Calone: Protect and grow Suffolk's future

David L. Calone, a venture capitalist, is chairman of the Suffolk County Planning Commission. These views are his own.

This November, Suffolk County will have its first contested election for county executive in nearly a decade. Only one other time in the past 30 years has there been an executive race with no incumbent. The unique dynamics of this election provide a rare chance to engage in a real conversation about Suffolk's future.

What can the county do to encourage economic growth? How can it protect critical natural resources? What policies would promote a more diverse mix of housing to meet the needs of young adults just entering the workforce, as well as the county's growing number of seniors? And how can the county encourage new housing and commercial development in downtowns and near transit hubs in order to minimize traffic?

Whether it's Steve Bellone or Angie Carpenter, the next county executive will play a vital role in pursuing these critical countywide priorities.

Economic growth results from the interaction of private investment and public policy. While a fiscally responsible county budget certainly improves the business climate, county government also must foster conditions that enable the private sector to drive long-term economic growth and bolster job creation.

This can be done by harnessing significant regional assets such as Suffolk's research institutions and educated workforce, as well as through a broad effort to make government more efficient and user-friendly through technology.

One example is the recently launched Suffolk Unified Permit Portal, a multiyear effort to create an online process for development applications that provides transparency and accountability for land use across Suffolk's 43 municipalities.

The next county executive also must reject the false choice between economic development and environmental protection. If we want our young people -- whose ideas, creativity and vitality are the future of Suffolk County -- to stay here, we have to preserve our open spaces and natural assets, while encouraging needed housing and commercial development.

In short, Suffolk must protect and grow.

Two recent efforts that marry these goals provide good building blocks. One is the recently adopted Suffolk County sewer financing bill. While the law is facing a procedural legal challenge, there is no doubt that it will, for the first time, make the county less dependent on Washington and Albany for sewer infrastructure money by providing a recurring, locally-controlled funding source. In the future, the law can be strengthened to prioritize projects located in downtowns or near transit that are consistent with countywide goals like multifamily housing and energy-efficient buildings.

In addition, Suffolk needs to leverage private capital sources for public infrastructure by enabling the participation of public-private partnerships, creating a county or regional infrastructure bank, and championing tax increment financing reform, which would fund location-specific development bonds with the future tax revenues generated by the growth in that area.

A second example is Brookhaven Town's recently released Carmans River Protection Plan, which seeks to defend that critical area while providing for needed development outside the watershed. The next county executive should work with the towns to use this balanced approach as a model to ensure that proposed projects with increased density in central Suffolk pay for the building limitations that protect our most sensitive water supplies in the heart of the pine barrens.

The next county executive will have to take additional steps to safeguard Long Island's sole source aquifer. Recent studies show that nitrogen and contaminant levels in our water supply are heading in the wrong direction. Protecting drinking water is essential to both public and economic health. Without a comprehensive solution, this critical regional asset will be impaired, and our economy will be burdened by substantial remediation costs.

The solution will lie in a portfolio of strategies, including sewer expansion, development and implementation of new septic technologies and farming techniques, and more frequent monitoring to determine whether Suffolk's slowing population growth mitigates the impact on our water supply.

The preservation of open space is another area where the new county executive must lead, to ensure that economic development and environmental protection go hand in hand. There are still some environmentally important last spaces that deserve prioritized protection. But, in the years to come, Suffolk will have limited dollars to spend on discretionary purchases of open space. The county, in coordination with the eastern towns, needs to promote clustered developments where a portion of a parcel is built upon and the rest is left forever undisturbed. This will save open space while keeping properties on the tax rolls.

Long Island lags behind other regions across the nation in creating regional housing goals and implementing policies to support them. Both Nassau and Suffolk have a much lower percentage of non-single-family homes than similarly situated suburban counties across the country. The lack of multifamily housing in Suffolk puts the path to home ownership beyond the reach of many, prevents young people from planting roots in the community, and increases traffic and commuting times, because people are forced to live further from their workplaces and from transportation hubs.

Suffolk hasn't updated its comprehensive plan in more than three decades. The new administration must work with the county legislature and others to finalize the new comprehensive plan, now in progress, and thus develop Suffolk's first integrated housing, transportation and infrastructure policy in recent history.

In particular, the plan should promote mixed-use residential and commercial development in downtowns and along the county's highway and railroad transportation spine, from Melville through Ronkonkoma and on to Riverhead. In addition, emphasis needs to be given to developing north-south transit connections and to building on the recent enhancements to the county's East End bus service.

Suffolk has great challenges and great promise. The only way to know if the county is on track for the long term is to set specific strategic goals and then work toward them. This election provides an opportunity for Steve Bellone and Angie Carpenter to engage in a substantive dialogue about what those goals should be. Soon, one of them will be in a position to tackle these critical issues and to implement policies that, in the fullness of time, will make Suffolk County into a more economically vibrant, ecologically secure, and affordable place to live.