Government

Village of Freeport Mayor Robert Kennedy, a man with many plans

Posted

Village of Freeport Mayor Robert Kennedy stood before a set of three maps in the Village Hall boardroom on Tuesday morning, reviewing a proposal that, he said, could save Nassau County from the next great flood.

Kennedy has served as Freeport’s mayor since 2013. He assumed the role after the worst natural catastrophe to befall the village since the Great Hurricane of 1938. Superstorm Sandy had rolled across the village only months earlier, in October 2012, leveling whole swaths of the municipality south of Merrick Road. Ever since, Kennedy said, he’s been working toward a solution to prevent another such flood.

He thinks he’s found one: tidal floodgates.

Kennedy showed a group of two Herald editors and one publisher a proposal that he is championing to construct two large-scale flood gates — one at East Rockaway Inlet, between Atlantic Beach and Far Rockaway, and one at Jones Inlet, between Jones Beach and Point Lookout.

Tidal floodgates have held back the Atlantic Ocean in places like Stamford, Conn.; Fairhaven, Mass.; and the Netherlands, Kennedy noted.

The project would cost $300 million. The money would have to come from the federal government, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineering would have to complete the work.

Kennedy has already successfully lobbied U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer for $3 million in federal grants to conduct a three-year study to determine whether floodgates would, in fact, be possible at the two inlets. Construction could take up to six years, so the gates themselves would not likely be installed for another decade.

If they were constructed, however, Kennedy said he believes they could stop another major flood in the event of a major hurricane the likes of Sandy. Most of the floodwaters that inundated the South Shore during Sandy came through the Jones and East Rockaway inlets, he said.

The plan, he added, has garnered the support of village mayors across the South Shore, as well as key Nassau County lawmakers. Kennedy detailed the plan in December on the plan at the Vision Long Island Smart Growth Summit, where he was joined by a host of village and town officials.

Climatologists say it’s critical that coastal communities begin to prepare now for rising sea levels caused by global warming. Predictions are that sea level could rise 5 percent by the end of the century, which would cause greater inland flooding than Long Island experienced during Sandy.

The floodgate project is only one of several that Kennedy has in the works. Two years ago, the Freeport installed a fiber-optic system of license plate-reader cameras that continually feed data into a central monitoring station, down the hall from the mayor’s office in Village Hall.

The cameras read up to 190,000 plates a day, and officials check for outstanding summonses and arrest warrants. Last year the village impounded some 1,600 vehicles thanks to the cameras. Additionally, 72 people were arrested — including a man who was wanted for murder in Virginia — and 7,000 summonses were issued.

At the same time, the mayor is turning his attention to economic development, with big plans for the Sunrise Highway and Merrick Road business districts as well as south Freeport, including the Nautical Mile.

Kennedy decided to get into politics after a long career in the private sector in 2009 when he was elected trustee of the Village of Freeport and promptly appointed deputy mayor, he said.

Kennedy served in the U.S. Navy aboard the USS Vulcan, in the early 1970s, spending time in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; Norfolk, Va., and various other ports of call.

After his naval service, Kennedy was appointed vice president of technical services for Starrett Property Services Inc., where he was responsible for maintaining hundreds of residential and commercial high-rise buildings and supervising several thousand employees. During his tenure at Starrett, he learned the importance of maintaining a fiscally responsible budget, he said. In 1984, Kennedy left Starrett Property Services to open up his own business.