By Jeff Lipton
Kenneth Bauer, president of MTA Long Island Rail Road, has pledged a cleanup effort starting the first week of September and completing the right-of-way clean-up by the end of the month for all stations in the Five Towns.
State Assemblyman Harvey Weisenberg (D-Long Beach) requested the LIRR to begin sprucing up the stations after he saw what positive impact a cleanup in his home territory of Long Beach has had.
"I'm aware that these areas have been neglected," Weisenberg said. "The clean-up of these stations should be done for the health and safety of the commuters who use the stations. And certainly these stations could use a cleaning.
"On the Long Beach railroad station they did a magnificent job," said the assemblyman, who then contacted Bauer on July 17 about possibly doing the same for the rest of his 20th Assembly District, which takes in all of the Five Towns.
In a letter Bauer wrote to Weisenberg on July 19, he said, "In follow up to our conversation of Wednesday, July 17, 2002, the MTA Long Island Rail Road will be pleased to participate in your clean up and beautification plans for the LIRR stations in the Five Towns area."
The assemblyman said once the clean-up is finished, for the second phase of his plan, he will be calling upon business and civic groups and homeowners associations to adopt-a station and help keep them beautiful. This program would be patterned after the very successful adopt-a-highway program that has gone a long way to helping keep the streets free of dirt and debris.
He said these groups may participate in regular cleanups and plant flowers and do other things to keep the Five Towns beautiful. "We will be looking for people to adopt a railroad area," he said. "We want to beautify the station and even the outside so when the trains pull into the station commuters can see what a beautiful area we live in."
Sy Glass, president of the Woodmere Merchants Association, said his group is way ahead, sprucing up the Woodmere station and the surrounding tracks for years now.
"That's great. I'm all in favor of that," Glass said of Weisenberg's adopt-a station idea. "That's absolutely what we've been doing. We have been cooperating. We've planted trees."
Glass also credited State Sen. Dean Skelos (R-Rockville Centre) for providing state aid to help clean up and maintain Woodmere as a beautiful community, a place attractive enough to convince others to move there and to establish a business in the neighborhood.
"We're on top of things. We want everyone to see just what we have been doing," Glass said. "We're ahead of the game. People who take the train come here and they see a clean and neat place. That's exactly what we want."
Weisenberg added, "A cleanup in the Five towns is something everyone could feel very positive about."
