EXCLUSIVE · TOWN HALL · LINDENHURST

New York caps how much more a town can raise in property taxes each year. A town that wants to go over the cap cannot simply do it. It has to pass a local law saying so, and it has to hold a public hearing first.

Babylon scheduled that hearing on October 7.

Resolution 705 is three sentences of plain intent. The Town Board, it says, “is desirous of passing a local law to pierce the tax cap,” and because state law requires a hearing before such a law can pass, one will be held at Town Hall on November 5, 2026 at 3:00 p.m.

A page later, Resolution 706 sets the hearing on the 2027 preliminary budget — same place, same date, same 3:00 p.m.

So the two questions arrive together: here is next year’s spending plan, and here is our request for room above the limit.

Both passed on the consensus agenda, offered by Councilman McSweeney and seconded by Councilman Gregory, 5 yeas, 0 nays.

What we cannot tell you yet is the size of it. The preliminary budget was not attached to the agenda packet; Resolution 706 says only that a copy “will be available at the office of the Town Clerk.” Any figure you see before that document is public is somebody’s guess, and we are not going to add one to the pile.

It is also worth being precise about what scheduling this hearing does and does not mean. Passing a cap-piercing law is not the same as piercing the cap. Towns across New York routinely adopt the enabling law as insurance and then pass a budget inside the limit anyway. It buys flexibility. It remains the single most consequential vote a town board takes in a year, and it is being taken at three in the afternoon on a weekday in early November.

If you want to be in the room: Town of Babylon Town Hall, 200 E. Sunrise Highway, North Lindenhurst, NY 11757 — Thursday, November 5, 3:00 p.m. The draft local law is on file at the Town Clerk’s office for public inspection during business hours, and notice of both hearings has to run in the Town’s official newspaper. The main number is 631-957-3000.

We will read the preliminary budget when it is out, and write up what is actually in it.

Source: Town of Babylon Town Board, resolution agenda, October 7, 2026 (Resolutions 705 and 706)

EXCLUSIVE · TOWN HALL NOTEBOOK · OCTOBER 7

A town board agenda is where a place tells you what it is actually doing, in the most boring possible language, at three in the afternoon. We read this one end to end. Two items were big enough to get their own stories — the full property tax exemption for seriously disabled veterans, and the November 5 hearings on the tax cap and the 2027 budget. Here is the rest.

An Eagle Scout got a day. Resolution 707 proclaimed Sunday, October 11, 2026 as Eagle Scout Alexander Green Day. The resolution is unexpectedly lovely for a legal document — it works its way through the rarity of the rank, then through the eagle itself, “noted for its size, strength, graceful figure, keenness of vision and power of flight,” and the fact that the bird was the standard of the ancient Romans and is the seal of the United States, before getting to the point and congratulating him. We do not know Alexander Green’s troop or his project, because the resolution does not say. If you do, write to us; a project that earns a proclamation is worth a photograph and a paragraph of its own.

Two rezonings were granted. Bolar Pharmaceutical Co. was granted a rezoning for premises on the west side of Bethpage Road, 166 feet north of Reith Street, in Copiague (application HPLN-30, planning board job 25-45ME). And 369 Little East Neck Rd, Inc. was granted a rezoning at the southeast corner of Little East Neck Road and Millard Avenue in West Babylon (HPLN-85, job 25-38ABE), covering six tax lots. Each went through the same three steps in one afternoon: a public hearing, an environmental determination by the Board as SEQRA lead agency, then the grant.

Three houses were condemned or secured. The Board authorized emergency securing, board-up and cleanup at 130 Claremont Ave, North Babylon; and the demolition, board-up and securing of unsafe structures at 19 Brewster Lane, North Amityville and 490 Howard Ave, Copiague. These are the resolutions nobody reads and everybody on the block has been waiting for.

A stop sign. Among the traffic-ordinance amendments: stop control added east and west on Frank Street at North Greene Avenue in North Lindenhurst. Somebody asked for that, probably more than once.

Two more code hearings were held. One on Chapter 213, Article XLVII — Renewable Energy Facilities, and one on Chapter 213, Article XVIII — Supplemental Regulations. Both are zoning articles, both were heard the same afternoon, and we are tracking what came out of them.

