History
Suffolk County has been
lying to everyone since the beginning.
The
County has never delivered on
any
promise
made to this community.
Thought the history of this range is
extremely complex and hardly as simple
as "who was here first", it would take
volumes of text to fully explain its
labyrinthine saga. So
instead we offer a sort of "Cliffs Notes" version of the
Rubik's
Cube that is the Suffolk County Trap and
Skeet Range.
The
RANGE ITSELF...
The Suffolk County Trap and Skeet
range began life on Gerard Road as the
"Nassau Gun Club" back in 1954 and
existed as a private gun club for about
ten years until the County assumed
ownership of the land under eminent
domain around 1964.
When the Nassau Gun Club first opened
its doors for business, the noise
generated from the facility annoyed
residents on Gerard Road and complaints
were made. The late Ray Corwin
referenced this fact in a statement made
to the Board of Trustees of the Suffolk
County Department of Parks, Recreation
and Conservation when he said, “as soon as the shooting began, one neighbor
that lived across the street, Mrs. Glover
was upset with the noise and attained an
attorney, and it was determined that Mrs.
Glover receive a nuisance fee.”
(From the May
6, 2004 minutes of the Board of Trustees of
Suffolk County Department of Parks,
Recreation and Conservation)
|
 In
addition to proving that noise has always been
an issue concerning the
range, the comments made
by Mr. Corwin serve to
illustrate the fact that
houses
existed prior to the
establishment of the range.
So perhaps it's time to put to
rest the rather tiresome
"range was here first"
rhetoric once and for
all and simply accept
the
reality that it wasn't.
|
|
The
first lie...
In the early 1990's many first-time
homebuyers looked at
houses in this area.
The models for the development
were located directly across the street from the
entrance to the shooting range, so naturally people had
questions about it. The builder claimed that
the range
was to be closed in 1995 and reopened elsewhere.
Understanding that a builder would say pretty much
anything to sell a house, almost everyone decided to
look into that claim.
Calls were placed to the Suffolk County Department of
Parks and Recreation (the sign at the range listed it
as the entity in charge) and they were asked if there was
any truth to the claim that the range would be
relocated. The
Department of Parks' response was an emphatic "Yes".
They said that the
then current vendor's lease was due to expire in 1995
and that they would then be relocating the facility to
county property located west of the Suffolk County
Police headquarters building on Yaphank Avenue, (over a
mile and a half away).
Many who then called the
Suffolk Police headquarters to
ask if they had heard anything about this were told that not only had they heard of it,
but that there was also talk of the County creating a
dual-use range with the police department, (part police
firing range and part public shooting range). Calls were
also placed to Park Police Headquarters located in Southaven Park
park itself and they confirmed that they too had been
apprised of this plan.
With
assurances such as those, people were
satisfied that the claim was true.
After all, why would the Parks
Department lie about moving what most
people saw as little more than a big
open field? In 1990 there were
many other big open fields on Long
Island and surely the County wouldn't
actually keep a shooting range right
next door to a residential community,
would they?
Needless to say, 1995 arrived
and the range was going
nowhere.
The
mendacity had begun.
Parks Commissioner
Michael Franks along with
his Deputy Commissioner Chuck Skinner, called interested
residents to a meeting at the range to explain that it
was NOT going to move
as promised and said that
the reason why the range was not going anywhere was
because the new site would be too close to the recently
built County Infirmary (now known as the Foley Nursing Center) and would...
(wait for it)... pose a disturbance
to the residents there.
He
then passed out a seven page document
explaining what a great neighbor the
range was going to be. It included
information about lead cleanup and noise
mitigation among other things and from
that moment on until the range was
closed in October of 2001, not a single
solitary thing was done to alleviate
either problem.
THE WONDER YEARS (1996 - 2001)
We
recall fondly the days that we refer to
as The
Wonder Years
primarily because we
wondered how anyone or anything could
have balls big enough to pull the crap
that the County and the range's new
vendor pulled in those days.
It
wasn't bad enough that just after 1992
ended, the County decided to allow the
Sporting Clays Course to move in.
Now instead of just an annoying (but
tolerable) "snap-crackle-pop", there
were now cannon-like "BOOMS" occurring
in pairs and at intervals of 3 to 5
seconds. Since this wonderful new
addition faced directly at the growing
community (just as it does today),
it was now officially impossible for
anyone to escape the sound of gunfire.
In fact, the reports not only invaded
the neighborhood directly, but once
there they began to bounce off of one
house and then another, filling the air
with not just cannon blasts, but
ECHOES
of cannon blasts too!
