Accelerate Long Island launches website

Brookhaven -- Supervisor Mark Lesko Supervisor Mark Lesko said the... — **Brookhaven -- Supervisor Mark Lesko**

Supervisor Mark Lesko said the biggest challenge for Suffolk County’s largest township will be the daunting task of reorganizing town government. The town has had to dip into its surplus in recent years but will not be able to do that in 2013, Lesko said, necessitating a top-to-bottom review of town services to determine which it can afford to continue providing.

Declines in mortgage taxes and landfill revenue — and the overall soft economy — have spurred the changes, he said. “The road we’re on now is not sustainable,” he said.

The economy also is a major concern for 2012, Lesko said. Brookhaven needs to keep its landfill — the source of about 40 percent of town revenue — competitive in the marketplace, he said.

Brookhaven’s other big challenge is keeping code enforcement aggressive, Lesko said. The town has increased fines for quality-of-life violations by more than 300 percent since 2008 and needs to keep up that pace, he said.

(June 28, 2011) Credit: David Pokress

By Joe RyanSeptember 17, 2012

Accelerate Long Island, the nonprofit organization founded to nurture fledgling tech companies, has completed an entrepreneurial rite of passage of its own, and launched a website.

The site, at www.accelerateli.org, debuted MoOnday as former Brookhaven Town supervisor Mark Lesko begins work as executive director of the organization, founded last year as a project of the Long Island Association.

Its mission is to help build a network of software, biotech and energy companies fueled by research at Brookhaven National Laboratory, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Hofstra University, Stony Brook University and the North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System.

The website is part of a broader effort to create buzz about Long Island as a breeding ground for tech companies, hoping venture capitalists will take notice.

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