Long Pond Greenbelt Walk It Off is this Friday

Long Island Morning Edition

Suffolk County employees and beneficiaries hoping to shed pounds using the latest weight-loss medications will face stricter requirements to prove they need the pricey drugs in order to get them covered by insurance, officials said. Starting Jan. 1, the Employee Medical Health Plan of Suffolk County will require monitoring, counseling, a higher body mass index and, in some cases, health conditions that put someone at higher risk for serious illness, according to an all-employee memo sent by the county executive's office. Lisa L. Colangelo reports in NEWSDAY that the new guidelines in Suffolk County are part of a national trend by municipal governments and private firms struggling to manage ballooning costs of popular drugs such as Wegovy and Mounjaro. Some states and companies have decided to drop coverage of these medications rather than deal with the growing price tags, experts said.

For example, Suffolk County's costs for these medications, known as GLP-1 drugs, increased more than $3 million over two years, from $1.2 million in the second quarter of 2022 to $4.3 million in the second quarter of 2024, according to officials. Earlier this month, the union that represents Nassau County employees sued the government about changes to its health plans.

Employers choosing to continue coverage of these medications are turning to third-party companies to help manage costs and set limits on who should have access to them, said Matthew Rae, an analyst at KFF, a health policy research and news organization.

"There are very few employers who are covering this the same way you cover low-cost drugs," Rae said. "This is a hugely expensive drug. Employers are thinking about how they want to do this."

Without insurance, one month of Ozempic can cost about $936; Wegovy, $1,349, and Mounjaro, $1,023, in the United States, according to a KFF analysis.

Currently about 2,100 Suffolk County employees or beneficiaries not on Medicare have active prescriptions for GLP-1 medications, according to county spokesman Mike Martino.

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Southampton Town has signed a contract to sell the Westhampton Beach building that it purchased in 2021 to transform into a new community center, and will direct the funds from the sale to construction of an entirely new facility next to Westhampton Beach Elementary School. Michael Wright reports on 27east.com that Southampton Town Supervisor Maria Moore said that the town has signed a contract to sell the Old Riverhead Road building, which previously housed a luxury auto dealership with a restaurant above it but had sat empty for several years, for $4.15 million — slightly more than the $4.1 million the town paid for it. The buyer, she said, is Appliance World, an appliance retailer with stores in Oyster Bay and Huntington, who signed the contract of sale last month. Moore, the former mayor of Westhampton Beach, said that she thinks having an appliance retailer returning to the former home of Bob Stevens Appliance, which closed in 2010, is a great thing for the area. The Town of Southampton had purchased the building in 2021 with its sights set on a wholesale renovation into a new community center and senior services center. But Supervisor Moore said, “We decided that it would be easier to sell this building and put that money and the money we would have spent on renovations into constructing something the right way rather than trying to fit the needs into an existing space,” Moore said.

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The Annual Friends of the Long Pond Greenbelt Walk It Off Walk is this Friday, November 29…the day after Thanksgiving…from 10AM-12 Noon. Meet at the end of Round Pond Lane in Sag Harbor for a moderately fast-paced hike to shed that Thanksgiving stuffing. Amazing views of Round Pond, Long Pond and Little Long Pond!

For more information call the leader of this Friday’s FREE event - Dai Dayton at 631-745-0689.

Long Pond Greenbelt is a chain of unspoiled coastal plain ponds bordered by wetlands and fringing oak forests between Sag Harbor and Bridgehampton, New York. Formed from glacial processes, the ponds in the Greenbelt vary in depth from year to year, depending on rainfall. This variability of pond depth has created a unique habitat called a coastal plain pond shore community.

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Two years ago, when PSEG Long Island proposed to bury a power line running from its Bridgehampton substation to East Hampton, under its right-of-way bisecting the Long Pond Greenbelt, the reaction was swift and unanimous from environmentalists and residents — they packed informational meetings on the project to demand that alternative routes be explored. When PSEG held a similar informational meeting at LTV Studios in Wainscott last week to unveil the new route, which will take the line north through Sag Harbor and down Route 114, avoiding the environmentally sensitive greenbelt, the response was decidedly more low-key, with more than a dozen PSEG representatives on hand to answer questions from the handful of people who trickled in to see their presentation.

