Local Civics Join Forces

The Civic Association of the Setaukets and Stony Brook on Monday publicly welcomed the Three Village Civic Association into its membership via a merger.

Judy Shivak, longtime president of the Three Village Civic Association, presented a check of approximately $400 to Ron DiBiase, president of the Civic Association of the Setaukets and Stony Brook, representing the last of its funds.

"I think it'll add to our diversity," DiBiase said of the merger. "It's good to have representation from all over the community. Many hands make light work."

The announcement comes during a membership campaign being conducted by the Civic Association of the Setaukets and Stony Brook. Leaders of that organization, which has been around for 70 years, said this past summer that the organization would be seeking more members to help keep it thriving.

Shivak will sit on the board of the Civic Association of the Setaukets and Stony Brook, which happened to have one vacancy, according to DiBiase.

The Three Village Civic Association is also in the process of finding a new sponsor for the Boy Scout troop of which it has been a longtime sponsor.

The Three Village Civic Association, which has been around since the mid-1960s, at one point had more than 300 members, according to Shivak. It drew its membership from among the Heatherwood and Strathmore communities along Route 347 and Nicolls Road, with leaders who felt the needs of those residents differed somewhat from the needs of residents living north of Route 25A.

In 1991, the Three Village Civic Association backed a lawsuit from a group of homeowners to prevent the Town of Brookhaven from lifting a restricted covenant that would have prevented the building of the Stony Brook Medical Park on Route 347. While the homeowners lost the court decision, Shivak said it was eventually responsible for a change that required a supermajority of town board approval to lift a restricted covenant.

"At that point, all the civics started to work closely together," said Shivak, who raised two children in Stony Brook with her husband of 50 years, Barry. "Even though we decided that each of the individual civics have their parochial interests, it was for the greater good that we all worked together on things."