Meet and Greet Islip Town Councilman James O'Connor

1373 Veterans Memorial Highway,Hauppauge NY 11788

21 February, 2022

Description

Opportunity to help revitalize Hauppauge HRDA is actively advocating for Hauppauge parks that can be accessible by Hauppauge residents. Specifically, we are focused in the short term on revitalization of existing parks with local townships recognizing it shortens the time frame to delivery. as compared with acquiring new park land to be developed. For Islip, we have been working to gain commitment to revitalization of Hidden Pond Park for soccer fields and HYO complex for baseball fields that are desperately needed by our community. With Smithtown, we have been working to gain commitment to the local revitalization of parks including Whitman Park for a lighted Baseball field and update to facilities and playgrounds and Garvey Park. Hauppauge is underserved with open space per capita standards and is one of the only towns that does not have youth sports fields despite being one of the larger youth-oriented sports programs on Long Island. We are making tremendous progress with Smithtown and Islip to solve the problem, but we need stakeholders in a room and gain commitment to the existing park revitalization plans. Doing so, will effectively deliver what the 20,000 Hauppauge residents are looking for from our representatives. Remember Hauppauge is split between Islip and Smithtown jurisdictional influence and accountability depending on the location of the residents’ home which brings in tax revenue and access implications. This is complicating the matter but there should be a solution to such an issue if we narrow the focus around registered youth sports and HRDA membership pass which allows for access to only Hauppauge based parks. This strategy doesn't upset the status quo of park town ownership and simply allows access by Hauppauge residents of Hauppauge-located parks. Separately, we are advocating for additional park land that will take more time, especially acres owned by NYS. However, doing so, would get our Hauppauge community to an acceptable published per capita open space ratio as per attached in addition to this shorter-term revitalization effort referenced.