do not have.

A clear symptom of the contempt our state’s “ruling class” has for its tax-paying citizens was highlighted when we learned that border crashers wound up in 4-star Manhattan hotels on the public dime, while hardworking New York families struggle to make ends meet.

This upside down, backward and failed governing approach taken by NY’s Democratic politicians has not gone unnoticed by hundreds of thousands of now-former residents. Numbers released by the Census Bureau, using data representing the two years since the beginning of the pandemic, shows our state has lost over a half-million people.

In spite of discredited political schemes, our shrinking population and even the surprising 2022 GOP gains flipping the House, there’s no indication Hochul, Schumer, Jeffries and Gillibrand, along with their party sycophants, have any plans to stop bleeding New York state dry.

That’s because, right after these woke, elitist, political masterminds, the rest of us come “first.”

Jim Soviero East Setauket

rita@tbrnewsmedia.com

Chores I’d like an artificial intelligence to tackle for me

I’m

really writing this. Or am I?

Now that I’ve seen artificial intelligence in action, I know that the system, such as it is, can write impressive pieces in much shorter time than it takes me to write a column or even this sentence.

Grocery shopping: I’m sure I get similar foods each week. Maybe my AI system could not only buy the necessary and desired food items, but perhaps it could reduce the ones that are unhealthy or offer new recipes that satisfy my food preferences.

Dishes: I’m not looking for a robot akin to “The Jetsons,” but would love to have a system that removed the dirt and food from my dishes, put them in the dishwasher, washed them and then put them away. An enhanced system also might notice when a dish wasn’t clean and would give that dish another wash.

over-the-counter supplies, such as band-aids. Perhaps it could also pick out new birthday and greeting cards that expressed particular sentiments in funny yet tasteful ways for friends and family who are celebrating milestone birthdays or are living through other joyful or challenging times.

Still, it’d be helpful to have an AI system that recognizes these regular needs and coordinates an optimal time (given my schedule and the time it’ll take to travel to and from these events) to ensure I don’t miss an appointment and to minimize the effort necessary.

For the inconveniences, an AI system would help by:

BY DANIEL DUNAIEF

And yet, I don’t want a machine to write for me or to reach out to you. I prefer the letter by letter, word by word approach I take and would like to think I earn the smile, frown or anything in between I put on your face as a result of the thinking and living I’ve done. However, I do see opportunities for AI to become the equivalent of a personal assistant, taking care of needed conveniences and reducing inconveniences. For conveniences, how about if AI did the following:

Laundry: Okay, I’ll admit it. I enjoy folding warm laundry, particularly in the winter, when my cold hands are starting to crack from being dry. Still, it would save time and energy to have a laundry system that washed my clothes, folded them and put them away, preferably so that I could see and access my preferred clothing.

Pharmacy: I know this is kind of dangerous when it comes to prescriptions, but it’d be helpful to have a system that replenished basic,

Staying on hold: At some point, we’ve all waited endlessly on hold for some company to pick up the phone to speak to us about changing our flights, scheduling a special dinner reservation or speaking with someone about the unusual noise our car makes. Those “on hold” calls, with their incessant chatter or their nonstop hold music, can be exasperating. An AI system that waited patiently, without complaint or frustration and that handed me the phone the moment a person picked up the call, would be a huge plus.

Optimize necessary updates: Car inspections, annual physicals, oil changes, and trips to the vet can and do go on a calendar.

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Send reminders to our children: Life is full of balances, right? Too much or too little of something is unhealthy. These days, we sometimes have to write or text our kids several times before we get to speak with them live. An AI system might send them a casual, but loving, reminder that their not-so-casual but loving parents would like to speak with them live.

Provide a test audience: In our heads, we have the impulse to share something funny, daring or challenging, like, “hey, did you get dressed in the dark” or “wow, it must be laundry day.” Sure, that might be funny, but an AI system designed to appreciate humor in the moment — and to have an awareness of our audience — might protect us from ourselves. Funny can be good and endearing, but can also annoy.

BY LEAH S. DUNAIEF

There is something new, and I hope you will find exciting, in this issue of the newspaper. If you will look at the advertisement for Elegant Eating on page 9 for those of you that get The Times of Smithtown or the back cover for The Village Times Herald, you will see a QR code within the border of the ad. Run your mobile phone camera over the code, and it will open up to a 30-second video.

The new addition, in effect, turns the flat, two-dimensional print ad into a talking motion picture, however briefly. This gives significantly extra punch

to the ad. It’s also fun for the reader.

We will repeat this for the other four newspapers, The Times of Huntington & Northport, The Village Beacon Record, The Times of Middle Country and The Port Times Record next week.

We can, of course, offer the same process for news stories. An article about someone newsworthy can carry a QR code that then permits a live viewing of that person speaking to the viewer.

For now, we will concentrate on providing this service to advertisers, refining the process as we go along. And we have priced this offering accordingly to allow many business people to afford coming aboard.

In addition to viewing the short on a mobile phone, the video will also run on the home page of our TBRnewsmedia website under the banner, “Video spotlight on

business.” Our website has approximately 150,000 viewers per month. Further, the advertisers can add the video to their own web page if they would like. Advertisers should check with their sales reps for more information and to get started.

In adding this new feature, we hope to have a meaningful interaction between print and the web. Print, of course, is being challenged as digital news and advertising have lessened to some extent the dominance of print. With this new service, it is our intention to bring the best of both worlds to the advertising side and also the news side of our media output.

The value of print, with its responsibility for vetting and fact checking both stories and ads, cannot be overstated in this present climate of enormous misinformation on the web. In bringing print to the web, and the benefits of the web to print, we hope to

engage our readers further and serve our local communities. We also hope, by being innovative, to help our bottom line.

We know communities need local news outlets to inform and protect them, as well as to hold a mirror up to record their daily lives and achievements. Towns where newspapers have failed in the last decade are now referred to as news deserts and have suffered for their loss. Ill-considered developments, poorly sited landfills and unfortunate actions by unworthy local government officials have been only some of the consequences, with no strong voice to give outcry on behalf of the people. Many energetic journalists have been thrown out of work. We believe the key to survival in this age is to embrace change and join with its best aspects.

Hence our latest enhancement for you.

D. None of the above

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