NU Village Civic Organization Looking for Community Involvement

The New United (NU) Village of Patchogue organization is seeking community involvement to discuss local issues.

The organization held its first meeting Tuesday night at the , where members spoke in front of a contingent of about 20 community members, sitting trustee Gerard Crean, Patchogue 2012 trustee candidate Tom Ferb and incumbent Residents First trustee candidate Stephen McGiff.

David Kennedy, one of the founding Nu Village members, said that the organization began forming in response to Village Board meetings. Kennedy said that several residents began discussing what this might mean for the Village’s future.

“And what started as informal discussions of a few friends kind of grew over the months,” Kennedy said, “...into a group of people that really became very serious about some ideas, some principles, some thoughts about how the village government and the community could have a better dialogue of how things are happening in the community.”

Kennedy and the other founding members went on to describe each of the principles that will serve as the backbone for the organization, which can be read on their website and .

In particular the organization states in its principals that it would like to create its own board where members would be selected randomly and serve one-year terms.

One of the first points brought up by Kennedy was the fact that NU Village will not have a candidate run for Mayor in this year’s election nor will they endorse a candidate from either party.

“These are principals that should be carried on beyond Election Day and we abandoned the idea or running our own candidates,” Kennedy said. “(We) decided the best thing to do is to bring this out to the public and really encourage those candidates that have already stood up and said that they are running this year to maybe try to encourage them to incorporate some of what we stand for as part of their platform.”

The main point the members of NU Village tried to get across at the meeting Tuesday night was that they are looking for as much community involvement as possible to help keep residents and taxpayers informed on what is going on in their neighborhoods.

“It’s your village,” member Lauren Prendergast said. “It’s your voice, it’s your future.”