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Blight Hides Behind Bamboo on Edgewood [Empty in Smithtown]

Town hopes property will one day be cleaned up.

While the in Smithtown is easily the most recognized abandoned eyesore on that roadway, there's another you might have missed.

Shielded from the road by towering bamboo sits 436 Edgewood Avenue, a small ranch house that has been left to decay in the neighborhood. Boards are rotted, trees have fallen on the house and an old motor boat sits on cinder blocks on the cracked asphalt driveway.

Last owned by the Church of the Gospel Ministry, the house now been once the town drafts an official plan for dealing with the host of ramshackle properties in the area. The vandalized former trucking facility behind the Smithtown Long Island Rail Road Station .

“The town is thinking of a blight ordinance, which is beyond a property maintenance ordinance,” Frank DeRubeis, director of planning for the Town of Smithtown, told Patch last summer. “We can write it. The hard part is deciding how you can implement it. When it comes to property we have to be careful. We can do something when there is a clear public problem."

The town has also .

The last time the town dealt with 436 Edgewood was in 2010, when they approved the installation of fencing around the property to section off the "unsafe" structure, according to a May 2010 town agenda.

According to real estate listing site Redfin.com, the lot size at 436 Edgewood is more than 35,000 square feet and has a taxable value of $11,365.

What would you like to see happen to this property? And check our gallery for photos of the blighted house.

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KFM May 21, 2013 at 04:17 pm
How, in a period of rapidly declining enrollment, can costs be increasing so much from year to year,Read More you ask? The answer is in front of you in black and white. I urge you to READ your district’s budget: we are funding retirements when many of us cannot afford to fund our own during difficult economic times. These wheels were set in motion by contracts negotiated in times of unrealistic growth that may likely not occur again. It is time to open up these plans and relieve this unfair burden from our shoulders. Whatever other measures are pursued in order to control costs, including consolidation within and eventually with other districts, are never going to be enough if you cannot get this problem corrected. Write your congressman, for the love of God. If you need any more incentive to do so, please go to http://rocdocs.democratandchronicle.com/database/teacher-pensions-new-york and look at what Smithtown’s retirees are collecting MONTHLY. It will sicken you.
KFM May 21, 2013 at 04:12 pm
They are allowed to exclude the pension and employee benefit increases when expressing the increase.Read More
Billie B May 20, 2013 at 10:17 am
Tomorrow is the vote..vote NO NOW or our taxes are going to continue to sky rocket. Unless we doRead More something this town will continue to spiral down. More taxes aren't going to help. We need to cut expenses and get ourselves on a fiscally responsible plan.