By the people & for the people By the people & for the people

December 19, 2008 | 02:56 PM Culminating months of work by dozens of community residents, the completed Comsewogue Hamlet Comprehensive Plan 2008 was introduced to and accepted by the Brookhaven Town Board earlier this year. The Port Times Record is proud to name all the residents, who contributed to the plan by dint of long work on various committees, our Men and Women of The Year 2008. We are also proud to include among those honored Lee Koppelman, director of the Center for Regional Policy Studies at Stony Brook University, who was retained to oversee the production of the study, and Councilman Steve Fiore-Rosenfeld (D-Setauket), who delivered funding for the study, which will be incorporated into Brookhaven's townwide 2030 updated master plan, and who delivered on a year-long moratorium on commercial development to coincide with the study. For Lou Antoniello, who was president of the Port Jefferson Station-Terryville Civic Association when the study was initiated and was a member of the plan's steering committee, that hamlet study built by residents now "takes precedence over anything else going on in the town" in the way of planning for the community. One example of that very thing happening involves the Lawrence Aviation Industries site, which the study recommended be rezoned for office space or a research and development park, possibly in affiliation with Stony Brook University. (The 152-acre parcel is currently a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Superfund site, and the EPA has said it would not recommend that remediated areas of the parcel be used for residential purposes.) Fiore-Rosenfeld said last week the initial steps toward the rezoning of the LAI site were in the works. The town would soon hire professionals to produce the environmental assessment required for a zoning change, he said. Brandon Pantorno, the executive director of the Comsewogue Public Library and a lifelong resident of the community, sat on the steering committee and said that group was very pleased with the high percentage of returns on the initial questionnaire because they were all about seeing "what the wishes of residents were." The survey went to all 7,000 hamlet residents, and their input about problems and recommendations became the impetus behind the creation of committees of volunteers who discussed housing, land use, traffic, commercial zoning, community facilities, history and other aspects of the plan. "Hundreds of hours" of work was involved, Antoniello said. Now the community has a document designed "from the input of community residents for the present and future zoning boards," Pantorno said. Commissioner Bill Theiss, chairman of the Terryville Fire District Board, who steps down at the end of this month, said he personally appreciated the high esteem residents demonstrated for the fire department in their questionnaire responses. Developer Jim Tsunis was making a presentation to the Port Jefferson Station-Terryville Civic Association, when members tapped the Belle Terre resident to sit on the Commercial/Industrial Zoning committee. Tsunis, who said he did not have any large-scale business interests in the hamlet area — he believes the liability of the Lawrence Aviation Industries site is prohibitive at this time — agreed to work on the study because he viewed the task as "helping the community." And it was "a real pleasure" to work with Koppelman, the eminence grise of Long Island master plans. According to Tsunis, who grew up around the commercial real estate business, Koppelman is "a very knowledgeable person in the field of comprehensive planning." Also selected to the steering committee was Dora Guma because of her years of experience with the civic association. Guma still remembers "the angry pack of townspeople" at a Brookhaven public hearing who were dead set against a moratorium. Shovels going into the ground during the many months it took residents to craft a master plan could have undercut their very efforts. But Fiore-Rosenfeld remained steadfast in his support of the moratorium and the path for the hamlet study was prepared. The rest, some would say, is history. We prefer to think of it as — the future and the future is now.