Friday, January 17, 2025
Pearl Jacobs has spent over 20 years working to improve the quality of life for the people of Uniondale. In recognition of her tireless service and her dedication to her community, the Herald is proud to name Jacobs its 2024 Person of the Year.
Jacobs is known for her unrelenting advocacy and her leadership in addressing longstanding issues in Uniondale. She moved here 30 years ago, and her community service journey began just over a decade later, when she met the late Melvin Harris Jr., the former president of the Nostrand Gardens Civic Association. Harris was a “strong community advocate,” Jacobs recalled, and encouraged her to get involved.
Though she was initially hesitant because of her demanding career as an operations manager for Verizon, Jacobs was moved by Harris’s message of community empowerment and equality.
“I started going to meetings,” she recounted, “and his message really resonated regarding the disparities within the Town of Hempstead and Nassau County, and how we have to fight for everything that we get.”
Jacobs eventually joined the board of the civic association, and became its president in 2014. Now in her 60s and retired from Verizon, she has remained the head of the organization and been an outspoken advocate for Uniondale, striving to address the challenges the community continues to face.
A primary concern for Jacobs has always been equality, and ensuring that working-class communities like Uniondale, which she says are often overlooked, receive the same services and attention as their more affluent neighbors. She named sanitation and cleanliness as big needs for the hamlet in order to improve the overall quality of life.
“The major challenges are just services,” she said. “We do get our garbage picked up, but other than that, there’s no oversight when it comes to sanitation issues. A lot of the time our roads are unsightly with the sanitation.”
One of the biggest local initiatives that Jacobs started, along with Nostrand Gardens Civic Association Vice President Heidi Sanft, was aimed at beautifying the neighborhood. They created a Beautification Committee around 10 years ago. According to Jacobs, Uniondale Avenue was “dark, barren, with no lights,” which motivated her to approach then Nassau County Legislator Kevan Abrahams about making changes.
Sanft said they prioritized adding planters and lamps to make the streets look more attractive, and she and Jacobs “lobbied for many years” for them, she said.
“Pearl is an action person,” Sanft said. “She sees something that needs attention and she takes action — and also she doesn’t give up.”
Now, every spring, the association organizes a community cleanup, planting flowers in the planters throughout the neighborhoods along Uniondale Avenue, Front Street and Jerusalem Avenue.
Though it was initially funded only by Jacobs and members of the committee, the initiative has since gained support from local businesses and residents.
“Everyone has come together with that beautification initiative, and they feel a part of it, which is great,” Jacobs said.
Sanft, who has worked alongside Jacobs for over 10 years, describes her as an “incredible person.” “She knows how to get things done, and she truly cares about the community, about other people,” Sanft said. “I feel very fortunate to know her, and to be working with her on different projects.”
Another major endeavor led by Jacobs and the association was the Segregated Roadways campaign in 2021. She noticed that roads across the county were being repaired and repaved, while the section of Jerusalem Avenue that runs through Uniondale — as Jacobs had been pointing out to the Legislature for a long time — was “horrific,” and in dire need of repairs. She pushed for an official survey, which showed that the roadway was indeed in poor condition, and she started a campaign urging the Legislature to approve of the project.
“I made a T-shirt that said ‘Segregated Roadways, Nassau County,’” she recalled of one of the sessions of the Legislature that she attended, “and maybe three or four months later, they started working on Jerusalem Avenue.”
In addition to her work with her civic association, Jacobs has also been involved in other Uniondale advocacy efforts, including the movement to eliminate the term “East Garden City” and classify that land as Uniondale, as it was before the 2000 census. She has been to many protests and rallies, she said, and the civic association has worked closely with the Greater Uniondale Area Action Coalition on the renaming issue.
In June 2015, the U.S. Census Bureau agreed to re-designate East Garden City as part of Uniondale, which was a big win. Jeannine Maynard, GUAAC’s co-coordinator, said Jacobs was “the front face” of Nostrand Gardens at the time and was very active in the campaign. The two organizations have worked closely on other local issues, including beautification and water quality.
“She's really got the heart of the community in mind, and is very, very clear about standing up for the rights of the neighborhood,” Maynard said.
Jacobs is a vocal opponent of Las Vegas Sands’ proposed casino project on the Nassau Coliseum site, and has raised her concerns at a number of County Legislature meetings over the potential environmental and health impacts of the development. Her opposition is grounded in her longstanding focus on the community’s quality of life, including air quality and asthma rates, and, she said, “We don’t need any other environmental catastrophes in our community.”
She has also been a leading voice in efforts to address water contamination in Uniondale, where residents have sometimes seen brown water coming from their taps. She is spearheading the campaign for a new water tower, because the existing one, on Jerusalem Avenue, has not been renovated in over 30 years.
Jacobs’s advocacy has led her to become something of a point person in Uniondale. She has built relationships with county public officials, including commissioners and code enforcement officers, and residents turn to her with their concerns because, as one neighbor told her, “Pearl, you always get things done.”
“They don’t call the county, they don’t call the town, they call us,” she said. “I get things done by process of escalation.”
Her commitment to her community is rooted in a sense of fairness. She describes herself as a “strong proponent against inequality” and believes that Uniondale, like all communities, deserves the services and infrastructure it needs to thrive.
“Everyone should get a fair shake,” Jacobs emphasized. “That’s what really led me into being a strong community advocate.”
