Suffolk County Legislator Bridget Fleming, guest speaker Friday the Town’s weekly emergency briefing, had nothing but praise for community leaders and residents for their response to the virus outbreak.
“You seem to do everything right on Shelter Island,” she said. And, she added later, “You’ve really become leaders in the region for your approach.”
As a member of a regional transportation advisory council, she singled out the Island’s North Ferry and South Ferry companies for praise, saying they’d not only kept their employees and the public safe, but also provide guidance on aspects of business like the safe collection of fares.
“Clearly the ferries have done a great job,” she said.
The past two months, she said, have been an extraordinary time that’s “taken quite a toll on everyone in the community.”
In recognition of Memorial Day, she extended gratitude to those families on Shelter Island who have lost a loved one in military service. In particular, she expressed gratitude to members of the Theinert family as they honor U.S. 1st Lt. Joseph J. Theinert who was killed in action in Afghanistan nearly 10 years ago at age 24.
COVID-19 on Shelter Island
“Since March the 8th, when we had our first positive finding of the COVID virus here in Suffolk County — it seems like truly a lifetime ago — but now we’ve come to the place where we’ve lost 1,772 members of the Suffolk County community to this horrible virus,” she said. “Our thoughts and prayers go out to everyone who has lost friends and family.”
She said Shelter Island has done a “truly remarkable job” in recording so few cases of COVID-19 — the county cites eight confirmed cases, but local officials say the number is nine.
“You surely have done something right in the way you’ve managed this virus,” Fleming said. “I’m sure we will be looking to you for best practices should we every have the horrible situation of a pandemic again.”
“I just want to congratulate you and wish you continued safety in your approach,” she said.
Slowly approaching reopening
At the county level, Fleming said officials are working toward slowly reopening the region.
“I don’t think anyone questions the fact that this pandemic has had a devastating effect on our economy and we want to get people up and moving, get our feet back underneath us as we approach the summer season,” she said.
For the purposes of the state’s reopening plan, Suffolk and Nassau counties are combined to make up the Long Island Region. Each region must meet seven metrics before it can begin phase one of reopening (see our post about the metrics here).
Long Island meets five. It is expected to soon meet the required number of contact tracers (30 for every 100K of population) but as of Friday, the region was at least five days away from meeting the 14-day decline in the number of hospital deaths due to COVID-19.
“We are that close,” she said, but a spike is possible. “We have experienced one spike when were on the way to meeting the metric. We’re not out of the woods.”
Masks and social distancing
Fleming applauded the community for complying with guidelines aimed at stopping the spread of the virus, including the use of masks and social distancing.
“It works, we’ve learned that it works,” she said. “But we’re going to have to keep it up as we begin to reopen or we’re going to see spikes and we’re going to have to shutdown again.”
“Keep it up. It’s very important.”
Small business support
Fleming encouraged local businesses to reach out to the Stony Brook Small Business Development Center for support in navigating various shutdown-related funding programs.
“There are eight counselors there, they’re terrific,” she said. “They’re very, very good a guiding people through those programs and trying to give advice as to how you can keep your feet underneath you so that when we finally do reopen those jobs are still there and those services are still there to sustain our economy through the summer season.”
In previous Town emergency updates, Council members Mike Bebon and Albert Dixon have also encouraged local business to reach out to this organization.
Find details at stonybrook.edu.
Some non-COVID-19 news
Lastly, Fleming thanked Councilman Bebon for his efforts on behalf of consumers regarding alternate energy options. He served on what Fleming described as a “brain trust” that’s officially known as the Community Choice Aggregation Task Force.
It was given the task of looking into alternate supplies of energy, “alternate to LIPA and PSEG’s kind of monopoly,” she said. Thanks in part to compelling research by the group, she said, LIPA voted last week to allow this model of achieving a cleaner energy future by individual communities being able to choose their energy.”
This change should make it possible not only to obtain cleaner energy, but also to reduce consumer costs, she said.
“It’s nice to think that there are some things that are continuing in government and in our future to make sure we have a sustainable, healthy, enjoyable East End of Long Island on the other side of this horrible COVID.”
[Fleming also talked about contact tracing, but we’ve included those remarks in this post about the meeting.]
