When her three children were young, Regina Crawford would take them to beaches in Shirley, Patchogue and East Islip, each about 20 minutes from their North Bellport home.
They would never make the four-minute drive down Station Road to Bellport Village and take the ferry to Ho-Hum Beach on Fire Island.
Ho-Hum was, and still is, off-limits to Crawford. The village-owned beach is open only to Bellport property owners and their guests, including summer renters.
“I’ve never been there,” Crawford said, “and I’ve lived here since 2007.”
Crawford and her neighbors in the predominantly Hispanic and Black hamlet could one day have a chance to soak in the rays at Ho-Hum.
First-term Brookhaven Supervisor Dan Panico, in his inaugural address last week at Brookhaven Town Hall, said he plans to ask Bellport Village officials to open the beach to all town residents, including those in North Bellport. Panico, a Republican, called the village’s beach access rules “absurd.”
Ho-Hum is the only Fire Island beach with such restrictions, said Suzy Goldhirsch, president of the Fire Island Association civic group.
Panico said opening the beach to non-village residents would narrow at least some of the racial and economic divide in what he called “one of the most de facto segregated communities on Long Island.”
“I’m no different, you’re no different than the children and families of North Bellport, and they deserve a means by which to enjoy this island and go to the beach,” Panico, who is white, told hundreds of town officials and invited guests at the ceremony. “Although the community of North Bellport may not look like me, or some of you, with regard to our skin tone, we must be better as a community as a whole because we are one town.”
Panico said Thursday the town would help pay village costs associated with expanding beach access.
Bellport Mayor Maureen Veitch, who attended Panico’s swearing-in, told Newsday she was “taken aback”…
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