Legislator Steve Stern is Very Proud to Call Dix Hills Home

If the next time you're at a school board meeting, you see a face you normally just see in the newspapers—you're not hallucinating.  That man sitting next to you is Legislator Steve Stern.

"There's rarely a school board meeting that goes by that I'm not at," Stern said. "It's important.  In Dix Hills, the schools are the central focal point in the community. There is no downtown. I want to learn what's going on and make myself available to the neighbors and the school board. I want to ensure that the programs work. It's important to me to be accessible and responsive. I'm there to help," he added.

Stern has lived in the district for the past 11 years. "My two sons [ages 8 and 11] have always lived in Dix Hills. It's the only school district we've known and we're very pleased with all the teachers we've had so far," he said.

He doesn't just appear at school board meetings. He feels it is very important to talk to his constituents, and to listen. He has something called "Coffee with Steve:" It's an invitation to his neighbors to have a cup of coffee with him and talk to him. "I really want to bring government to the people. I want my neighbors to see their ideas implemented," Stern said.

In fact, he said, at one of these community meetings, he heard about how at the Park and Ride on Commack Road, cars traveling to and from the parking lot were loitering in the residential community across the street. So Stern created a structure so that the cars couldn't go from the Park and Ride to the neighborhood across the street.

"That's why it's important to listen to my neighbors," Stern said.  "I'm proud whenever I'm able to implement any of their ideas."

Another thing that people had been complaining about were the turn lanes at the LIE-Commack Road interchange. "So now those turn lanes have been widened, which is helping with the volume on the north and south service roads to the LIE," Stern said.

Even though few projects are qualifying for federal assistance in these hard economic times, Commack Road qualified, Stern said. "I played a role in getting that work done. I'm very proud of that fact, that we were able to do that."

But he's not done thinking about how to fix Commack Road. "I have a map of Commack Road in my office," he said. "I look at that map every single day, trying to create a vision of how to best go forward with fixing the traffic problems on the road."

Stern and Congressman Israel have come up with an idea--after listening to the community—of adding a parallel road, adjacent to the Sagtikos Parkway, for all the commercial truck traffic. It would go through the Pilgrim State property, running from the LIE to the industrial area along Long Island Avenue, where most of those trucks are going.

"This would be dramatically beneficial to the community," Stern said. "It would push all the commercial traffic off of Commack Road."

Another problem that Stern has been working to fix has been graffiti. "It's a problem in every community, and it's a problem here in Dix Hills as well. Seeing gang member messages—that's unacceptable to me," he said. "I take that very seriously."

Stern started an anti-graffiti task force, sponsored by local businesses. Two dozen high school students are in charge of reporting graffiti whenever they see it, and then they do the work to get rid of it.

"Graffiti will not be tolerated," Stern said. "I have great pride in my community."