Denise Civiletti

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.

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.

If your community is important to you, it’s time to recognize the value of the people who work to ensure transparency in its governance, who work to help your community celebrate its successes, cope with its failures or mourn its losses — your local news providers.

Racism lives, in our town and across the country. It’s time we confront the beliefs we hold in our own hearts and start having some serious conversations, however uncomfortable they may be, about how to bring about the change that’s needed to solve the problems we face — together.

Coronavirus has been silently ravaging nursing homes and adult care facilities across New York State, killing residents at an alarming rate — which, until this week, has largely been shielded from the public by state and local officials.

This isn't how our 10th anniversary was supposed to be, but life, news, — and a pandemic — happened.

Stuck with the unintended consequences of Facebook's profanity filter algorithm.

The state comptroller says budget documents should show a few years’ worth of budget data. Not in Riverhead, where the budget shows no actual numbers for the prior year or year-to-date.

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the “Great Grumman Giveaway” election campaign of Republicans running for town board in 1999 on the platform that the Democratic majority in office had sold off the town’s most valuable asset for a song.

Americans are armed to the teeth. Hate flows through the veins of some of us. Mental illness affects others. The combination of weapons, hate and depravity is deadly. The resulting lawlessness is terrifying. This is the real “American carnage.”