So much to think about

Welcome. Thank you for coming to check out my blog.

My goal is to develop this blog into a provocative discussion of things going on in and around Riverhead Town. Like The News-Review, this blog is dedicated to Riverhead. If it doesn't have a "local hook," it doesn't belong.

This is different from anything I've ever done, and while I'm looking forward to watching this blog evolve, it's not without some trepidation. Will I have anything worth blogging about on a regular basis? Will it be interesting enough for people to come back to? Will it engage readers enough to spark discussion, both here and elsewhere? I'm hoping the answer to these questions is "yes."

To achieve these things, there have to be some ground rules for comments. No foul language. No nasty name calling and carping back and forth between readers. And no advertisements for businesses or politicians. I reserve the right to delete comments that violate these rules.

And away we go.

There are so many things going on, it's hard to decide what to begin with.

There's the wide-as-the-Grand-Canyon split in the local Republican party, something that's been festering for years on the Town Board, going back to the days of "the boys against the girls" Kozakiewicz administration. Now, one of the Republican councilwomen is off the ticket and the other one is being frozen out, with the local party blatantly supporting one of the candidates in the three-way council primary race.

There's the alliance of our former deputy supervisor and a sand-mine/solid waste guy with a very interesting past and her brazen appearances with him, as his business associate, at Town Hall concerning a matter — the EPCAL rail spur — she was involved in as deputy supervisor. This seems to flout the town's recently adopted ethics code and nobody in Town Hall seems to be showing any interest in doing anything about it. The supervisor even seems to be interested in defending his former deputy's behavior. Why?

Then there's the Wilpon deal, a deal this administration has been pushing since the beginning. Does it make sense for EPCAL? For Riverhead? Will the administration push this through before Election Day? RIverhead has had bad experience with deals inked in the shadow of a looming local election — the Burman deal in 1999, the Suffolk Theatre deal in 2003. Ed's thrown down the gauntlet this week, telling voters that a vote for Phil is like a vote for housing at EPCAL, while a vote for him is like a vote for jobs and tax base there. He challenged Phil to postpone any decision on Wilpon until after the election — to, in essence, make the election a referendum on the Wilpon deal. A very interesting move on Ed's part.

EPCAL, oh EPCAL. That could be a blog unto itself. Maybe it should be.

Then, as if town politics weren't enough to give us all a headache, there's the wonderful world of school politics. The school stuff is actually more intriguing. I'm still sort of dumbstruck that the school board gave our new superintendent a four-year contract extension and a hefty raise in pay before the first year of his original two-year contract was up. What is THAT about? And they also rewarded our $700-a-day interim assistant superintendent with a $50-a-day increase. (I heard they were matching an offer he got from another district.) And gave 4% pay hikes to two other assistant superintendents already making six-figure salaries.

Since these increases weren't part of any public budget discussion as far as we can tell, where'd all this extra dough — tens of thousands of dollars — come from? Ours was a "bare bones" budget, we were told before the budget vote in May. Sounds like there was significant funds squirreled away for post-budget-vote maneuvers, and that's disturbing. Especially when the school board plans to ask the taxpayers to approve borrowing tens of millions — probably well over $100 million — for a major capital expansion project in the coming year. What they've pulled with these administrators' salary increases doesn't build trust among the tax-paying, voting public, that's for sure.

So much to think about, so little time.

Entering a brave (not so) new world

I’m learning that I am, after all, something of a traditionalist.

I know that now because of the trepidation in my heart as I look at the blank posting screen on the civiletti blog on blogger.com. Truthfully, I had a hint of it when I created the civiletti blog on blogger.com a month ago. I created it, but left it empty.

I’m not sure what to do with this forum. It’s a strange concept: a sort of public diary. I’ve been an off-and-on avid journaler all my life. I don’t think I ever shared my journal writings with anyone, much less the anonymous public-at-large.

So this is scary.

It’s also intimidating because it’s unchartered territory and I’m used to doing what I do the way I’ve always done it. I’ve been churning out a 700-word essay every week, more or less, for six years. My column has a structure, a format, a time and a place. Top of page nine of The News-Review, every Thursday. This blog thing is uncomfortably amorphous. You write when you feel like you have something to say. Long, short, doesn’t matter. Topics vary. You can even post pictures.

Yep. I’m a traditionalist all right.

Now that I’ve wandered outside of my comfort zone, I have so many questions. But there are no real answers, because, in blog world, there are no real rules. At least that’s what my 13-year-old daughter tells me.

When I asked her if she knew what a blog was, she responded with a huge guffaw. Eyes rolled. Head shook. Well, duh, of course. I then learned that she has three blogs of her own. And that everybody knows what a blog is.

Except this particular 13-year-old’s embarrassingly antiquated parental unit. (That’s what she calls me, parental unit.)

I got to wondering about blogs (sure, I’d heard of them but they hadn’t become more than a fleeting blip on my radar screen) after a recent conversation with a young woman who’s just finishing college. She’s a regular writer of letters to the editor. She’s articulate, organizes her thoughts well, and she knows how to construct a sentence. I asked her if she’d be interested in a job at the newspaper. No, she replied. But she was thinking of starting her own blog about local issues and politics, she casually informed me.

There was that word again.

I started to look into this blog thing a little more. And the more I read, the more I realized the potential we traditionalists have for sitting back while the world passes you by — and you don’t even realize it’s happening.

This realization hit me like a bucket of ice water in my face. And not just because I never thought I’d be such a dinosaur about communication technology at this young age. (I can see my daughter rolling her eyes right now.) This is the direction the publishing industry is going in. This may be the future of the newsroom. And it was happening without me. I was hunkered down in my comfy little corner of the maze with Hem and Haw, and one day I’d emerge from my comfort zone and find that the cheese had moved. Vanished. Just like that.

If you’ve never read Spencer Johnson’s “Who Moved My Cheese?” you really should. It’ll make you think about how you deal with change in your life, whether it’s change at the office or at home. And there’s certainly enough change in this world to keep us all on our toes. Or left behind wondering what happened, like Hem and Haw, the mice in the “Cheese” parable who didn’t anticipate change and one day emerged from their comfort zone to find that everything was different.

And so began my thinking about my personal blog experiment, a thought process that led me to this blank screen on the civiletti blog at blogger.com.

It’s got some words on it, now. Close to 700 words in fact. The traditionalist dies hard, you see.

Meanwhile, I’ll write. Maybe not every day. But then again maybe so. I’ll blog about life in Riverhead. I’ll blog about the upcoming local elections. I may even blog about you. I’ll blog about whatever the spirit moves me to blog about, since that’s what a blog is all about.

And if I can figure it out, I’ll set it up so that you can comment on my blog, too. If I can’t, I’ll get my daughter to help me. So check it out, read all about it, and chime in. Go to civiletti.blogspot.com.