Stephen J. Kotz reports on 27east.com that the new route will run the 69-kilovolt line north from the substation on the Bridgehampton-Sag Harbor Turnpike into Sag Harbor, where it will follow Jermain Avenue to Madison Street. From Madison Street, the line will head south to Harrison Street, where it will head east to Route 114 and southeast to East Hampton, where it will be connected to the Buell substation. The total cost of the project is $65 million, according to Katy Tatzel, PSEG’s director of communications, who said the original budget for the project through the greenbelt would have been only $47 million. The cost will be shared by all ratepayers. Project manager Anthony Carullo said PSEG plans to begin work on laying the cable in January 2025, with a December 2025 completion date. No work will take place between Memorial Day and Labor Day due to the seasonal population swing. Workers will be on the job from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., except on Route 114, a state road, where they will only be allowed to work between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. No night work is planned in Sag Harbor, but PSEG says if there is a need to work in the evening, residents along the route will be notified in advance.

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One of Michael E. White's prized possessions is a flag commemorating the first Earth Day in 1970.

More than a half-century later, the environmental lawyer has been selected by Stony Brook University to serve as interim director of its Waste Reduction and Management Institute. He is principal investigator overseeing a state-funded study of Long Island's municipal trash and recycling programs. The institute is using a $250,000 grant for the research. Carl MacGowan reports in NEWSDAY that White, 72, of Centerport, has played a key behind-the-scenes role in local trash issues as a lawyer and consultant for West Babylon-based Winters Bros. Waste Systems and as vice chair of the Long Island Regional Planning Council. Winters Bros. was purchased earlier this year by national trash hauling conglomerate WM, formerly Waste Management.

Founded in 1985, the waste institute has become a resource for government officials and nonprofits as Long Island grapples with the impending closure of the Brookhaven Town landfill. The landfill will stop accepting construction debris next month and is expected to close completely in 2027 or 2028.

In a Newsday interview, White discussed the challenges posed by Long Island's waste crisis, including illegal dumping in the state-protected pine barrens, and trucks clogging the Cross Bronx Expressway and other roads while hauling construction and demolition debris off the Island. He also weighed in on what could happen once the landfill closes, highlighting the possibility of higher taxes and construction costs as building contractors and municipalities ship waste hundreds of miles away.

Suffolk County Legis. Steven Englebright (D-East Setauket) said localities must step up efforts to reduce and recycle trash.

"We don’t know where our waste is going to go," said Englebright, a former State Assemblyman who chaired the chamber's environmental conservation committee. ” The stakes are huge locally as well as internationally.”

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In Sagaponack this coming Friday November 29 from 11am to 1pm you are invited to join a beach Cleanup at Sagg Main Beach, in collaboration with the South Fork Natural History Museum and the Surfrider Foundation of Eastern Long Island. Please bring your own gloves and bucket. The event is free.

Those interested please RSVP Suffolk County Legislator Ann Welker at [e-mail].

Meet before 11am this Friday in the parking lot at Sagg Main Beach, 1200 Sagg Main St., NY 11962

The Sagaponack beach clean up seeks to spread awareness of the harm plastic waste creates in our environment and to make an impact by cleaning our beaches and shorelines.

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It’s going to rain on Macy’s parade tomorrow according to the National Weather Service. But that is only one of Macy’s worries right now. Others include $154 million that went missing from the company’s books. And then there are declining sales and “underproductive” stores. James Barron reports in THE NY TIMES that Macy’s announced the $154 million issue — an accounting error it says an employee responsible for tracking how much the company spent delivering small packages “intentionally” made — at the beginning of what is Macy’s most high-profile week of the year. The Thanksgiving parade, with giant balloons and loads of confetti and performances outside its flagship store, in Herald Square, gets Macy’s into the conversation in people’s homes. This year, there will be 22 floats and several new character balloons, including a new Minnie Mouse and Spider-Man. The parade leads the way to the holiday shopping season, when Macy’s leans into Santa Claus like few other retailers. It hopes for moments that will last in people’s memories.

But there is more to Macy’s than pageantry at this time of the year. So its decision to delay its full earnings report this week left Wall Street without a harbinger of how the end of the year might play out.

Macy’s said it would report its earnings by Dec. 11.

Macy’s is nine months into a new strategy of slimming down. The pain will be felt beyond Manhattan — the flagship store in Herald Square is safe, and probably always will be. But Macy’s plans to close 150 stores over the next three years in its latest round of downsizing. It said it wants to shed “underproductive locations” that account for 25 percent of its overall square footage but only 10 percent of its sales. That will leave Macy’s with 350 stores, just over half the number it had before the coronavirus pandemic.

There are 4 Macy's in Suffolk including one on the east end in Hampton Bays.