School property taxes for the 2025-26 academic year could rise an average of 2.62% on Long Island, according to figures collected by the NYS Comptroller's Office and released at Newsday's request. John Hildebrand and Michael R. Ebert report in NEWSDAY that early projections show that a majority of Long Island school districts — 69 of 124 — are keeping proposed tax increases below the inflation rate, a Newsday analysis found. Current inflation is running at 2.8%, down from 3% in February. Some districts, however, project tax-levy increases well above the average…including in Suffolk - Mount Sinai 3.95% and East Hampton 5.34%. Despite these large proposed increases, Newsday determined that no district so far has called for a voter override of the state's tax-cap limits, which requires approval by at least 60% of local voters. That's in marked contrast with last year's school-budget season, when six districts attempted to bust their caps, and half succeeded. In dollar terms, school property tax revenues are projected to top 4.9 billion dollars in Suffolk County. Typically, that money accounts for more than two-thirds of homeowners' tax bills across the region. Local educators described their districts as caught in a squeeze between rising costs, cap controls and what they argue is limited state aid. Some district administrators interviewed by phone said it was too early to know if extra money from Albany would be enough to substantially lower local tax requests.
In Albany, the Democratic majorities of the NYS Senate and Assembly this week proposed increases in school spending beyond the $825 million, or 2.4% increase, put forward by Gov. Kathy Hochul's executive budget in January. Under law, a final state budget is due for adoption on April 1.
***
Gov. Kathy Hochul is scheduled to meet with President Donald Trump today over New York’s increasing need for federal aid for mass transit and infrastructure, even as Hochul’s Democratic Party takes a harder line against the Republican president.
"I said I wanted to carry on the conversation that we had in the Oval Office a couple weeks ago," Hochul told reporters yesterday, a day after she requested the meeting. "I have a lot on my agenda."
She said she will again push for more federal funding for several infrastructure projects including the Penn Station rail hub to which massive federal aid would normally flow.
Michael Gormley reports in NEWSDAY that Governor Hochul said she will also push for billions of dollars in federal aid to help fund the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s capital program and support for the state’s congestion pricing program that was supposed to fund it. Congestion pricing began in January and charges a fee to enter the most congested part of Manhattan during the busiest hours to reduce traffic, improve air quality and combat emissions that contribute to global warming.
Trump, however, has said he opposes the program after hearing opposition to the fees from New Jersey Republican officials.
Hochul said she also wants to talk to Trump about the trade war he began with Canada that threatens energy and commerce from Canada, a major trade partner with New York.
"So," Hochul said, "we’ll have quite an agenda."
***
The Annual Westhampton Beach St. Patrick’s Day Parade steps off at noon tomorrow from the elementary school on Mill Road, marching south to Main Street, and finishing at the corner of Main Street and Sunset Avenue. This year’s Grand Marshal is former town fire marshal and Westhampton Beach Fire Department member (and Santa Claus) Steve Frano, who wants to know, “Is there a volunteer within you? That’s tomorrow’s Westhampton Beach St. Patrick’s Day Parade from 12:00 pm – 2:00 pm.
Also, tomorrow – the St. Patrick’s Day parade in Jamesport steps off at 1 p.m. on Main Road at Washington Avenue and proceeds east on Main Road to Manor Lane.
***
The wildfires that erupted in Eastern Suffolk County last weekend spread through more than 400 acres of woodlands before they were extinguished. But in spite of the alarming billows of smoke, the fires were not catastrophic. Quite the opposite, ecologists argue: Long Island’s pine barrens have burned too little in recent years.
If wildfires must be suppressed for public safety, ecologists say, forest managers need to set small, controlled fires intentionally, to improve the health of the pine barrens and reduce the risk of a really big, fast-spreading conflagration.
"The ecosystem really needs the fire," said Polly Weigand, the Northeast fire project manager for the nonprofit Forest Stewards Guild. "If you're not going to let wildfires burn, then you need to substitute another type of disturbance — a proxy for wildfire."
Still, Long Island firefighters said it's too dangerous to allow the forests to burn uncontrolled, preferring instead planned fires that can be closely watched.
Tracy Tullis reports in NEWSDAY that on Long Island, the turning point came 30 years ago, when the Sunrise Fire consumed 4,500 acres of overly dense pine barrens. Afterward, the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation started a program of prescribed burns to maintain forest health.
