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This week in Shelter Island history

REPORTER FILE PHOTO Highway Department worker Jim Lenzer was at work 10 years ago clearing snow in the Center from the Blizzard of 2005.
REPORTER FILE PHOTO
Highway Department worker Jim Lenzer was at work 10 years ago clearing snow from the Blizzard of 2005 in the Center .

50 YEARS AGO IN HISTORY

Satchel Paige was named the All-Time Outstanding Player by the National Baseball Congress
Billboard was being hailed as the world’s premier weekly music publication

Peter Jennings, at 26, was named ABC Nightly News anchor

The average income was $5,942

A first-class stamp cost 5 cents

50 YEARS AGO
Divide and survive, not divide to conquer

Suffolk County Executive H. Lee Dennison 50 years ago appealed to East End municipalities to abandon talk of creating a separate Peconic County, saying “Succession is not the answer to anything.” But the Reporter at the time argued that while Shelter Island’s voice would be the same — only one Island representative to a new county group — at least that representative would be dealing with similarly rural town representatives whose interests are very similar to those of Islanders. But binding the East End rural towns to the Suffolk Country group means balancing rural interests against better represented industrial towns to the west.

POSTSCRIPT: Fifth years later, there continue to be rumblings among East Enders about succession from Suffolk County, but no apparent action to succeed from Suffolk County and form a new Peconic County.

30 YEARS AGO
Assessment Advisory Group organizes

Concerned with potential changes in property assessments, resident Barbara Allen organized a group to advise town officials in their efforts to devise an equitable revision. Ms. Allen denied the effort was related to any personal plans for a political campaign. Instead, she said it was related to a review of her own tax bill that led her to wonder why she was spending more than others on the Island.

POSTSCRIPT: With all the discussion of an imbalance in the existing assessments at the time, it wasn’t until January 1995 that a new code was due to be implemented and then it was delayed another year to allow time for state personnel to convert raw data into an undated value-based tax assessment. That system is still in place.

20 YEARS AGO
A small Tanglewood on Shelter Island?
Nostrand Parkway resident Richard Williams was proposing a three-day mini-Tanglewood music program for August that would include a 50-piece symphony orchestra performing under a 750-seat tent plus blankets spread on the lawn on the Coecles Harbor side of St. Gabriel’s grounds. The Town Board struggled with the proposal that wasn’t proving popular among residents.

POSTSCRIPT: If the Island was dubious about hosting a three-day music festival 20 years ago, it opened its arms to the Perlman Music Program when Itzhak and Toby Perlman came knocking in 2000. The 28-acre site that was once The Peconic Lodge thrives today.

10 YEARS AGO
Island digging out

Ten years ago, Islanders were digging their way out of 15 inches of snow that constituted the Blizzard of 2005. Police reported a few weather-related accidents but credit went to Mark Ketcham’s Highway Department workers who cleared and sanded and salted roads to keep them manageable.

POSTSCRIPT: Obviously, this week’s storm eclipsed that 2005 blizzard, dropping about two feet of the white stuff here and similar amounts on both North and South forks. Orient got 30 inches, topping the snowfall anywhere else.

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