By JOSEPH KELLARD
Workers could be seen and heard hammering wood siding on the park¹s buildings and using drills to install new sinks in the bathrooms.
These and other recent upgrades at the park, on Island Parkway North, came about after residents found photos of its dilapidated conditions on a Web site and called the Town of Hempstead to complain. Earlier work, some of it still in progress, resulted from the efforts of determined Harbor Isle locals who continue to press the town to maintain the park.
Mark Greenberg visited the beach for the first time with his wife and daughter in early July, and the Oceanside resident was taken aback by what he saw. ³The bathroom looked like something out of Iraq,² Greenberg said. ³There were chemicals within the reach of kids, big holes in the walls and paint chips, broken light fixtures and shower nozzles that didn¹t work, and it was smelly and disgusting. I wondered how they could allow this to happen, and thought it should be condemned. It was just wrong.²
When Greenberg, a founder of the Oceanside Civic Association, posted photos of park facilities on his Web site, Oceansidelocal.com, they sparked a flurry of complaints to the town. Greenberg called the town¹s Department of Parks and Recreation, where a representative said he would look right into the situation. A week later, Greenberg returned to the park and found the town had installed new sinks, faucets, toilets and shower heads, removed the chemicals, covered up the holes, posted new ³men² and ³women² bathroom signs, and cleared debris from the beach.
³I was really happy with how quickly the town reacted,² said Greenberg, who posted photos of the upgrades on his site. ³I think the Internet, where people can see things as they are, has really changed things. I just wish now the town could be more proactive.²
Dorothy Jacobs says she and other Harbor Isle residents have asked the town for seven years to be proactive in upgrading and maintaining the park, suggesting such amenities as new benches and picnic tables. During that time, Town Councilman Anthony Santino points out, the town responded to residents¹ requests concerning the park, which the municipality bought from the Harbor Isle Civic Association years ago.
The town has since installed gazebos, playground equipment and swing sets, chain-linked fencing around them, a concrete shuffleboard court and barbecue pits, and has planted new shrubs. In addition to the recent upgrades, the bathrooms and the front fence were repainted, and a flag pole and brand new benches were installed, along with a 25-foot boardwalk along the buildings that house the bathrooms, office and storage area. The town also put up and painted new stock siding around the brick buildings.
³I think it¹s 100 percent better than what it looked like,² said resident Lynne Gilman. ³They let it go downhill, but now they have gazebos, a little playground and shuffleboard, and they put showers and a picnic table in. I think it¹s a huge improvement.²
While Jacobs acknowledges that the town has acted on some of her and other residents¹ concerns, she said she believes it has done mostly patchwork and installed used equipment. ³But the heart of the issue here is that there has been no unified approach to what to do at the park,² Jacobs said. ³They do as little as possible, and it is neglected. It¹s out of the way; it¹s not visible.²
Jacobs and other residents question why the town has made a new parking lot, at the former site of the Oceanside Motel on heavily traveled Long Beach Road, look like a park ‹ with new ornamental light posts and a clock, brick sidewalks and shrubbery ‹ while at an actual park in Harbor Isle, an island community of some 500 homes, the town installs what residents claim is second-hand equipment and does superficial upgrades.
³I think it¹s shoddy workmanship,² said 32-year resident Gene Murtagh, a building inspector for the New York City Fire Department for five years. ³The new paint job in the bathrooms is sloppy, and that small boardwalk by the shower heads is out of kilter.²
Santino insisted that the town has a plan for its parks, having just completed major upgrades throughout the park system that include small ³pocket² parks as well as major beach facilities, and that the town has always done general maintenance at Harbor Isle Beach Park. ³It just happened to fall into a period where it got a little run-down-looking,² Santino said.