It
wasn't too long before many people began
to complain that this new addition --
one which was "not here first" was quite
unnerving, especially at
9:00AM.
So the community lobbied the County to
consider opening an hour later at
10:00AM.
The County said that they would do so,
but in return for the "lost time", would
we be willing to allow the range to
remain open until dusk, ONE
EVENING PER WEEK?
Everyone figured that one night wouldn't
be so bad in exchange for an extra
hour's peace in the mornings, so we said
"OK". Well, the County's promise
of "one evening" lasted for exactly two
weeks, after which the range stayed open
EVERY
SINGLE DAY UNTIL DUSK.
So
this meant that there were virtually no
daylight hours that were not accompanied
by gunfire. If one came home from
work on a hot summer day, there was
absolutely no opportunity to simply sit
in one's backyard with a cold beer or an
iced tea and just relax -- unless
relaxation included the booming gunfire
that lasted until just before it got
dark.
Naturally, everyone complained and the
County was of course "looking into it",
but by then we all knew what that meant
but we kept on complaining and calling
them the lying bastards that they were
but it all fell on deaf ears
(probably from being around their range
too much).
The next
lie...
In
October of 2001 the range was closed
and would remain closed for almost
five years.
When
news of the closure hit the
neighborhood, it was like Times Square
on New Year's Eve! An almost
audible sigh of relief could be heard
from the entire neighborhood because
that's when we all got our lives back
(or so we thought).
Building continued here in South
Yaphank and more importantly, people actually began
LIVING in their homes. Patio's,
pools, decks, swing sets, hammocks --
all of the things one associates with a
suburban community all began to be built
or used, many for the first time.
The community had finally begun to
actually LOOK like a community and more
significantly, it began to actually FEEL
like one.
In early 2002 we heard rumblings about
"vendors" and "RFP's" and we stayed
plugged in to what was going on and we
attended meetings and we made our case
for keeping the range closed never
realizing the corruption and collusion
that was going on behind closed doors.
By 2006, another 200 or more homes had
been built with more on the way and it
was then that we heard that the County
was going to reopen the range.
Despite the fact that almost five years
had passed and despite the fact that
over 300 homes now existed within a
half-mile of the range with many much
closer than that and despite the
controversy and enmity which had already existed when there were less
than one hundred homes here, the County
(specifically it's new leader, Steve -
I-never-met-a-person-I-couldn't-fuck-over
Levy)
apparently
believed that reopening the range near a neighborhood
over three times larger than it was when the range
closed would somehow engender
LESS
of a
controversy.
Take a
moment to Look up the definition of
"insane".
(Bet you didn't believe Levy's picture
was actually next to it, did you?)
The spin coming from what was now the Levy
administration was all about
what
a financial windfall the "new" range will be. It was
supposed to attract out of town guests and have them
paying for hotel rooms (there are no hotels in Yaphank)
and to sample the local cuisine (a bar, two deli's
and a pizzeria),
and of course they would purchase
gasoline and go shopping in the area
(if there
were any stores)
and just exactly
how any of that translated into "Dollars for Yaphank",
was never fully explained to us and still is
a mystery.
The range was touted as being a boon to Yaphank, although no one
seemed to be able to tell anyone just how that was
so. At this time, Suffolk County had allotted $800,000
for noise mitigation, environmental restoration and
general improvements.
This exists in the form of bonds which will
be paid back at about 5% interest over 15 years.
Everyone from the vendor on down cited the huge
financial input to the county coffers the range would
supply, but in the years prior to 2001, the
best it ever managed in any given year was barely
$30,000. The current vendor claims that his first
full-year proceeds to the county were around $43,000
(much of which, we suspect, comes from retail sales,
rather than shooting fees), but
at the current payback rate, the annual cost to the
taxpayers for these bonds is around $66,000, so no
matter where that $43,000 comes from, that
leaves the county operating this facility at a
LOSS
of $20,000 per year.
Couple this with
the fact that the Brookhaven Town
Assessor's Office has devalued 178 homes
near the range by an average of 6%.
If one assigns even a modest market
value of just $350,000 for each of these
homes, that adds up to a loss of almost
FOUR
MILLION DOLLARS.
Not
only that, but the loss in value
translates into a loss of revenue (in
the form of taxes) for the South Country
School District, the Town of Brookhaven
as well as for other services such as
fire and ambulance and this shortfall is
permanent.
So,
if someone would like to come
forward and explain to us just how
the presence of the range actually
enhances our lives, we'd love to
listen to what they'd have to say.
After all, everybody needs a good
laugh once in a while!
