At a Rotary Club meeting this week, we heard one man's solution to the traffic and parking problems in Nassau. It was "No More Building. There's no room for any more buildings and certainly no room for more cars. We just have to stop building." People who think like this are now termed "BANANAs." They are more extreme forms of NIMBYs. NIMBY, as we all know, stands for Not In My Backyard. BANANA stands for Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything. We can almost hear the cries of the building trades unions at the very thought. Sometimes, when we are stuck in traffic or gaze in amazement at the size of new construction, we are tempted by the philosophy of the BANANAs. Most of the time we recognize that things and places change. We do not live in an artificial community like Colonial Williamsburg. Change is inevitable, but it must be managed and controlled. Last year the Town of North Hempstead placed an Environmental Legacy Bond issue on the ballot. The town held a number of sessions to explain the plans for the Environmental Legacy Fund and they were poorly attended. Administration officials were concerned and were confounded when the bond issue passed with 70 percent of the voters favoring it. "They didn't come out because they approved of it. They want things preserved," said one official. This past Tuesday, the Environmental Legacy Commission gave its first report to the town board. The deadline for this newspaper came before those recommendations were made public. Without seeing them, we are sure that there will be some controversy surrounding the choices of what to preserve. But we are also sure that the residents of North Hempstead, although not all BANANAs, want to see their beautiful town preserved.

E.F.B.