And some housekeeping with real money in it: the Board set its own 2027 meeting schedule, authorized a 2026 budget modification and an interfund transfer, and authorized a contract with LiRo Engineers.

One thing that was NOT in the agenda. The proposed electric vehicle charger rules that drew objections at Town Hall last week do not appear anywhere in the October 7 document — we searched all 81 pages. So that proposal is still ahead of a vote, which means there is still time for residents to be heard on it. More on that in Quick Hits.

Source: Town of Babylon Town Board, resolution agenda, October 7, 2026 · Agenda Center

DEVELOPMENT · COPIAGUE

Downtown Copiague has been a plan for a long time.

It is a NY Rising community. It has had state money for pedestrian walkways, roadway and streetscape design. It has had architectural design guidelines drawn up to govern future storefront work. In 2024 its congressman asked Washington to fund the strategic expansion of its downtown plaza, the acquisition and redevelopment of blighted properties, and transit-oriented mixed-use housing. Back in 2021 the state put $105,000 toward roadway improvements at Great Neck Road and Marconi Boulevard, inside a project budgeted at $525,000.

Plans, grants, guidelines, letters. What downtown revitalization actually runs on is parcels.

Newsday reported on October 8 that the Town of Babylon has begun the process of buying the property at 782 Marconi Boulevard for $450,000, as part of an effort to expand Veterans Plaza.

One house. Four hundred and fifty thousand dollars. And it is the most consequential thing to happen to that plan in a year, because a plaza cannot grow into land the Town does not own.

This is how the quiet version of downtown redevelopment works, and it is worth understanding, because Copiague will not be the last place in the Town to go through it. A municipality assembles land one willing seller at a time, at market, over years. There is no ribbon to cut. There is a closing. Then, eventually, there is more plaza than there was.

What we cannot tell you yet is the schedule. We read the Town Board’s full October 7 agenda — all eighty-one pages — and neither Marconi Boulevard nor Veterans Plaza appears anywhere in it, so the authorizing action came at an earlier meeting. We are going back through the September minutes for the resolution, and we have asked the Town when the sale is expected to close and what the expanded plaza is actually meant to hold.

The question worth asking out loud now, while the design is still theoretical: what is the plaza for? A bigger hardscape with nothing programmed on it is a bigger place for nothing to happen. A plaza with a farmers market, a summer concert series, or a Saturday morning anything is the thing that makes the rest of the storefront money work.

Copiague is about to own more of its own downtown. That is the easy part.

Sources: Newsday · Downtown Copiague Revitalization funding request · Town of Babylon Agenda Center

CONSUMER WATCH · AMITYVILLE

The call came from the number printed on the back of his own TD Bank card.

That is the detail to sit with, because it is the detail that works. Caller ID is trivially spoofed, and the number a cautious person checks first is the number a scammer puts on the screen.

The voice told an Amityville man that his card had been used at a skimming device and had to be deactivated. Then it told him something stranger: someone would come to the house within ten minutes to collect the card.

His wife, who asked News 12 not to use her name, started counting red flags.

“They would have wiped it out,” she told the station. “They would have really have done that.”

What she said next is the whole story. Rather than argue, she set a condition the caller could not meet.

“If you’re from TD Bank, as you say you are, meet me at TD Bank,” she said. “We’ll see if you work for them.”

Then the couple drove to their local branch. Somebody did show up at the house — waited outside for a while, and left when nobody answered the door.

At the branch, employees confirmed what the couple suspected. A bank does not send anyone to your home to collect a card. Ever. The couple says their money is safe.

They also told News 12 where their instinct came from: they had seen the station’s earlier reporting on scams like this one, and recognized the shape of it.

That is worth saying out loud, because it is the only part of this that scales. The scam did not fail because the couple was clever. It failed because they had heard about it before the phone rang.

So, the three rules.

Hang up and call back yourself. Her own advice, and it is the correct advice: “If you see someone calling and they’re saying they’re your bank, hang up. Call your bank.” Use the number on your statement or in your banking app, not the one that just called you — and not a number read out to you over the phone.

Nobody comes to your door for a card. No courier, no “fraud officer,” no technician. A real bank cancels a card in its own system while you are standing there. Anybody asking to collect a card, cash, gold or a gift card at your home is stealing it.

