Port Jefferson, NY — Crash Data, Roads, History & Law

History

Port Jefferson is an incorporated village in the Town of Brookhaven, on Long Island's North Shore at the head of Port Jefferson Harbor.^[4] Between 1655 and 1687 the Setauket Indians sold land in the area to English settlers, who named the marshy settlement Drowned Meadow; William Simson was the first recorded property owner, in 1661, and John Roe, a shoemaker from Queens, became the first person to actually live there when he moved into a new house in 1682.^[2]

Shipbuilding began in 1796, when farmhand John Willse started building vessels at what is now neighboring Poquott; the next year he bought land on the harbor's southeast corner, and by 1809 he had taken on Richard Mather as an apprentice, who married Willse's daughter and became the community's largest builder in his own right.^[1] Between the late 1700s and 1884 Port Jefferson's yards turned out 327 wooden vessels, with about a dozen shipyards operating during the peak years of the 1850s.^[1] On August 31, 1852 the village was designated an American port of entry, and a federal customs house went up on East Main Street (the building was later moved and still stands on High Street).^[3] The boom faded in the 1870s as steamships and iron hulls, which needed larger yards than Port Jefferson had, replaced wooden sailing craft; a brief wartime revival financed by the federal government between 1917 and 1919 raised shipyard employment from about 250 to more than 1,100 workers before the industry ended for good.^[1] One of the last major wooden vessels built here was the schooner Martha Wallace, launched in 1901 at more than 200 feet, the largest sailing ship ever built on Long Island.^[1]

As the port grew, residents decided "Drowned Meadow" no longer suited a prospering seaport; meeting at the schoolhouse on March 7, 1836, they adopted a suggestion to rename the village after Thomas Jefferson.^[3] Mather Hospital, which opened December 29, 1929 as the first general hospital in the Town of Brookhaven, was endowed under the will of shipbuilder John Titus Mather, tying the village's hospital directly to its shipbuilding-family history.^[10][11]

Three properties in the village are listed on the National Register of Historic Places: Bayles Shipyard at 101 East Broadway (listed June 2, 2000, significant for its 1875-1924 shipbuilding and commercial history), the Port Jefferson Village Historic District along East Main Street, East Broadway, Grant Street, High Street and South Street (listed April 6, 2005), and the First National Bank of Port Jefferson building at Main and East Main Streets (listed October 5, 2005).^[12][13][14]

How the roads got here

New York State Route 25A, the North Shore's principal east-west highway, is a state road that NYSDOT's official touring-route description routes "on North Country Road and Main Street to Port Jefferson, Port Jefferson Station" before continuing east on Hallock Avenue toward Rocky Point.^[5] Route 25A descends into the village from the east along what is now North Country Road before joining Main Street through the commercial core.^[5]

New York State Route 112 is a separate state road whose official NYSDOT description runs it from Patchogue through Medford and Coram to "Port Jefferson Station (NY 25A)" — that is, Route 112's northern terminus is at Route 25A near the village's southern edge, in Port Jefferson Station, rather than a route that runs through the incorporated village itself.^[6] Within the village, Main Street and East Broadway are local streets under the jurisdiction of the Incorporated Village of Port Jefferson, whose code has a dedicated chapter governing streets and sidewalks.^[15]

Law and legal history

The Village's prior-written-notice law is Chapter 177, "Notification of Defects," of the Village Code, adopted by the Board of Trustees on December 18, 1985 by Local Law No. 12-1985.^[15] It provides that no civil action for damages from a defective, unsafe or obstructed village highway, street, bridge, sidewalk or other village property — or from snow or ice on one — may be brought unless written notice of the specific defect was actually given to the Village Clerk beforehand and the Village then failed, within a reasonable time, to repair or remove it; the Clerk must keep an indexed, publicly available record of every such notice for at least five years, and the chapter does not excuse a claimant from separately filing a notice of claim under General Municipal Law § 50-e.^[15]

On December 14, 2018 the Long Island Power Authority and the Town of Brookhaven signed a tax certiorari settlement covering LIPA's Port Jefferson generating plant, reducing the plant's $32.6 million tax assessment by about 50% — to $16.8 million — in increments over nine years beginning with the 2017-18 tax year.^[19] Then-Town Supervisor Edward Romaine said the deal "puts an end to the uncertainty of this plant over the course of nine years and gives finality to this issue."^[19] Because the power plant sits partly in the Port Jefferson Union Free School District, the settlement's "glide path" of declining LIPA payments squeezed the district's tax base; Superintendent Paul Casciano warned residents "there's a high likelihood that residents will see a double-digit increase in their tax rate" as the settlement phased in, and the Village separately budgeted for reduced LIPA revenue on its own tax rolls.^[19]

Sources differ on Bridgeport & Port Jefferson Steamboat Co. founder P.T. Barnum's actual role: contemporary reporting describes Barnum as merely "one of the original stockholders" when Charles Tooker and Edward Davis formed the company in 1883, while the ferry company's own history page today credits Barnum as its "inaugural president."^[1]

The Village's own department directory does not list a police department, and Suffolk County's 6th Precinct — headquartered at 400 Middle Country Road in Selden — describes its territory as "several hamlets and incorporated villages within the Town of Brookhaven (North)," the category Port Jefferson falls into; day-to-day law enforcement in the village accordingly runs through the County police rather than a village force.^[16] Village-level enforcement (parking, building and village-ordinance violations) is prosecuted through the Port Jefferson Village Justice Court, which requires a court appearance before payment on any "Vehicle and Traffic Ticket, Village Ordinance Ticket, or a Building Violation Ticket."^[18]

Government, courts and policing

Port Jefferson is governed as an incorporated village within the Town of Brookhaven, with its own Board of Trustees, code and Village Justice Court.^[15][18] The Suffolk County Police Department's 6th Precinct, at 400 Middle Country Road, Selden, patrols the incorporated villages and hamlets of the northern Town of Brookhaven, the category that includes Port Jefferson.^[16]

The Port Jefferson Village Justice Court sits at 121 West Broadway; matters include vehicle and traffic tickets, village ordinance violations, building violation tickets, and parking-ticket disputes (which may also be handled online through the Village's ticket portal).^[18]

Railroad and transit

Port Jefferson is the Long Island terminus of the Long Island Rail Road's Port Jefferson Branch and of the Bridgeport & Port Jefferson Steamboat Company's cross-Sound car ferry, whose predecessor company was formed in 1883 after informal ferry service to Bridgeport, Connecticut had begun in 1872.^[1]