Tourism
Tourism is a good part of the Long Island economy in certain regions. Tourism thrives primarily in the summer because of the natural beauty, parks and beaches in Long Island along with the warmer weather of summer. Regions of Long Island that are major tourist attractions include the North Fork on the east end of Suffolk County, known for fishing villages, quaint towns, ferries to Connecticut, and for world-famous wineries. The South Fork is known for similar features, including golf, equestrian, boating, surfing, and fine dining in the Hamptons and Montauk. The village of Patchogue has a fine theater, the Patchogue Theatre for the Performing Arts, which is the official home theater of the Atlantic Wind Symphony.
The eastern end of the island is still partly agricultural. In the last 25 years, development of vineyards on the North Fork became a major new industry, replacing potato fields. Pumpkin farms have been added to traditional truck farming. Farms allow fresh fruit picking by Long Islanders for much of the year. Fishing continues to be an important industry, especially at Northport and Montauk.
Long Island is home to the East Coast’s largest industrial park, the Hauppauge Industrial Park. The park has over 1,300 companies employing more than 55,000 Long Islanders. Companies in the park and abroad are represented by the Hauppauge Industrial Association.
Nassau County and Suffolk County each have their own governments, with a County Executive leading each. Each has a county legislature and countywide-elected officials, such as district attorney, county clerk and county comptroller. The towns in both counties have their own governments as well, with town supervisors and a town council.
Brooklyn and Queens, on the other hand, do not have independent county governments. As boroughs of New York City, both have Borough Presidents, largely ceremonial offices with little political power. The shutdown of the city’s Board of Estimate due to a Supreme Court decision’s declaring it unconstitutional, led to a reorganization of the city government.
Two Indian reservations – Poospatuck Reservation and Shinnecock Reservation located in Suffolk County are the home of Native Americans. Numerous island place names are Native American in origin.
In 2005, Forbes magazine listed Long Island as having 2,042 crimes per 100,000 residents, less than half the US average.
Long Island is patrolled by the New York City Police Department, Nassau County Police Department, Suffolk County Police Department, New York State Police and several dozen town and village police departments.
Both Nassau and Suffolk have a sheriff’s office that handles civil process, evictions, warrant service and enforcement, prisoner transport and detention, and operation of the county jail. The Nassau County Sheriff’s Department employs about 1,000 correction officers and 100 deputy sheriffs and performs the above duties although deputy sheriffs have full police officer powers and can make arrests for any crime they come across. The Suffolk County Sheriff’s Office has approximately 900 correction officers and 260 deputy sheriffs and operates the two jail facilities in Suffolk County. The deputy sheriffs in Suffolk County have a full service patrol unit, including K9, Aviation, SWAT, and Marine divisions as well as a Criminal Investigation Division and various other special details and assignments. N.Y.S. court officers secure court houses for Long Island courts.
On March 28, 2008 Suffolk County, NY Comptroller Joseph Sawicki proposed a plan that would make Long Island the 51st state of the United States of America. Sawicki says that all the Long Island taxpayers’ money would stay on Long Island, rather than the funds being dispersed all over the entire state of New York. The state of Long Island would include as many as 2.3 million people. If New York City and Westchester County were to be included in a new state together, the population would total over 9 million people, becoming the 10th most populated state in the US, ahead of Georgia and behind North Carolina.
Every major form of transportation serves Long Island, including John F. Kennedy International Airport, LaGuardia Airport, and Long Island MacArthur Airport, multiple smaller airports, railroads, subways, and several major highways. There are historic and modern bridges, recreational and commuter trails, and ferries as well.
The Long Island Expressway, Northern State Parkway, and Southern State Parkway, all products of the automobile-centered planning of Robert Moses, make east-west travel on the island straightforward, if not always quick.
There are currently ten road crossings out of Long Island, all within New York City limits at the extreme western end of the island. Plans for a Long Island Crossing at various locations in Nassau and Suffolk Counties have been discussed for decades, but there are currently no firm plans to construct such a crossing.
Information on this site is gathered from the Wikipedia free online encyclopedia. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (See Copyrights for details.)
