With the end of summer and beginning of football season overlapping, I've found myself lately, with three kids in tow, constantly utilizing TOBAY Syosset Woodbury Park and Syosset High School ball fields. And I have one thing to say to the residents of Woodbury and Syosset. Shame on us!

In a town where every other house has been renovated to the extent of being able to land a plane in new, fully-loaded kitchens and bathrooms or multi-media screening living rooms; a town with all the bling, Prada, BMWs, cell phones and high-maintenance services we pay for to keep us in the "style to which we are accustomed"...Shame on us for forgetting our children and not demanding that TOBAY keep our parks in the latest, state-of-the art equipment, maintain our roads and at the very least keep it all clean.

By the way, those renovations caused soaring property values that have increased TOBAY's collected tax revenues every single year for many years-What are they doing with it all? Whose roads in other TOBAY towns have they been fixing with our Syosset-generated revenues? As I see it, we are "cash cows" personally fixing up our properties, creating money for them and not having our own needs met.

Have any of you seen the condition of the so-called mansion up at the Syosset Woodbury Park that used to be a haven for art exhibits, musical performances and even pre-school classes? Now, it houses sports stuff like football/cheerleading offices and equipment. The building should be condemned--plastered walls falling apart, rickety staircases. What are they waiting for? Until a wall crumbles down and hits someone or an asthmatic has an anaphylactic fit and TOBAY gets slapped with a lawsuit that we'll pay for?

What about the chronic litter strewn everywhere? Take a drive South from the train station all the way to Woodbury Road. It's disgusting, the litter near the train station or against the fences on S. Oyster Bay Road. The conditions of the roads like Jackson Avenue? Come on! And, I should be on the payroll for how many times I've cleaned up glass from broken beer bottles at the "market" neighborhood parklet off S. Oyster Bay Road.

I've lived here 32 years and many of these facilities are very much the same. No renovations. The community pool, the ice skating rink/ice house, the conditions of the bathrooms anywhere. Or the fields our children are supposed to play football on (NOT the high school fields) but behind the diving boards of the community pool where the wattage of the nighttime lights are as bright as a bug zapper, kids dodging goose poop and crater-sized holes every step of the way.

I'm appalled. Can't we fix these things and renovate the Town of Syosset itself? And I'm not talking about hiring the geniuses that re-designed our little neighborhood parklets either, who took away the "dangerous" seesaws and replaced them with thousands of rocks so the children throw them at each other or the wood chips that after it rains provides mosquitoes with a new home for breeding. Or, the Syosset/Woodbury Park playground with the blue tarmac that gets super hot so the kids fry and which they have picked holes in under the swings like a year ago and no one fixed.

I ask you to go to other towns and see their ball parks with perfectly manicured, clean grass, white gridlines, bleachers even for visiting teams to sit in, a concession stand to buy food-and wonder where is TOBAY when it comes to Syosset's infrastructure and cleanliness. Syosset prides itself on being a great place to raise our children, great schools, etc. However, it doesn't look anything like a town of excellence - it looks like a poor, run-down community. No one would tolerate these conditions from their own personal lawn maintenance service-and we shouldn't tolerate it from TOBAY either.

Rumor has it Syosset is slated for field renovations next year. Hmmm, feels like an election year with promises and signs up to vote the "usual suspects" in again. You want my vote? Renovate our parks, ball fields, roads, public bathrooms and the mansion up at the Syosset/Woodbury Park and clean it all up. I urge Woodbury and Syosset residents not to accept the lack of concern for our great town and badger TOBAY-through e-mails, letters and phone calls-to put Syosset back on top of their priority list.

Mary Ellen Friedmann