Make them meet you at the branch. This couple turned a phone call they could not verify into a meeting they could, and the caller evaporated. It is a good move precisely because a real bank employee would say yes.

News 12 reached out to TD Bank, which had not responded as of Sunday night.

And if someone in your family already handed something over: call your bank’s real fraud line immediately, then report it at the FTC and to Suffolk County Police. Shame is the thing these crews count on most, and it is the one thing you can refuse to give them.

Sources: News 12 Long Island · FTC fraud report · Suffolk County Police Department

DO SOMETHING THIS WEEK · TOWN OF BABYLON

Food drives have a timing problem. The appeals arrive in late November, the shelves fill in December, and February is quiet and empty.

This one runs in October, which is part of why it works.

Councilman Anthony Manetta’s ninth annual Pasta & Sauce Drive is collecting now and closes Friday, October 23. Everything goes to the Town of Babylon Food Pantry.

Manetta started it, and it has been co-sponsored since the early years by Town Clerk Gerry Compitello and the Sons of Italy Constantino Brumidi Lodge in Deer Park. In its second year the drive brought in more than 200 pounds of pasta and 85 jars of sauce, according to Greater Long Island. This is year nine.

There are three places to drop off:

The Sons of Italy Constantino Brumidi Lodge, Deer Park.

Babylon Town Hall, 200 E. Sunrise Highway, North Lindenhurst.

Lindenhurst Memorial Library, 1 Lee Avenue, Lindenhurst.

The ask is narrow on purpose, and that is the useful thing about it. Pasta and jarred sauce are shelf-stable for a year, they need nothing but a pot of water, and they stretch — a box and a jar is dinner for a family, not a side dish for one. A pantry can plan around them in a way it cannot plan around whatever was in the back of your cabinet.

Which is to say: one box of ziti and one jar of sauce is not a token donation. It is the donation.

If you are shopping anyway this week, the arithmetic is about four dollars and a two-minute detour. If you are the kind of household that buys in bulk, a case of either is the easiest large gift anyone will ask you for all autumn.

Also at Town Hall this month: the Town’s National Red Ribbon Week kickoff is set for Friday, October 24 at 6:30 p.m. in the Town Hall Board Room in Lindenhurst, with vendors, resources and activities on substance-misuse awareness. It is open to the public, and it is free.

Source: Town of Babylon announcements

MEET YOUR NEIGHBOR · AMITYVILLE

Most people pick one graduate degree. Jeanine Guelee of Amityville is doing two at once — a law degree at Touro Law Center and a master’s in social work at Stony Brook University.

Those two paths usually lead to different rooms. A lawyer argues the case; a social worker sits with the family. Guelee appears to be after the overlap, and the internship she just landed sits exactly in it.

She has been placed for the academic year with ERASE Racism, the Long Island civil rights organization based in Syosset. Her placement satisfies a requirement of the social work program, which is a mundane detail with a non-mundane consequence: the requirement sent a Copiague High School graduate back onto Long Island’s own civil rights problem rather than off the Island entirely.

Guelee graduated from Walter G. O’Connell Copiague High School and then from Stony Brook.

ERASE Racism works on structural racism, with public education and housing as its two main fronts — the two systems that decide, on Long Island more than almost anywhere, what a child’s zip code is worth. It does that through research, policy advocacy, legal action, and community education, and it works in Long Island, New York State and national coalitions.

Guelee’s year will run across two of its programs: the Education Equity Initiative, which includes the Student Task Force and the Long Island Leaders of Tomorrow Conferences, and the Inclusive Housing Program.

Elaine Gross, the organization’s founder and president emerita, said ERASE Racism is “excited to welcome Jeanine Guelee to ERASE Racism as a graduate student intern,” and that Guelee “knows Long Island and its civil rights challenges well” — the perspective, Gross said, of a graduate student who was raised here.

That last part is the reason this is a Meet Your Neighbor and not a press release. Long Island exports its ambitious graduates. The ones who stay and work on the thing they grew up inside are rarer, and they are the ones whose names are worth knowing early.

We have asked to speak with her. If she says yes, you will hear from her directly rather than about her.

