We Need to Accelerate and Innovate our Community

My wife Laura and I saved enough to recently purchase a home in this community because we love the area and want to lay down roots here. Unfortunately, for many young people, living in Suffolk County is not an option. A lack of opportunity and the prospect of spending years in their parents' basement sends many of our best minds packing. As young people flee, opportunities vanish and the tax burden is placed even more disproportionately on seniors, thus creating a vicious cycle.

Fortunately, we have leaders who are recognizing this challenge and taking it on. Brookhaven Supervisor Mark Lesko began the Accelerate Long Island program to encourage our world-class research institutions to work together, while County Executive candidate Steve Bellone is proposing the creation of Innovation Zones to ensure that the companies and jobs that emerge from those research institutions remain in Suffolk County.

As a candidate for Suffolk County Legislature, I am proud to have Mark Lesko and Steve Bellone's support, and I plan on being a leader in the implementation of these programs.

We also need to do more to make sure that people looking for work have the skills to fill today's jobs. I am proud to have the endorsement of the Faculty Association of Suffolk County Community College because I support the programs they offer to train workers.

For too long, our leaders have been complacent as taxes have risen, our brightest young minds have fled, and the rest of us have been squeezed. It is time for new leaders who understand the need to seize the opportunities we have thanks to exceptional research institutions like Brookhaven National Lab and Stony Brook University to create good jobs and a sustainable future. This is government doing what it does best, creating the environment for private sector growth and good jobs that can sustain middle class families.

I hope to have the opportunity to work alongside of Supervisor Lesko and our next County Executive, Steve Bellone, to make this vision a reality.