Angie M. Carpenter for Islip supervisor

Governing the Town of Islip, with more than 330,000 residents and a diverse social and economic makeup all its own, requires a deep knowledge of all its communities and a fair amount of political seasoning. The challenges are varied and always changing.

Republican incumbent Angie M. Carpenter, who over the past 30 years also served as a Suffolk County legislator and county treasurer, now seeks her third full term in the job she’s held since 2015. Her Democratic challenger is a newcomer to local elections, Kenneth A. Colón, who has worked in the health technology field, studied patterns of addiction, and most recently served as data manager for suicide prevention initiatives in the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.

Comparing their arguments for why they deserve the job means contemplating a competitive tale of two Islips. The Islip touted by Carpenter has cleaned up and improved a notorious haven for drugs, Ross Memorial Park in Brentwood, while making slow but steady progress in housing development, maintaining important services, keeping budgets in order, and confronting the COVID-19 pandemic as effectively as possible. The town as evoked by Colón underserves the jobless and desperately drug-addicted, has patronage hires and inadequate infrastructure, and fails to plan comprehensively for the future.

The candidates are sharply different in what they choose to describe, and how, about Suffolk’s second-biggest town. Meantime, both frankly acknowledge that affordable housing will require hard effort and community outreach to negotiate, and that solid waste disposal will require a regional approach, and perhaps a new incinerator. The winner must zero in on those areas with newly focused plans.

Long Island MacArthur Airport is another challenge. While administrators have had to dip into a fund balance to keep the place operating, Carpenter, 80, of West Islip, seems to work well with other interested parties, including Sen. Chuck Schumer, to boost business. As announced last week, Breeze Airways is adding nonstop flights from MacArthur to Vero Beach, Florida, starting in late December. She has also helped bring in more professional management for the facility.

Colón, 27, of Brentwood, argues that a major priority shift is needed by creating a Department of Social Services like those that work on a town level in Babylon and Brookhaven. Given this is mainly a county function, it seems unlikely that the funding for such a new governance structure would be available. But there does seem to be a need for strategic approaches on addiction and mental illness; the town would do well to listen to Colón as an adviser or administrator on these matters.

For her experience and knowledge, and what's been a generally successful tenure so far, Newsday endorses Carpenter.