Council recognizes dog, cop, skater

The workaday business of the Long Beach City Council took a backseat Tuesday night to what seemed more like a prime-time television show.

An inline skating enthusiast at last persuaded the council to allow the activity on the boardwalk; a mixed-breed dog named Daisy was proclaimed a hero for barking loud enough to awaken her owners to a fire next door; and a veteran auxiliary police officer was honored for earning a diploma from the Nassau County Auxiliary Police Academy.

The council presented proclamations to the dog and the officer.

On March 10, Daisy the dog became unusually excited in the middle of the night when she smelled and saw something amiss at a neighbor’s house at 4 Clark St. in Long Beach. What she saw was a growing fire, and she began to bark nonstop.

Her owners, Kathleen Dulligan and Bennett O’Donnell, became alarmed and rushed to see what might be the matter. To their astonishment, they saw what was by then a raging fire at the home of their neighbor Chris Carr. They ran over to see what they could do, and immediately called the Fire Department, which responded quickly. O’Donnell, who has said he is very close with his neighbors, banged on the door to wake the family up.

Tuesday night, Carr accompanied Dulligan, O’Donnell and Daisy to the ceremony. Daisy was pronounced a hero. Without her barking, Carr said, he and other members of his family might have been seriously injured. As it was, the house was destroyed in what Carr said was an electrical fire.

“(She) is a hero,” Dulligan, a nurse at North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset, said of Daisy before the meeting. Daisy’s reward, she said, is extra food. “We let (her) eat off our plates.”

Daisy sat quietly during the brief ceremony. Asked if she cared to comment afterward, she offered a single “Woof.”

After Daisy was recognized, Josh Janov, who was wearing his favorite pair of Rollerblades, skated up to the podium, as the council called a public hearing on whether to allow inline skating on the boardwalk. Janov, 51, who has been skating since he was a kid, had said at a previous meeting that he could see no good reason why it wasn’t permitted on the boardwalk, which has a bike lane.

Janov, the cantor and ritual chairman at Temple Zion, said he skates everywhere in the city as well as in Manhattan, and that it is great exercise and loads of fun.

As it turned out, there were no objections from council members to a proposal to amend the city code to allow inline skating on the boardwalk, effective immediately.

By the time the vote was taken, it was dark outside. Janov was hustling out of the meeting room. “I’m going Rollerblading,” he said, heading toward the street.

Next, a figure who is seen at virtually every council meeting, as well as on the boardwalk and elsewhere in the city, but whose voice is rarely heard, was honored for graduating from the Nassau County Auxiliary Police Academy in Garden City.

Anna Fatigati, 64, is the first female lieutenant in the Long Beach Police Auxiliary. A member of the force for 15 years, Fatigati completed a one-year program at the academy, where courses focus on law-enforcement procedures and handling difficult situations.

Fatigati, who once owned a deli in Long Beach that she closed years ago, decided to become an auxiliary police officer after her husband died. “I wanted to give back to the community.’’ She said.

Finally, Gerry Snell, president of the Long Beach Waterfront Warriors, was presented with a proclamation for organizing a week-long event for hundreds of wounded veterans and their families that ended last weekend. City Manager Donna Gayden, who attended last Sunday’s barbecue, said it was “the best day” of her administration, because she got to spend time with the veterans and their wives or significant others, and their children.

In the good and welfare portion of the meeting, Crystal Lake, a resident of the city’s North Park section, repeated her complaints that little has been done to mitigate flooding problems in the neighborhood, as the city and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority have been locked in years-long negotiations over insurance payments and other issues while the city builds bulkheads near LIRR lines. City officials said they were continuing to work on the issue.