Editorial: It don’t matter to me…

Few things fire our editorial ire like people who care about their physical backyard and don’t give a fig about the metaphorical community backyard. At a recent meeting of Brookhaven’s town board a lot of time was taken up with public hearings regarding amendments to the proposed alterations in the town’s commercial zoning code. (See story page #.) While Supervisor John Jay LaValle tries to get in as many public comments as possible in the time between when the meeting begins and 6:30 when he is obligated by law to begin the public hearings, there are usually people waiting. They must then sit through the hearings and the board’s resolution calendar until the second public comment period at the end of the meeting. This does not make many people happy.

However, the grumbling from a particular group of “waiters” on this night was louder and more relentlessly negative than usual; complaints about New Yorkers being permitted to speak before locals and LaValle listening to special interests before his own constituents flitted about the corridors while high school students loitered until their parents could speak and take them home. Unable to resist an opportunity to talk to youngsters about local government’s role in their lives we struck up a conversation, asking if they had any idea what was being discussed. They didn’t know, or care. “It has nothing to do with us,” they said, echoing the words recently uttered by their parents. Having learned that adults don’t learn what they are not disposed to learn, we concentrated on the children.

“These people are talking about changing the zoning code for all of Brookhaven,” we said, watching their eyes glaze over, the memory of an admonishment to be nice to the elderly the only thing keeping them from bolting. “That means they decide what your own community will look like five years hence.” A flicker. “How?” one asked. A brief explanation of how the codes insure that all of Long Island isn’t developed into one huge strip mall and a reminder that, for example, gas stations don’t add buffers between the end of their sales area and the street out of the goodness of their hearts – they do it because the code mandates it. Now they saw how this boring evening might affect their own neighborhoods and were stirred to concede that it was important. Not interesting, but important. (They are still teenagers.)

Their parents, however, were beyond help. They maintained that the board should address their specific concerns in the middle of the public hearing rather than make them wait. In their defense, there were a number of long-winded speakers, some of whom were attorneys representing developers of different types (one did give a New York City address) and a lot of what was said was repeated ad nauseum by successive speakers. On the other hand, what was being debated here was of interest and importance to them whether or not the street on which they live or work will be immediately or directly impacted. The zoning codes are not the sexiest issue Brookhaven faces today, but it is intentionally obtuse to assume that no matter how they are decided, they are not one of the most important.