Opinion

Thanksgiving will be different at our house this year — starting with a change of venue, because social distancing won't work at our house, built when "cozy" was good. And that's just the beginning.

After confusing official reports of spiking COVID infection rates in Riverhead, I sought the town-level data. What I got was a bunch of baffle-gab and bullsh*t and a state official essentially telling me to take a hike.

For people with dementia, unquestionably the pandemic has been a grim ordeal. During extended lockdowns, the loss of social, even routine, contacts has hastened cognitive decline in great numbers of people.

The situation our district finds itself in right now — failed budgets, failed bond votes, upset and angry parents, dejected children — isn’t somebody else’s fault. It’s a direct result of the persistent lack of candor on display at every carefully scripted board meeting — of the board and a series of superintendents being consistently unwilling to give people straight answers to straight questions about subjects that are, in fact, the people’s business.

What 'following the science' really means.

Until a comprehensive and cumulative approach to zoning and the extent of industrial development in our community can be determined by the residents in coordination with the town board and its consultants there should be a moratorium on further industrial development in the 11933 zip code.

Prop 2 is yet another ploy to fix the county’s budget mess caused by its own fiscal mismanagement — by erasing its legal obligation to repay $154.17 million it “borrowed” from environmental protection funds, by erasing a court judgment of $29.4 million arising from an earlier lawsuit and by raiding the Sewer Assessment Stabilization Fund to the tune of at least $15 million. Voters should say no to this scam.

This was not an error a multiple-term member of the Board currently seeking a promotion to the New York State Assembly should have made.

Registering to be an organ donor does not affect your life but does change someone else's. Talk to your family about organ donation and consider being someone's hero.

Suffolk County's fiscal crisis long preceded the COVID pandemic, but the county seeks to blame COVID in its quest for a federal bailout. New column by Greg Blass.