Sources: Patch · ERASE Racism · Touro Law Center

FROM THE ARCHIVES · NORTH BABYLON

On Saturday the Cerebral Palsy Family 5K runs at Belmont Lake State Park. On Sunday the Walk to End Alzheimer’s fills the same paths. Several thousand people will spend the weekend circling a body of water that exists because of one man’s opinion about horses.

Beginning in 1867, the financier August Belmont bought 1,300 acres here, according to the Town’s own history of North Babylon, and built a horse-breeding farm and “a spacious 24-room mansion.” He called the operation Nursery Stud. Royal Phelps, the Town’s profile notes, is credited with introducing Belmont to the rural community in the first place.

Belmont was not dabbling. The aim was to breed the best racehorse in America, and the place was built to be self-sufficient while he tried: fields and silos for corn, hay, wheat and rye, pasture for cows and horses, a trout pond, a thirty-acre lake, and a private one-mile racetrack with grandstands so he could watch his own stock work. There was also, in a detail that tells you everything about the scale of the thing, a bowling alley.

The name on the Belmont Stakes is his. The race was first run in 1867 — the same year the farm began — and in 1869 it was won by Belmont’s own colt, Fenian. He bought the great racer Kentucky outright and stood him at Nursery Stud until the horse died in 1875.

Belmont died in 1890 and the estate passed to his son, August Belmont II, who eventually moved the breeding business to Kentucky. The Kentucky farm took the same name, and it is the one that produced Man o’ War. The best horse in the bloodline, in other words, was foaled after the family left Babylon.

Then the land did what large private land does. During the First World War the estate’s racetrack became Camp Damm, an Army Air Corps training facility, from 1918 to 1919. After the war the camp was disbanded.

The mansion was photographed around 1925, the Town notes, “just before the house was demolished.” A portion of it is said to have been moved to Straight Path and Little East Neck Road and turned into a church — a story that is repeated locally and that we have not been able to confirm. If you know the building, write to us.

Belmont Lake State Park was established in 1926. Robert Moses, then running the Long Island park commission, helped secure the purchase; in 1935 he made it the regional headquarters for every state park on Long Island, which it still is. Region-wide permits are sold there, and the New York State Park Police keep their headquarters on the grounds. The park today covers 463 acres — roughly a third of what Belmont bought.

The lake itself is spring-fed. How big it is depends on who you ask: the state’s own page says 26 acres in one paragraph and 42 in another, and the historical accounts of the estate say thirty. We mention it because somebody always asks, and because the honest answer is that nobody has settled it.

None of which you need to know to walk it on Sunday. But the next time you are standing on that shore wondering why there is a lake in the middle of North Babylon, the answer is that a man in Manhattan wanted somewhere to watch his horses run.

Sources: Town of Babylon, North Babylon Community Profile · New York State Parks, Belmont Lake State Park

THE WEEKEND AHEAD · BABYLON VILLAGE

The best thing about the Fall Harvest Festival is structural: the restaurants come out of the buildings.

For five hours on Saturday, village restaurants set up out front and serve fall specialties on the sidewalk, which turns a street you have walked a thousand times into something you have to navigate slowly. That is the entire trick of a good street festival, and Babylon Village has the downtown for it.

Saturday, October 17, noon to 5 p.m., downtown Babylon Village. It is run by the Babylon Village Chamber of Commerce.

What is on: restaurant specialties from the village’s own kitchens, live entertainment on two stages running all day, rides, games, inflatables, a new kids zone, and fall activities at the Conklin House.

That last one is the one people skip and shouldn’t. The Conklin House is the village’s own history museum, and a festival afternoon is the easiest possible way to get a child through the front door of it.

Two practical notes.

The weather is on your side, but dress for it. Friday is the day it rains — showers and thunderstorms, a 90 percent chance, gusts to 26 miles an hour. Saturday clears up sunny with a high near 55 and a northwest wind of 17 to 21 miles an hour. Translation: bright, pleasant in the sun, genuinely cold in the shade on Main Street. Jacket, and a hat for the kids on the rides.

Come on foot if you can. A five-hour festival on the main commercial street of a walkable village is not a parking situation anyone wins. The LIRR station is a short walk from downtown, and the people who enjoy this festival most are the ones who did not spend the first forty minutes of it circling.

Details, including entertainment and any street closures, are on the Chamber’s event page.

