By Brookhaven town Supervisor Mark Lesko recently visited Newsday to talk to reporters Sophia Chang and Patrick Whittle and a group of editors about issues and developments in the town. Here are excerpts.. On the future of the Carmans River protection plan: "The opponents of the original proposed plan on my town board, they don't seem themselves to have an alternative plan . . . my colleagues stopped the process from even starting.". On why the original Carmans River plan was withdrawn: "In the postmortem of all of this, where I think the train went off the tracks is when you brought in the affordable housing piece into the mix, then we really saw the worst of Brookhaven . . . Many references to 'those people' when talking about affordable housing . . . There's a racial component to this. And once the discussion became about that, I think the whole plan was in trouble.". On his push to expand the town landfill: "Our main revenue source is the landfill . . . I feel obligated to protect that resource from a fiscal standpoint. The residents who live near the landfill, it's an unpleasant thing to live near. I get that . . . we need to view our landfill as a regional asset, which it really is . . . So what I've asked for is to start a long-term study of waste management issues generally, with a particular focus on the landfill . . . The thing right now we're up against: Do we do a short-term, relatively modest expansion of the landfill vertically to take in more material? . . . Those residents (near the landfill) are taxpayers and they're paying taxes to the town. We represent them. So we can't be callous about the impacts on their quality of life.". On Accelerate Long Island's potential to transform the region: "I think it's the key to our economic future on Long Island . . . So we need to get to a place where we make things again, sell them elsewhere, take other people's money and bring it to our local economy . . . We have some of the most highly educated people in the world who live on Long Island . . . It's that entrepreneurial talent that we're missing.". On the plan to privatize some town services: "The bottom line is it's not just the town, all the levels of government are moving toward public-private partnerships. . . . With dwindling revenues you don't have the funding that allows government to provide these services . . . My view is you try to continue to provide the services . . . I'm a big believer in letting the market tell us what can work and what can't.". On the Ronkonkoma Hub project: "It's one of those projects where the stars seem to be aligned . . . The obstacle is we need a sewage treatment plant. Without that, nothing else happens . . . The town doesn't own any property . . . So you've got to do mass acquisitions. It's costly . . . And so what we're trying to do on the governmental side [is] provide the funding or at least the mechanism for funding for the sewage treatment plant . . . The thing that we're all trying to impress upon people [is] I have probably $300 million of private investment, stacked against $25 million in public investment for sewer infrastructure. That type of leverage, that type of payback . . . you can't get a better investment.". On the possibility of eminent domain to acquire property for the Hub: "I think you can't take it off the table . . . It all really depends on the developers and we've got good ones, so my hope is that we can do this privately. If they can't, like I said, we can't take eminent domain off the table. "
