Patchogue Village Board Meetings Is Democracy As Up Close As It Gets

On Monday night May 9th 7:30 p.m. at Village Hall, the for its first meeting of the month. It's a long tradition of such meeting and democracy in action. I am grateful that the Patch has offered me a chance to comment on those meetings. Over the past few years I have gone to quite a few of them and as a result I have been impressed with the number of issues that are discussed and acted on at those meetings. And just as impressed that most of them go unreported or once reported never get any follow up when those issues can affect hundreds if not thousands of residents. But somehow they disappear from public view. I hope that I can help focus some long term attention on those kind of issues. They may disappear from being reported but they do not go away in reality and that story is one I want to report.

This Monday one such issue will be a new village code to limit valet parking on public streets. Sounds like a sleeper issue to some but to those residents who live near and some other large Tikki bars and restaurants in the village it most certainly is a quality of life issue that is on the front burner of community concerns. The success of recreational businesses on the riverfront has also brought a spike in traffic and with that a loss of neighborhood as local streets get taken up as parking for businesses that seem to have no end to the number of customers streaming through their front doors.

The proposed law seeks to limit the use of public streets for parking and should help local residents feel that their concern about their neighborhood becoming swamped with strangers counts and is not forgotten.

In the days ahead I intend to talk about how that issue did get resolved by the Trustees and a host of other issues that no doubt will come up at Monday's meeting.

In the process I am going to explain in my own words just how local democracy works in Patchogue Village. As they say "knowledge is power". I hope that in time others will be encouraged to find their voice and act for their interests what ever those interests might be. That is after all what a democracy is supposed to about: government of, for and by the people.