Sayville residents fight warehouse plan

Residents who live near Sayville Union Free School District's planned new maintenance facility are not giving up their opposition to the project.

About 50 people packed last week's Islip Planning Board meeting to make another pitch in what West Sayville Civic Association president Brendan McCurdy described as a "David and Goliath" battle to protect the neighborhood.

The school district last month submitted a road opening permit application to extend Garfield Avenue an additional 100 feet north of Howard Court, one of the final steps in a more than three-year process for the $1.1 million project.

The district is exempt from local zoning laws for the construction of the 8,900-square-foot storage warehouse on Garfield Avenue, but requires the road opening permit from the town.

The planning board voted to reserve its decision after hearing pleas from about a dozen residents, including Garfield Avenue resident Harry Berg.

"The entire community is very quiet," said Berg, who disputed official findings on the likely impact from the 27 maintenance vehicles the district plans to shift to the site, saying they would significantly increase traffic. "There's not a vehicle that drives down that area where you don't know the owner of the vehicle or the home."

Residents have fought the bid to open up the dead-end road, arguing all the way to State Supreme Court in a petition to have an environmental review overturned, an effort the court denied in May 2010.

Many of the residents who addressed last Thursday's hearing said they had purchased homes in the area precisely because of the dead-end streets and quiet atmosphere where their children could safely learn to ride bikes on neighborhood roads. "This project will completely destroy why I moved there," said one nearby resident, Tom Falco.

But Lisa Weaver, the attorney representing the district, said the district's access rights were not in question. "We are here to make sure the district is using a road [that] they have a legal right to . . . complies with the town's standards," she said. "We are here in the spirit of cooperation."

Planning Commissioner Dave Genaway, who has noted the maintenance facility is "an anomaly" in a residential area, said the town had urged the school district to find another way to access the site.

But board chairman Joe DeVincent noted the school district was within its legal rights. The board could not make a decision "on the basis of popularity," he said.