Hempstead Town is wrong to ignore Baldwin's residents
Hempstead Town Supervisor Don Clavin heard from Baldwin residents who vigorously advocated for downtown projects. Credit: Newsday
Observers of Tuesday's Town of Hempstead board meeting might have thought they had stepped into an Alice in Wonderland story, traveling Through the Looking Glass and into a world where everything had been reversed.
In this world, so unlike Long Island's typical reality, residents of a community were begging for new development, housing, revitalization. One after another, residents of Baldwin stepped to the microphone, loudly, forcefully, unanimously advocating for projects proposed for their downtown. Each pleaded with Hempstead Town Supervisor Don Clavin and the town board.
"Do your job," one resident said.
"I do believe it's time for us to act," said another.
The response came just weeks after Clavin and the town board proposed a yearlong moratorium for any development in Baldwin — a plan that met with angry pushback. But the proposed alternative — an intensive environmental review on each project combined with a greater role for the town board — didn't go over well, either. And Tuesday, Baldwin's residents came to register their disapproval.
"The Town of Hempstead has failed the Baldwin community," one resident said.
It's a phrase said often at local meetings across Long Island. Usually, however, it's said when a resident is asking for housing and other development not to happen.
Hempstead officials, meanwhile, claim to be looking out for their residents. But they've chosen to bring in outside counsel, attorneys Steven Losquadro and William Duffy, to assess the Baldwin situation and come up with a new code and procedure on how to handle development there. When Losquadro came to the microphone Tuesday, he said the board asked him to examine how the Baldwin overlay district could work "in the best interests of the residents."
"The mandate of the town and the desire of the town is to have development move forward, but in the best interests of the residents, so that the development and the growth and the transformative projects … could take place … in a reasonable way, in a responsible way," Losquadro said.
"Best interests of the residents" sounded like code for "best interests of the board."
And how would Losquadro, of Rocky Point, know better than Baldwin residents what their "best interests" are, especially when those residents have made their interests quite clear?
Losquadro said in an interview Tuesday afternoon that he wasn't looking to "stymie" development, but only to make the process better. And he said he spoke to Baldwin representatives after the meeting so he could understand their concerns.
But the real goal of his work was clear in his message at Tuesday's meeting.
Within 45 days, Losquadro said, he'll develop a new code that addresses everything from fire and police to traffic and sewer and that, he said, "more importantly, puts power and authority in the town board and not in another board that had been put into place, so that the residents' interests can be spoken to and answered for."
Ah. Suddenly, the meeting popped out of the looking glass and back into typical Hempstead reality. A reality where the "more important" piece is preserving the power to make decisions. In flexing that power, an arrogant town board pretends it knows what's best for Baldwin more than the residents of Baldwin. And, since Baldwin is a hamlet without its own elected leadership, its residents are left powerless.
Now they have woken up from the Looking Glass dream — and find themselves back on Long Island, where all too often such dreams go to die.
Columnist Randi F. Marshall's opinions are her own.
Randi Marshall is a member of the Newsday editorial board.