Sources: Babylon Village Chamber of Commerce · I Love Babylon events calendar

THE WEEKEND AHEAD · AMITYVILLE

A ragamuffin parade is a genuinely old Long Island habit: children in costume, walking down the main street, two or three weeks before Halloween, for no reason other than that the costume exists and the street is right there.

Amityville’s runs Saturday.

The Thomas H. Smith Ragamuffin Parade, hosted by the Amityville PBA, steps off at 10 a.m. on Saturday, October 17 from the 9/11 Memorial Park at 259 Broadway, by the LIRR station. The route runs down Broadway to Park Avenue and finishes at Village Hall, 21 Ireland Place. It is scheduled to wrap by noon.

Two things make this one worth putting on the calendar rather than catching by accident.

The first is the start point. A children’s costume parade that forms up at a 9/11 memorial is a very particular kind of village gesture — the two things sitting in the same place on the same morning, with nobody making a speech about it.

The second is who runs it. A police benevolent association putting on a costume parade for small children is the shortest possible route to a kid meeting an officer on a good day, in a costume, with a parent holding their hand. Whatever else is true about that relationship nationally, that particular Saturday morning version of it is worth an hour.

What we do not know yet, and are asking: whether there is a costume contest, whether anyone needs to register, what time the line-up actually starts before the 10 a.m. step-off, and what happens if it rains. We have put the questions to the Village and the PBA. The weather at least looks cooperative — Friday is the wet day, and Saturday comes in sunny with a high near 55 and a brisk northwest wind. Dress the costume over a sweatshirt.

And we would like to know who Thomas H. Smith was. A parade carries a name for a reason, and this one has carried his long enough that most people walking it have stopped asking. If you know, write to us — that is next week’s piece.

Sources: Village of Amityville calendar · I Love Babylon events calendar

AROUND TOWN · SATURDAY, OCTOBER 17

The Great Give Back is a statewide day of service run through New York’s public libraries, and the thing that makes it work is that nobody asks you to sign up for anything. You walk in, you do a thing, you leave.

Four versions of it are running in the Town of Babylon on Saturday.

Lindenhurst Memorial Library, 1 Lee Avenue — 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., free. You write encouraging cards for the Marty Lyons Foundation, which grants wishes to seriously ill children. Each card written triggers a one-dollar donation toward a child’s wish. That is the rare volunteer task with an exchange rate.

West Babylon Public Library, 211 Route 109 — 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., free. Drop-in service stations, no registration. Teens can earn community service hours, which is worth knowing if there is a junior in your house with a form to fill.

Wyandanch Public Library — 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., free. An outdoor family fall festival built around the same idea: the giving-back part is the party.

Deer Park Library, at Deer Park High School, 1881 Deer Park Avenue — 1:30 to 3:30 p.m., free. The library sets up a table at Homecoming. Students in grades 6 through 12 drop off canned or boxed food and get a community service certificate. Food drive, football game, paperwork done.

A note on the weather, because it decides which of these you pick: Friday is the washout — showers and thunderstorms, a 90 percent chance of rain, gusts to 26 miles an hour. Saturday clears. Sunny, high near 55, but with a northwest wind of 17 to 21 miles an hour, which on a bay-side October afternoon feels colder than the number. The indoor card-writing table in Lindenhurst may be the smartest two hours of the weekend.

If you only have time for one: the card-writing. It costs nothing, it takes ten minutes, and it is the only one on the list where the thing you make in the room is the gift.

Sources: I Love Babylon events calendar · Lindenhurst Memorial Library · West Babylon Public Library · Wyandanch Public Library

THE PET DESK · AMITYVILLE

Every week this magazine runs one animal from the Babylon Animal Shelter. This week it is Beau, a senior tomcat who does not want to be held. It is worth knowing what is behind that one photograph.

The Town covers 53 square miles and is served by three Animal Control Officers, who enforce Article 7 of the state Agriculture and Markets Law along with the Town’s own codes. Office staff field resident complaints and dispatch more than 5,000 calls a year to those three officers.

Inside the building at 80 New Highway, kennel attendants care for the roughly 3,600 animals that come through each year — strays, impounds and owner surrenders. The shelter reports an adoption rate of over 80 percent.

