An article like this week's cover story, "A Good Idea Spoiled," doesn't just fall out of the sky. In fact, it's more like a culmination of all the past stories, remembered conversations, and personal observations we've written, had or encountered over the years.

Though our summary of our findings may well have come to a rather pointed conclusion, what we hope to achieve by publishing this piece is getting everybody on the same page and talking about realities rather than the spin-meisters reality filtered through rose colored glasses.

If any one thing could be said to have set this investigation in motion, it was that while the Westbury Business Improvement District has been in existence for five years, the "physical plant" that is Post Avenue has only appeared to decline.

Just using one's own eyes, one had to wonder, what goes on here?

In addition, there was the Old Westbury resident quoted in the piece. She said she didn't feel comfortable doing her banking on Post Avenue anymore.

While many people might accuse her of having certain negative feelings about race or other people's socio-economics, we didn't see that.

Instead we thought about something else -- the fact that her neighbors can no longer be found on Post Avenue.

Five years ago, when we first came to this newspaper, it wasn't uncommon to run into someone you knew each and every time you walked down Post Avenue.

Conversations on street corners were commonplace. A sense of community still ran rampant on Post.

Today, while there are still many, many fine retailers on Westbury's Main Street -- Alfredo's Pizzeria, Gino's Pizzeria, Joe's European Haircutters, Prochell's Florist, Espositio's Meats, Phame Haircutters, and others -- that feeling of Post Avenue as a kind of social mecca is gone. And that's really too bad.

We're sure that in the days and weeks ahead, this lengthy article will likely ignite a firestorm. So be it.

We didn't write to bury Caesar. We simply strove to illuminate his actions.

Daniel J. McCue