Oceanside/Island Park Herald
By Alex Costello August 07, 2008
The three women who sit behind the long table at the front of the Island Park Public Library’s second-floor meeting room on the second Tuesday of every month appear quiet and unassuming.
But they are more outspoken than you might think.
They are the president, vice president and secretary/treasurer of the newly formed Island Park Civic Association, and they are working with outspoken Island Park citizens to help make the community a better place to live. “[We wanted] to see if we could just help out the community,” said Patti Ambrosia, the organization’s president. “So far it’s been great. Every month, [we've gotten] about 30 to 40 people.”
Ambrosia, Vice President Laura Hasset and Secretary/Treasurer Anne Egan have been making headway on problems that concern many Island Park residents. They have already succeeded in cleaning up parts of town, like the old Speaks nightclub parking lot on Broadway, and they are working toward other goals.
At the top of the group’s list of priorities are the problems with the Long Beach Motor Inn on Austin Boulevard. “We’ve already succeeded in getting families out of the Long Beach Motor Inn,” said Ambrosia.
Hasset explained that one of the main problems is that homeless people were placed in the motor inn to live permanently, not just temporarily. “They have no [amenities], nothing,” Hasset said of the motel. “So it’s not a proper place for people to live.”
In April, the civic association met with Dr. John Imhof, commissioner of the Nassau County Department of Social Services, to discuss what the county was doing to remove the few remaining homeless families from the motor inn. The county had joined forces with the nonprofit group, Community Housing Innovations, to find more permanent housing for the homeless, and county officials pledged to stop using motels as temporary shelter by the end of the year.
Imhof said that since Jan. 1, the number of families living at the Long Beach Motor Inn has decreased from 17 to six, and the total number of people from 23 to 12. But residents were still skeptical, and worried about rumors that the motel would be turned into a permanent homeless shelter or used for low-income Section 8 subsidized housing.
“The community was very nervous about what will happen with the motel, such as Section 8 coming in,” Ambrosia said after the meeting with Imhof. “And we also wanted to make sure that they were removing all the homeless.”
Ambrosia said that concerns about the motor inn have brought the community closer together for a common purpose. “A lot of Island Park people are really coming together,” she said. “We want our community back and our quality of life back, and this is a start.”
The civic association’s long-term goal for the motor inn is to turn it into a home for senior citizens, a notion Hasset says the community seems to like.
The organization is also backing efforts by residents to address the hazards some drivers pose on Austin Boulevard, Island Park’s main thoroughfare, which cuts northward through town from the Long Beach Bridge. From Jan. 1, 1998, to June 30, 2008, the Nassau County Police Department recorded 11 fatalities on the road. In the first half of 2008 alone, there were 77 recorded accidents.
Residents are exploring the idea of asking the county to install medians to stop drivers from making illegal U-turns and to give pedestrians safer places to stand in the middle of the road. They are also hoping to give them more time to cross by re-timing the traffic lights.
Jim Ruzicka, Island Park’s mayor and a member of the civic association, is pleased with the work that the group has been doing. “They stop in here and give me their concerns and we try to find solutions to a lot of them,” Ruzicka said. “They’re not like an opposition group where they’re fighting everybody. They really mean to do well for the community.”
Joseph Kellard contributed to this story. Comments about it? ACostello@liherald. com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 207.
©Herald Community 2008
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