All 13 Long Island town supervisors — including Shelter Island’s Gerry Siller — will work together to coordinate summer “re-opening” of public parks and recreation facilities, the Suffolk County Supervisors Association announced Friday.
The association, led by Babylon Town Supervisor Rich Schaffer, announced a joint planning effort to explore areas of possible coordination of summer programs and facilities across the 13 towns that comprise Nassau and Suffolk counties. They’re calling the effort the Nassau/Suffolk Joint Summer Operations Task Force.
“While every day we are bombarded with scary news, we want to offer Long Island families some hope,” the organizers said in a news release. ” We will have Summer on Long Island, it will be different, certainly, but we will have Summer on Long Island.”
The 13 supervisors participated in a Facebook live event via Zoom to talk about the particular challenges involved in Long Island summer planning during the COVID-19 pandemic. Their immediate goal is to establish possible coordination of three central components necessary to allow for safe recreational summer activity on Long Island:
- Public Health Messaging — Establishing social distancing guidelines across all communities to ensure broad compliance from residents
- Opening (and possible re-closing) timelines — Synchronizing the opening of beach, park and facilities as much as feasible, to ensure that variation between towns does not lead to a surge in crowding at one location, due to closure at another; and coordinating possible closure of activities — if there is an increase in infection rates — to prevent any one town or community from being overrun
- Beach, Park, and Playground Policies — Ensuring the safest approach is applied uniformly across Long Island towns despite wide variation among the size and types of parks resources
The supervisors hope to announce guidelines by May 18.
“This will enable the group to take into consideration the very latest research on outdoor virus transmission, and still allow for proper planning and staffing before the start of the summer season,” the organizers said.”This type of cooperation between all 13 townships is unprecedented, and we also look forward to working with our respective incorporated villages and cities on coordination.”
The task force will share final determinations with Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone and Nassau County Executive Kathleen Curran. And it will send the final report to the office of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo for approval.
