'Residents' Has Its Say on Jackson Avenue Project

Laura Schultz has become well-known for bringing brownies instead of banter to political functions.

As the Jackson Avenue improvement project inches along, her oven may start getting busy again.

"We've got a long way to go," the vice president for Residents for a More Beautiful Syosset says.

Schultz is pleased that the Town of Oyster Bay on Tuesday passed an inter-municipality agreement (IMA) that should help push along the jointly financed project with Nassau County. But road work that looked to break ground in June now will start in November as a best-case scenario. The IMA has to go back to the Nassau County Legislature for a vote. 

Schultz hopes the issue will go on the agenda for the Legislature's Monday meeting. If not, it would have to wait for the Legislature's next meeting on Aug. 26. Presiding Officer Peter Schmitt (R-Massapequa) sets the agenda for meetings.

In the meantime Residents will go over the project's plans. As part of the deal between Nassau County and the Town of Oyster Bay, the county's contract with builder E.W. Howell was canceled so the Town could create its own plans.

Schultz expressed many of Residents' concerns during Tuesday's Town of Oyster Bay Board meeting. The organization's biggest safety priority involves a planned traffic signal on Jackson at the cross streets of Dawes Avenue and The Mall.

"At 5 p.m. on a winter day you can't take a left [from either street]," Schultz says. "People are having trouble getting out of developments."

The signal wasn't initially in the county plans but was added after some lobbying. Members of Residents are looking forward to going over the plans and have been promised a meeting with Jack Libert, the commissioner of the Department of Public Works, to see any differences between the county and Town plans.

The other concerns for Residents are more cosmetic. The county plans would save the Residents' garden across from St. Edward the Confessor but make it narrower. The civic group would also like to develop a plan to replace the pear trees that line the road and would almost certainly be demolished during the construction, says Schultz.

"When they bloom, it's a beautiful canopy of white along the road," she says.