Last weekend’s fires broke out in a rare ecosystem of dwarf pitch pines, a variety that grows no more than about 20 feet high and is found in only a few other places besides Long Island. Southern pine beetles don’t generally attack the dwarfs, as they prefer larger specimens. But when fires erupt among dwarf pines, their diminutive stature can help them to spread. Flames can reach into the low branches and climb into the crown and then leap to surrounding trees. The Westhampton fires were extinguished before that became a significant hazard.
To the extent that the pine beetle has increased fire risk, it’s an indirect effect, Kathy Schwager, an ecologist at the Brookhaven National Laboratory, told Newsday in January.
***
Centuries of fire suppression have left Long Island's pine barrens overcrowded, unhealthy — and prone to wildfires. The thousands of trees killed by the southern pine beetles don't increase the risk of fire, ecologists say; they tend to smolder rather than ignite. Carefully planned and monitored burns restore forest health and remove the excess fuel that can feed a fire. Tracy Tullis reports in NEWSDAY that the large number of dead standing trees killed by the southern pine beetles in the past decade haven’t increased the risk of fire, according to forestry experts. "What drives fire is the small fuels, the needles," DEC supervising forester John Wernet said at an East Hampton town board work session this week. "Large, dead standing trees really don’t drive the fire." There are one-hour fuels, like pine needles and twigs, that ignite and spread flames rapidly, and 10-hour fuels such as brush that take a little longer to catch. Dead trees are 1,000-hour fuels: "It will just smolder — it doesn’t burn," he said.
Long Island’s pine barrens cover 105,000 acres — a small remnant of a forest that once extended over a quarter million acres, but still a very large landscape to manage with controlled burns. The DEC concentrates its efforts on the wildland-urban interface, where forests border residential neighborhoods — areas such as Rocky Point Pine Barrens State Forest. The agency’s staff started work there in 2022 and are still "clearing dense understory vegetation and will begin marking trees for removal soon," DEC forester Rob Cole said in a statement. "Once dense vegetation is cleared and trees removed, prescribed fire is used to maintain the open barrens."
***
Shelter Island Friends of Music hosts its second concert of the 2025 season featuring award-winning violinist Sirena Huang and pianist Chih-Yi Chen tomorrow afternoon at 3pm in the Shelter Island Presbyterian Church. In this free concert, the virtuosos will perform the identical program that they will be presenting for their Carnegie Hall debut in April. It features works of Beethoven, Stravinsky, Poulenc, Chen Gang, Coleridge-Taylor, and others.
There is no admission fee; donations are always appreciated. A reception with the musicians will follow the concert.
Visit www.shelterislandfriendsofmusic.org for more information.
***
As with every emergency, last Saturday’s wildfire in Westhampton proved to be a learning experience for Southampton Town’s leaders and emergency managers. Michael Wright reports on 27east.com that some officials say it has shed light on some relatively simple, and possibly easily improved, steps that could have been taken to better coordinate the massive response and to keep the public informed in such a frightening and rapidly evolving scenario. Saturday’s events were especially harried and confusing because of the speed with which the emergency situation exploded to urgency, the size of the response and, fortunately, the speed with which it effectively ended as the fire was mostly brought under control by Saturday evening. But with the Los Angeles wildfires still fresh in many minds, residents of neighborhoods who could see the billowing black smoke blowing toward their streets were understandably concerned for their personal safety and that of their homes and loved ones. No evacuation orders for residential areas were ever issued. But — in what has become the defining hallmark of our hyper-interconnected world — incorrect information spread quickly, leading to moments of confusion and panic. Some Southampton Town officials say that they wished the town could have used its Notify Me emergency communications system more frequently and effectively to quell rumors and incorrect information, reassure residents that there was no imminent danger, and let them know that if there was to be an emergency order that applied to them how they would be informed. But overall, officials celebrated the 2025 Westhampton Pines Fire response. Southampton Town Supervisor Maria Moore said that the town’s communications system had actually worked well beyond a brief period when an announcement about the fire had not loaded correctly and didn’t display in the links sent to Notify Me users. Had the threat required evacuations, Supervisor Moore stated the warnings would have been loud and clear – and at the front doors of every home in danger. “Now that the emergency is over, we can sit down and look it all over and think about how to improve communication,” she said. “There’s always room for improvement.”