³We can¹t possibly stay on top of every single aspect of our parks, and we need to be told every once in a while, ŒHey, this is not up to snuff, this is not right,¹² Santino said of Greenberg¹s pictorial Web postings. ³Then, if we don¹t go out and do it, you can take us to task. But we went out and did it.²
Jacobs, however, said she believes the park should not have been allowed to fall into such disrepair ‹ especially after she first complained about the facility in a letter to then town supervisor Richard Guardino in 2000. Jacobs has chronicled all of her various interactions with town officials about upgrading the park since then, and read them at the town board¹s regular meeting on Sept. 4.
Supervisor Kate Murray visited the beach in 2003, and mailed out a questionnaire to Harbor Isle residents asking for their input on what improvements they wanted to see at the park. But Jacobs said that nothing happened until Santino visited the facility two years later, after which the town installed the gazebos and playground equipment. Jacobs and others, however, had asked the town to do much more, including adding picnic tables, installing a sprinkler system for kids and building a pier into the bay.
Jacobs charges that throughout the years, right up to this summer, the town has either delayed or pushed the issue aside. In late July, she called the town to say she was going to the press about the recent upgrades she said she was promised but that were not materializing. The next day, Jacobs said, more than a dozen workers, including carpenters, plumbers, electricians and painters, arrived to installed new benches, paint the bathrooms, and install siding on the buildings.
³I go to that park and use that park and I simply care about how it looks,² Jacobs told Santino at the board meeting. ³But you¹ve failed over seven years ‹ failed ‹ to accomplish what you said you were going to accomplish. And it has not been completed.²
Defending the town¹s efforts at the park as an ³outstanding job,² Santino told Jacobs, ³Your issue with Harbor Isle Beach is probably something that unless the town experienced a windfall of millions and millions of dollars, we still wouldn¹t be able to satisfy you, because your vision for the future of that beach is certainly something that is simply beyond the means for our local government to pay for.²
Jacobs said the main issue is the condition of the beach and access to the bay. As has happened at a number of Long Island beaches, the sand at Harbor Isle Beach Park has eroded and the shoreline is largely muck, making it a less-than-desirable place to swim. She and other residents do not expect the town to spend millions of dollars to restore the beach, Jacobs said, but rather to build a pier out into the bay so people can fish, swim and otherwise enjoy the water ‹ like the pier at neighboring Masone Beach.
³I see boats docked out in that bay all the time with people fishing, so, yeah, why not have a pier?² said Gilman.
Jacobs said she asked Santino and Murray to contact the Army Corps of Engineers and the Environmental Protection Agency to explore the potential of such a project. Santino told the Herald that from what the town¹s Department of Parks and Recreation has reported to him, building a pier into the bay is unrealistic. ³Because of the nature of that waterway and the various other jurisdictions that are involved, like the EPA, a pier is just not practical in that waterway, and you¹re not likely to get state approval from them,² he said. ³It¹s a navigable channel. You can¹t just put a fishing pier out into it.²
Jacobs said she understands that it can take a lot to get permits for this kind of project. ³But what I said to Murray and Santino was, if you don¹t ask, it can¹t happen,² she said. ³And no one could ever prove to me that they ever asked and it was denied. They simply ignored it.²
Jacobs points out that, instead, the town installed a chain-linked fence blocking access to the beach from the playground and park area, and posted signs that read: ³Beach Closed: No Lifeguard.² Those signs were recently replaced with others featuring a list of prohibitions, including no swimming, bikes or picnics without a permit, Jacobs said.
Ultimately, Santino said, while he considers what Greenberg did with his Web site ³positive activism,² Jacobs is acting primarily on political motives. ³Jacobs is a Democratic Party activist pursuing a personal political agenda here,² the Republican councilman said.
Jacobs said that she simply wants the town to upgrade and maintain a nice park for area children and other residents. ³I think that kind of a statement is a red herring, in which he tries to make this a personal, single-person issue,² Jacob said, ³and he drags it out as a way to abdicate responsibility.²
Comments about this story? JKellard@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 287.
Photos by Joseph Kellard/Herald
