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Shelter Island Reporter Letters to the Editor

REPORTER FILE PHOTO|
REPORTER FILE PHOTO|

Thanks, y’all
To the Editor:
Thanks to all Shelter Island people for their amazing hurricane relief compassion and generosity.

Kudos go to the Highway Department for its support; Ace Hardware for its assistance; Julie Lane and the Reporter staff for a supportive article and photo; and Joanne and Lisa for their social media work to spread the word.

A special shout-out goes to Bridg, Jaime, Jeff, Lance, Mike, Stella, Stuart and Tom. Their support drove the drive.

As of last week, the Galveston Food Pantry had a working supply chain gratefully accepted financial support, but did not require additional food deliveries. The Jernick truck will instead go the Naples, Florida where its cargo will provide critical assistance.

Thanks, y’all for being such good people.
DON YOUNG
Shelter Island

To bury or not to bury
To the Editor:
I’ve lived on Long Island my entire life and previously served in local government. I understand the importance of transparency and fairness, especially when it comes to my hard-earned money.

Recently, there have been calls by some to bury an overhead line from Eastport to Riverhead along a route that has had a similar overhead line for more than 50 years. The advocates propose the additional $70 to $100 million be charged to all Long Island residents through their electric bills.

PSEG, on behalf of LIPA, goes through an extensive analysis to decide whether to build lines overhead or underground. The process weighs visual and technical considerations, including costs and benefits. There is a statewide standard for these decisions that seems to work well in the rest of New York.

The LIPA Board of Trustees, of which I am a member, plans to consider this statewide standard at our September meeting. I personally support this proposal. The Board welcomes comments on whether this standard is fair to all Long Island residents. Using this state-wide standard, the Eastport to Riverhead line would remain overhead, as it has been for the last 50 years.

Underground lines simply do not provide enough benefit for their cost, in most cases. Nevertheless, some communities want LIPA to put the lines underground anyway. It’s an understandable response.

That’s why LIPA offers a program to allow local residents who prefer underground lines to bury the lines at their own expense. LIPA will even finance the additional cost through a charge on local electric bills. Over the last 20 years only one community has elected this option.

Long Island is 110 miles long. If residents in a community are unhappy with the results produced by a fair statewide standard, they are invited to work with LIPA to bury the lines in their neighborhood at their expense. That is the only way to provide fairness to all the residents of Long Island.
TOM McATEER
Vice chairman, LIPA Board of Trustees

Issues of the day
To the Editor:
Thank you so much for the wonderful comments on Bob Reiter (“Back to basics,” September 14).

Bob was a true Shelter Island icon, taking a scallop shop to a fine restaurant — if only those walls could talk.

Anyone who attended Bob’s memorial knows all this did not happen without the help of his boys, Jeffrey, Michael and Earl, and of course, the good woman he was married to, Kolina Nevel Reiter. The stories to be told are endless.

Our Island now becomes ours again, as the summer vacationers head back home and leave us to enjoy a glorious uncrowded fall — so far!

I’ve not had an opportunity to comment on some of the letters written the past few weeks, or on our award-winning cartoonist’s recent entries. I don’t quite get what the interpretation of the balloons should be, but certainly get the poem and I could probably add to it.

There certainly is a seat at my house for all four-legged creatures and a branch for the eagle.

Short-term rental legislation needs to be scrapped or shredded. Trying to amend it would just be a waste of time. How many complaints were there this summer?

On another urgent topic: The estuary and the aquifer need to be protected, and now! The quandary is, should the “powers that be” start from the center of the Island to upgrade aging septic systems or start within the shoreline district. I’d like to see some solid guidelines from the Suffolk County Department of Health Services that make sense.

And by the way, where is the Bridge Street “potty”?
GEORGIANA KETCHAM
Shelter Island