If you were busted for a traffic violation in Suffolk County by a camera, you might be able to get some bucks back. A state court ruled yesterday that drivers who paid extra fees for Suffolk red-light camera tickets are eligible for class certification, potentially moving motorists one step closer to getting reimbursed. Rather than recouping their funds from the county individually, each driver who paid an administrative fee will be entitled to restitution from the county as part of the class action case. Peter Gill reports in NEWSDAY that the decision comes two weeks after the same court — the Appellate Division, Second Department in Brooklyn — ruled that any extra fees on top of the base $50 fine and $25 late fee, are illegal. Nassau has since stopped charging the extra $100 it had collected in "public safety" and "driver responsibility" fees. Suffolk had collected a $30 administrative fee per ticket, but it stopped that in 2023 and then legislators let its entire red-light camera program expire at the beginning of this month. The court ruled that a class action is merited because "the class consists of a large number of identifiable individuals seeking ... relatively small sums of damages." Though the new decision only pertains to Suffolk County, it suggests that drivers in Nassau will also ultimately be granted class status, according to David Raimondo, a lead attorney for the plaintiffs in both counties. "It’s over, time [for the counties] to pay up," he said. According to Suffolk’s 2023 annual red-light camera report, the county collected more than $90.5 million in administrative fees between 2013 and 2023. Raimondo said that county officials owe drivers 6% interest on top of the administrative fees, according to state law.

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The State Board of Regents, which sets education policy in New York, has put out a proposed regulation for school districts to think about "regional plans for sharing resources" as a way to save money. While in the embryo stages, even the idea of regional sharing has set off strong reactions: alarms for some, followed by counterclaims about overreactions. Given the response, the Regents took the extra step Monday of changing the language in the planning guidance to make clear participation by districts is absolutely optional. Still the reactions illustrate the political difficulties in holding down school costs and property taxes on Long Island. Sure, residents are unhappy about high taxes, but reactions against school regionalization at any level seem to be stronger. "Home rule is not just a legal concept, but a very emotional concept that is very closely held in the suburbs where people have invested their life savings in a house, a neighborhood, a school district," said Lawrence Levy, dean of suburban studies at Hofstra University. "So anything that sounds like an infringement on local control is going to get a push back that might be more emotional than rational." Yancey Roy reports in NEWSDAY that the Regents and NYS Education Department are asking districts to submit reports about strengths and weaknesses, which in theory would be used to come up with ideas for sharing services and saving money. The local Board of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES) would shepherd progress reports, due April 1.

Long Islanders pay some of the highest taxes in the nation, and school-driven property taxes are a major factor. But the idea of lowering those costs through some consolidation will always face severe blowback on multiple levels, Levy said.

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Christmas came early for 25 local kids this week. There were smiles all around as children in kindergarten through high school went on a pre-holiday shopping spree with Riverhead police officers at the Riverhead Target store. Denise Civiletti reports on Riverheadlocal.com that each kid had $100 to spend on whatever they wanted, courtesy of Riverhead Police officers’ unions, whose members accompanied them around the store. Kids and cops fanned across the store, walking the aisles and picking out games, toys, stuffed animals and clothes. Kids also got goody bags from police, with treats and trinkets, coloring books and crayons. The Riverhead Police PBA and Riverhead Police SOA, the unions that represent police officers in Riverhead, funded and coordinated the “Shop with a Cop” event, a first for Riverhead Police. Kids selected to participate in the “Shop with a Cop” event were suggested by Riverhead school officials in collaboration with the Riverhead Police school resource officers, Eric Cohen and Kaley Castantine, who were on hand Tuesday evening to check-in each of the students as they arrived. The police officers who participated in “Shop with a Cop” were all off-duty, volunteering their time. About 30 officers turned out for the event, including, much to the children’s delight, two K-9 cops and their furry, four-legged partners.

