Nassau County Executive Thomas R. Suozzi joined local elected officials and community representatives on a bus tour throughout the community last Wednesday to discuss ideas for economic development in the East Meadow, Levittown and Salisbury area. In doing this, Suozzi plans to collect input from residents, community leaders and activists and apply their suggestions and concerns in shaping the future of local communities.

The bus tour, which began and ended at Eisenhower Park, provided community representatives on hand with an opportunity to point out key areas of concern. Among those present on the tour were Legislators Norma Gonsalves and Dennis Dunne, Hempstead Town Councilman Gary Hudes, chamber of commerce representatives, library board trustees and other community and organization representatives.

At the start of the tour, the county executive encouraged those in attendance to point out any areas which may concern the community. The bus headed down East Meadow Avenue to Prospect Avenue, down to Merrick Avenue (passing Prospect Park and The Meadows Senior Housing), headed to Old Country Road and through the Salisbury area. The bus continued through Salisbury down Salisbury Park Drive, over Newbridge Road and into Levittown.

While driving through parts of East Meadow and Salisbury, the county executive inquired about the price of homes in the community. This led him to point out that one of the plans he has for the county, in all communities, is more housing for both seniors and the "next generation."

"We have 14 of the top 100 schools in the nation, yet our young people can't afford to live here," Suozzi said. "We've lost 20 percent of the young people between the ages of 18 and 34 over the past 10 years."

Suozzi said that in addition to creating affordable housing to help young people stay on Long Island, Nassau needs to have more high skill, high tech companies around so that those young people have profitable, high-paying jobs. He also said that senior citizens in most communities are being drained by the high taxes and that housing needs to be readily available for them as well.

This led Suozzi to discuss some of the economic problems facing the county. The main problem the county executive pointed out was that Nassau has stopped growing. This is a problem, he said, because the county has only three sources of revenue - property taxes, sales taxes and state and federal aid.

Offering a history of the county, Suozzi discussed how much Nassau County grew within the past 50 years. Appropriately for this particular tour, the community of Levittown came up, which was the first suburban community in the nation.

"In 1947, Mr. Levitt built affordable housing for returning veterans after WWII," Suozzi said. "And from 1950 with 400,000 people, by 1960 Nassau County had 1.2 million people - that's three times the number of people in 10 years - explosive growth."

He continued noting that there was explosive residential homebuilding in the 1950s, 60s and 70s and then very explosive commercial building in the 60s, 70s and 80s. "Now we stopped growing. We're the same population today as we were in the late 1960s and we're the same property tax base as the early 1990s," he said. "If we stick with the same game plan that we have now, which is no growth but with growing expenses, there's four things that are naturally going to happen in our evolution that we will have no control over: property taxes are going to go higher, not just for us but for our school districts; services will go down; traffic is going to get worse; and young people will leave, that's the natural evolution ... if we don't wake up and change the game, change the rules, fix things up."

Suozzi explained his 10 point plan for a New Suburbia, an effort to keep all of the great things residents enjoy about the community while helping the county grow and not ruining the quality of life that all residents enjoy.

"The main idea behind New Suburbia is targeted growth in targeted locations," he said, leading to the purpose of such bus tours and meetings in communities throughout the county. "We are driving around your neighborhood [so] you can point out what's going on in your communities." The tour preceded a meeting which was held later that evening at Wisdom Lane Middle School, when the county executive further discussed these and other issues with residents.

Some key areas of concerns while driving around the East Meadow area included affordable housing, senior housing, some spots of graffiti, gang infiltration and traffic. Legislator Gonsalves brought up that the lack of affordable housing unfortunately leads many communities, including East Meadow, to have an increase in illegal housing.

Other issues discussed included ball fields, and lack thereof in some spots, and how certain brownfields and sumps can be reused and recycled into athletic fields for local sports organization and school district use. When passing through parts of Levittown and Island Trees, Legislator Dunne brought up that some county-owned fields are not being properly maintained and that various sports organizations have been mowing and cleaning the fields and would like to take ownership of them. Suozzi said that the county should not be in the business of owning small fields like that, that they should become properties of local towns and villages.

Traffic was another major area of concern brought up in all of the areas. The county executive reiterated that congestion is getting worse and worse in Nassau. He pointed out four geographic areas where encouraging development is a priority: traditional downtowns, because they build a sense of community and create a sense of character; brownfields, because they can be recycled and put back to productive use; minority neighborhoods, because they are places that have historically never been invested in before; and the area known as the Nassau County Hub, to establish it as the "downtown of Long Island." Suozzi noted that the area is already heavily developed but has many traffic problems. His goals include to fix the traffic problems, promoting more businesses, developing and rebuilding the Coliseum to make the area a cultural business centerpiece for all of Long Island.

To combat problems individual communities face and to further add to the benefits of living in each community, the county has drafted an Economic Development Plan that outlines broad goals for the future development of Nassau. The plan divides the county in 35 economic development areas, allowing it to work with each community to create a vision based on what residents would like to see in their neighborhoods. Over 20 similar tours and meetings have been held in various areas throughout the county and more are planned for the future.

Suozzi noted that with the support of Nassau's town supervisors and local mayor, along with the input of residents, the county will develop a detailed plan for the future of each community that will be incorporated into the Nassau County Master Plan. This plan will then be used to encourage the development you want in your neighborhood and discourage unwanted development.

"I really had not realized that there were so many local parks within the Levittown/East Meadow area that are maintained by the Town of Hempstead, with all the different pools, baseball fields and things like that," Suozzi said, adding that there are also some county parks that need to be better maintained, but also noting that the county will never be able to do it.

One suggestion that came up was making such parks into an "Adopt a Spot," where a local business could sponsor the park or field and help maintain it. The county executive asked the two local legislators, Gonsalves and Dunne, to help him get such plans moving forward.

"We have to figure out ways to try to do it and work together to get it done," Suozzi said. "We talked about a lot of different things here, saw a lot of different properties. What I'm trying to do is encourage people to be thinking about what we are trying to accomplish - how do we grow in ways that doesn't hurt our quality of life? ... It's not easy because these things contradict with each other directly - one is growing, the other thing is we don't want growth. We have to find a happy medium."

Overall, Suozzi stated that the communities of East Meadow, Levittown and Salisbury clearly have active representatives.

"You've got a very solid neighborhood, very nice places and very active community members that pick up on things," he said, noting that residents pointed out spots of graffiti and problems such as commercial parking and broken traffic lights that were immediately addressed. "You have a very active community here, you're very lucky."

Suozzi also pointed out the many pools and fields in the area, particularly in Levittown. "Most places don't have that. This is a very unique, wonderful solid place to live. The problem is that we're faced with a challenge over the next 20 years that this is going to catch up with us," he said. "There's this tremendous upwards pressure on our taxes - we have to address those problems or else this beautiful dream we have is not going to be the same dream it was."

Residents who are interested in taking part of developing the future of their community or who would like further information about these community meetings, call 571-6000.

"East Meadow, Levittown and Salisbury are great communities. We want to take care of these communities so that residents can enjoy them for years to come. I am very pleased that for the first time in many years, Nassau County residents are permitted a hand in shaping the future of their community," Suozzi said. "As we rebuild Nassau County government we now can also address neighborhood issues that have an impact on our suburban quality of life."