Suffolk County Legislator - 15th District

REPUBLICAN

Connors, 61, of Amityville and an aide to state Sen. Phil Boyle, is running on the Conservative and Republican lines.

• Connors said he would like to fix the county’s shelter system, calling it “broken and a disgrace,” as many homeless people prefer to sleep on streets rather than risk becoming victims of violence in shelters.
• He said he is also concerned about the handling of big development projects, such as Wyandanch Rising, which he said create affordable rental housing but also spark an influx of children into a school system without a commensurate increase in property tax revenue.
• Spending, he said, is out of control in Suffolk even as the county installs red-light cameras to fine motorists and hikes fees on services to increase revenue. “The county doesn’t have a revenue problem; it has a spending problem,” he said.

DEMOCRATIC

Gregory, 50, of Copiague, is running on the Democratic, Working Families and Independence lines.

• The five-term legislator, who serves as the Legislature’s presiding officer, said he’s been addressing “the challenges facing our millennial-age residents” by finding ways they can afford to live and work here.
• Gregory said he helped create Project Connect to address the opioid crisis by linking people with substance abuse issues in the Southside and Huntington hospitals emergency rooms with critical counseling and social services.
• He said the Suffolk County Landbank Corp. he helped create has been able to rid the county of blighted properties by buying them and working with nonprofits to turn them into affordable housing. The land bank also strives to preserve Long island’s drinking water through the cleanup of brownfields.