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The battle lines were clearly drawn as the Southampton Town Board this week opened a hearing on a proposal that would force the closure of sand mines in the town over the next seven years. Stephen J. Kotz reports on 27east.com that residents and environmentalists spoke unanimously in favor of the proposal, which would use a zoning tool called amortization to force mines that are in residential zones or special groundwater protection areas to shut down in the near future. Those who represented mining and construction interests were unanimously opposed. The board’s meeting room was packed, with an overflow crowd forced to watch the proceedings on video screens in the ground-floor auditorium. While it appeared that more opponents of the legislation filled the room, the majority of speakers were in favor of it. The audience was orderly, but a brief altercation between two men on opposite sides of the issue outside the meeting room brought police to the second-floor hallway. Under the proposed legislation, those mines that have extracted all of the sand allowed by their mining permits would be forced to close within a year, and those that still have sand left to mine would be allowed to petition the Zoning Board of Appeals for an extension of up to seven years to exhaust their sand allotments. A total of seven mines, most inactive, would be targeted by the legislation. After listening to testimony, which included a lengthy statement in opposition from Southampton Town Councilwoman Cyndi McNamara, the sole Republican on the board, at the start of the hearing, the board tabled the matter until January 28, as town planners begin to coordinate the environmental review of the proposed law under the guidelines of the State Environmental Quality Review Act.

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More than $12 million in grants will be funneled into conservation projects for Long Island Sound, officials announced this week. Brianne Ledda reports in NEWSDAY that the federal money is distributed through the Long Island Sound Futures Fund, a program dedicated to revitalizing Long Island Sound — the second-largest estuary on the East Coast with a watershed that “stretches 16,820 miles across five states,” according to officials.

“It’s really a critical time for us to be doing this when we see what is happening from climate change and how our ecosystems are changing,” said Sean Mahar, interim commissioner at the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, during a virtual announcement of the grants on Monday.

The initiative — a partnership between the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, the Long Island Sound Study and the Environmental Protection Agency — has invested $68 million in 673 projects since it was launched in 2005, officials said.

For 2024, program officials have announced 31 grants totaling $12.5 million for environmental groups in New York, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Vermont. Recipients have agreed to match the grants with another $12.2 million.

The money “will support water quality improvements, habitat restoration [and] public engagement projects to restore and maintain Long Island Sound,” said David Cash, EPA administrator for the New England region.

Fourteen grants amounting to around $3.5 million have been awarded to projects completely or partially in New York, with at least four based on Long Island.

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There were 140 employees in towns and cities on Long Island who made more than $200,000 in 2023, up 12.9% from 2022, and nearly 43% more than in 2018, a Newsday analysis found. Payroll totaled nearly $844 million in Long Island's towns and cities in 2023, up 3.8% from 2022 when payroll totaled $812.7 million, Newsday found. The five highest overtime payments in a single year ranged from $118,934.07 to $217,546.52, the data show. Joe Werkmeister and Carl MacGowan report in NEWSDAY that the increases, municipal experts said, came during a period of low unemployment, high inflation, and after governments recorded millions of dollars in federal pandemic aid.

On the East End, town police departments account for the lion's share of the payroll totals and employ some of the highest municipal earners on Long Island, the data show.

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East Hampton Town’s Community Housing Advisory Board has recommended the town fund five of the seven projects that applied this year in the first-ever round of requests for proposals for funding through the town’s new Community Housing Fund (CHF). Beth Young reports in EAST END BEACON that if the East Hampton Town Board approves the total of just over $3.68 million in funding after upcoming public hearings on the proposals to be held next Thursday; December 19th, a large portion of the money would go to projects that have already been built and are either in need of rehabilitation or facing budget shortfalls due to inflation in recent years, Director of Housing & Community Development Eric Schantz told the Town Board at its work session last week.

Community Housing Advisory Board {CHAB} Chairman Andrew Garvey added that, after going through the first year’s applications, the CHAB has realized that its preferences going forward will be to fund high-impact projects that create the greatest number of housing units, and that the board would prefer to spend the money on construction than on soft costs like permitting and architectural plans, and would prefer to provide loans than grants, to “be able to recycle funds back into affordable housing projects, which compounds the power of CHF dollars.”

The Town of East Hampton currently has about $10 million in its CHF fund, said Mr. Schantz, some of which is earmarked for the town’s down payment assistance and accessory dwelling unit programs rolled out this past spring. The Town Board has set public hearings on each of the proposals for its Dec. 19 meeting, which will be held at 6 p.m. The East Hampton Town Board would then vote separately on whether to approve each individual application.