Housing in Suffolk, smell of marijuana, cutting school district costs

Homeownership an elusive goal

Newsday’s editorial on housing is absolutely correct “Suffolk needs all kinds of housing,” Editorial, Sept. 10]. Legislators opposed to mixed-use housing emphasize Long Island’s historic commitment to single-family homes. Yet today, this model is out of reach for most. A family would have to earn $247,500 to afford Suffolk’s median-priced $750,000 home.

The editorial singles out Anthony Picarillo, presiding officer of the Suffolk County Legislature, for his intransigence. He is not alone. In December 2024, the Welfare to Work Commission of the legislature presented a report to the Seniors and Human Services Committee on the need for affordable housing. We called for a summit hosted by the county executive to begin a conversation around a coordinated county response to its affordable housing shortage.

The following November, the commission held five hours of testimony from housing experts on how to overcome the impediments to affordable housing in Suffolk. One month later, the legislature dissolved the commission.

This is a depressing local example of the federal government’s current playbook to silence voices.

— Richard Koubek, Dix Hills

The writer is former chair of the Welfare to Work Commission of the Suffolk County Legislature.

The sad truth for most of America and especially Long Island is that if your parents do not own a home, you will never own a home yourself. The amount of money needed for a down payment is staggering. You need to make more than $100,000 a year to even have a slight chance of buying a house.

Besides the big cost of the house itself, you must be able to afford the property taxes. On LI, those are high in part to pay for the cost of salaries of public employees, like teachers and police.

A huge part of that is the funding required to pay their pensions. If government is serious about making housing affordable on LI, it has to eliminate defined pension plans for both entities and replace them with money on top of earnings. If someone is earning $50,000, the company (or government) will put $5,000 a year into investment funds.

The benefit of this is that the funding ends once the worker retires, saving millions of dollars each year. My wife had this plan and after working for 25 years and with proper investing, we have enough money to live very comfortably.

— Bob Cavaliere, Port Jefferson Station

Our quality of life is going to pot

I related to the article on complaints about the smell of marijuana at the U.S. Open “Something’s in the air,” U.S. Open, Sept. 6].

I’m bombarded with the pervasive stench of weed regularly. The joy of a beautiful day in Central Park is overshadowed by the fruitless search for oxygen. The smell carries from far-off unseen places. The excitement of Broadway has now been seemingly forever-altered by the stench within the theater, where smoking isn’t allowed. How did it get there?

The overpowering odor is in the smokers’ hair and clothing. When the man sitting next to me at the last show I attended laughed, he emitted strong breaths of weed. You are all carrying the smell with you way past the time you smoked.

Dear weed users, I’m sure you are some of the people who celebrated when cigarette smoking was banned from offices, or who complained when the person in front of you at a concert drowned herself in perfume. You should understand.

I assume you’re not addicted. Weed’s legal. You do you. But can you do you when you are not going to a public space? The tennis players and I would like to breathe.

— Roberta Comerchero, Commack

Smoking pot became legal in New York State in 2021 for economic growth and public health. If it helps one medicinally, absolutely.

Unfortunately, it has gotten to the point where people are fed up with it infringing on their right to breathe clean, fresh air as they were at the U.S. Open. I’ve smelled it in the parking lot of the library and supermarket. If one wants to smoke it, do so in the confines of your own home but not in public. And for the person who takes a morning walk by my house, it would be appreciated if you can kindly refrain from smoking pot until I get my morning paper!

— Rose Syms, Oceanside

It’s up to school districts to cut costs

It is outrageous that the tax cap, which has been in effect for numerous years, may no longer exist [“NY’s 2% tax cap: A rule that’s made to be broken,” News, Sept. 7]. This will be detrimental to homeowners on Long Island where we pay the highest school taxes in the state. I have lived in the Oyster Bay-East Norwich school district for 58 years and our budget for 2026-27 is $69,378,079 for a total enrollment of only about 1,350 students in grades K-12. This equates to about $51,000 per student, and is absolutely ludicrous. The superintendent earns more than $380,000 for this small district.

Will the administration have carte blanche if the tax cap disappears? It is up to the administrators and Board of Education members to strive to make reductions. There are many ways to cut costs without affecting the students’ requirements.

— Grace Searby, Oyster Bay