Three people in trucks, 3,600 animals, one building. Hold that next to the fact that the shelter still finds time to write a listing describing a frightened cat as preferring “human company from a respectful distance,” and you understand something about how it is run.

What a fee actually buys. Dogs leave heartworm tested, on heartworm prevention for their stay, dewormed, altered, and vaccinated for rabies, DAPPV and Bordetella. Cats leave FeLV/FIV tested, dewormed, altered, and vaccinated for rabies and HCP. Every adoption includes microchipping with registration and a veterinary exam, and Babylon residents adopting a dog get a Town dog license.

The fees. Cash only. Cat or kitten, $65 — $35 if the adopter is 60 or over. Dog or puppy, resident: the Town’s website says $91.50 and the shelter’s own Petfinder page says $90, so bring cash and ask at the desk. Non-resident, $85. Adopters 60 and over pay $50 resident, $45 non-resident. Rabbits are $35.

Set that against what the same services cost privately and the arithmetic is not close.

Two things people do not know. First, every adoption requires an approved application — it is not a same-hour transaction, and that is the shelter protecting the animal. Second, you can bring your own pet to meet a candidate: an on-leash introduction in the shelter’s own BAARC in the Park. For a cat like Beau, who the shelter says would do best with a feline companion, that is the whole ballgame.

Hours. Monday noon to 5:30; Tuesday through Friday 10 to 3:30; Saturday 10 to 2:30; closed Sunday and holidays. Arrive at least thirty minutes before closing. 631-643-9270.

If you cannot adopt. As of this week the shelter says it needs canned cat and dog food, and it keeps Amazon and Chewy wish lists. A case of wet food is a real contribution to a building taking in seventy animals a week.

And one name to remember. We read the shelter’s full roster this morning. Rebel, #23-274, an adult male pit bull terrier, is still on it — a 2023 intake number, still listed in October 2026. So is Shyra, #23-319. Beau’s sixteen months are not the record at 80 New Highway. Not close.

That is next week’s column.

Sources: Town of Babylon Animal Shelter · the shelter's adoptable roster

ASK A LOCAL

This is a new column. You ask about living here, we go find the answer. We seeded the first one ourselves — send us the next.

Q: Every year brown paper leaf bags turn up and I never know who brought them or what the rules are. What is the actual system?

The actual system is more generous than most people realize, and more specific.

The bags come to you. According to the Town, during the last week of October through the first week of November, leaf bags are packaged and distributed by Department of Public Works employees to every Town of Babylon resident and property owner. You do not request them. You do not buy them. They arrive. So the bags for this season are days away.

They go out on your regular yard waste day. Once a bag is full, put it curbside for your normal yard waste collection — the Town does not run a separate leaf truck for the bags. Yard waste is collected weekdays, twelve months a year, and which weekday is yours depends on your Yard Waste Zone (YWZ). If you have never looked yours up, the zone map and the address lookup are on the Town’s recycling pages.

Now the rules that decide whether your pile gets taken.

Ten items a week. That is the cap — no more than ten yard waste items out per week. An item is a bag or a bundle.

Under 50 pounds. Bags of grass and leaves have to weigh less than fifty pounds. Wet leaves get heavy faster than anyone expects; if you can barely lift it, neither can the crew, and it stays on your curb.

Branches: bundled, tied, under four feet, under 50 pounds, and under four inches in diameter.

No dirt, sod or rocks. They cannot be collected, full stop. This is the single most common reason a pile is left behind.

No mixing, and no cardboard boxes. Yard waste mixed with garbage will not be taken, and neither will yard waste put out in a cardboard box.

Bamboo is garbage. Not yard waste. It goes out with the regular trash.

And while we are here, the Christmas rule, because you will want it in ten weeks: real, nursery-grown trees are picked up on the same days as your yard waste, with every ornament and light removed. Artificial trees go out on a regular garbage day, also stripped.

Numbers worth saving. Residential Recycling Center, 631-249-9346 or 631-249-9347 — call them if your bags have not shown up by the second week of November, or if you are unsure about an item. Garbage collection is handled by EnCon Industries, 631-491-3200. Town Hall is 631-957-3000.

Got a question about living in the Town of Babylon? Send it to us and we will chase the answer down.

Sources: Town of Babylon, Yard Waste Collection Information · 2026 Recycling Calendar