Competing visions of housing are at center of town elections
Left, the Huntington Quadrangle in Melville, and right, downtown Kings Park. Credit: Howard Schnapp, Heather Walsh
In the neighboring towns of Huntington and Smithtown, political fights are brewing, ready to come to a head during next month's Republican Party primary.
On both sides of the towns' line, the arguments and battle cries are nearly identical. And the outcome of these supervisor races will say a lot about what the future holds not only for the leadership of each town but for Long Island in general.
It's the suburban debate of the moment: the push-and-pull between preservation and development, through the lens of two vastly different visions on the twitchy topic of housing.
In Smithtown, Suffolk County Legis. Rob Trotta is challenging Supervisor Ed Wehrheim, with Kings Park as the key battleground. In Huntington, it's town Councilwoman Brooke Lupinacci against Supervisor Ed Smyth, and Melville is the combat zone.
The lines are clearly drawn. Lupinacci and Trotta claim to be champions of preservation and open space, painting a dark picture of what new housing could bring and arguing that the incumbent favors overdevelopment. Smyth and Wehrheim, meanwhile, have bucked traditional Republican nay-saying with innovative efforts to redevelop tired downtowns and rusty office parks with needed residential, retail, and office space that suits those specific locales.
In both towns, however, the challengers promote a disingenuous narrative, falsely suggesting that housing would replace bucolic nature preserves, towering trees and vast stretches of green open space.
Last week, Trotta's "Save the Town of Smithtown" Facebook page featured a photo of a path winding through some trees.
"Rob Trotta doesn't just talk about preserving open space, he has a record of doing it," the post said. "One candidate has a proven record of protecting what makes Smithtown special. The other just talks about it."
Just hours later, Lupinacci's "Save Huntington" Facebook page featured a similar photo, of an open field with a tree rising in the blue sky.
"While many politicians hope to drive by a tall brick building one day that casts a dark shadow over what once was, I'll continue to fight to protect open space filled with trees, vibrant ecosystems and wildlife, that can show us all what can be," the post said.
The reality is that neither battlefield is paradise. In Melville, it's acres upon acres of mostly vacant office buildings and parking lots. In Kings Park, it's dilapidated buildings, vacant retail, old downtowns and, similarly, parking lots.
Neither scenario quite matches Joni Mitchell's metaphor: "They paved paradise to put up a parking lot."
The contenders buttress their cynical arguments with unfortunate and misleading rhetoric. Smyth has "pushed hard to urbanize our Town," Lupinacci wrote. Wehrheim wants to "Queens-ify Suffolk County," Trotta said in an interview. In that conversation, Trotta went as far as to criticize a recently-completed housing complex in downtown Smithtown because "they have air conditioners sticking out of the building like it's the Bronx."
These are battles that have been waged before and will be waged again, in towns and villages across Long Island and beyond. Even in Queens, there's an ongoing debate over whether to alienate "parkland" to build a casino resort. The "parkland" in question? The Citi Field parking lot.
There's a legitimate conversation to be had in some parts of Long Island about keeping open space and preserving land.
But these spots in Melville and Kings Park are not those places, and that's not the conversation happening in Huntington or Smithtown.
Columnist Randi F. Marshall's opinions are her own.
Randi Marshall is a member of the Newsday editorial board.
