Highway Veterans Square Off in Brookhaven Superintendent Race

The race to run Brookhaven's Highway Department features two veterans: Superintendent Dan Losquadro, who's held the seat for the last 10 years, and Mike Kaplan, a long-time public servant who's worked his way up through the highway departments of other towns.

A former Suffolk legislator and state assemblyman, Losquadro, a Republican, said he is well-suited for the role, having mastered the art of securing outside monies to augment local taxpayer funds in improving the town's highway system.

Kaplan, running as a Democrat, said he would be more successful in winning money from Albany and Washington, where the policymakers are from his party. "The paving budget used to be $10 million annually, and I was able to work with the supervisor and the town board to increase it to $15 million, and that's significant," Losquadro said. "But if you look at the grant monies that I've received–I've averaged about $25 million a year-- which augmented our investment in the local infrastructure, so it's been a very important part of what I've been able to accomplish over the past 10 years."

The superintendent assembled a grants committee and a team of application writers and said he will remain aggressive in pursuing monies from the $1 trillion federal infrastructure plan and other government funds. Kaplan said he has photos of over 200 road and drainage areas that need to be addressed and will put together a "portfolio package" to take to officials at other levels to make the case for more Brookhaven funds. "I don't take no for an answer very easily," Kaplan said, "so I will go to Albany, I will go to Washington D.C. I will show them the state of disrepair in this town, and I will convince them that we really need the money."

A Shoreham resident, Losquadro graduated from the State University at Stony Brook with a B.A. degree in history. For nearly a decade before starting in public office, he worked as a senior property claims estimator for State Farm Insurance. He is a graduate of Shoreham-Wading River High School and said he and his family have a long history of working in the construction industry, where he started out as a laborer. Growing up around his father's auto body shop gave him an appreciation for fleet maintenance, a valuable skill for managing a department that has numerous trucks and other vehicles, he noted. "I think I've checked off a lot of the boxes that I set as goals for myself when I first came in as highway superintendent," Losquadro recounted.

"I said I need a three, five, and 10-year plan to move this department forward, and at 10 years now, I think I'm further ahead than I ever imagined," he said, adding that "the department was really left in a very poor state" when he took over from the previous superintendent, Democrat John Rouse. "It really took a lot to change not only the operations but the culture of the department, and I take a lot of pride in what I've been able to do here." One area of improvement Losquadro notes is the computerization of various department operations, including work orders and management's ability to monitor projects.

"Switching from a paper system not only eliminated the possibility of missing things, it created a way to gauge myself and how I gauge my employees–measurable metrics such as the average time to inspect a work order or the time that a maintenance crew is taking to place a hundred feet of sidewalk and curb. Previously, there was no mechanism by which you could judge that, and now all that information is just a simple search in our data mining system." Losquadro points to his experience at State Farm participating in major reorganizations and the need to get buy-ins from the employees.

"The way I did the initial rollout of the iPad system, I actually gave it to a select few foremen first, and they started talking about it with other foremen, and they realized they don't have to fill out paperwork anymore, and they don't have to come back to the office just to drop it off, and soon everyone wanted an iPad. It has really streamlined our operations and given me a powerful tool to manage the department." Also, providing uniforms and safety equipment for the workers gave them pride in being part of the department, Losquadro pointed out, and gave the taxpayers faith in how their money is being spent.

Having worked for both the Islip and Huntington highway departments in a career that spanned 30 years, Kaplan made his way up from laborer to working directly with the superintendents. He's an Army veteran who served in combat zones during the Gulf War and reenlisted in the Reserves when his son joined the military so they could serve together. The veteran was called up for active duty at age 42, and was actually in Iraq at the same time as his son, although in different units. "I started driving the roads in our town and seeing their condition–the condition of the catch basins–and I started talking to residents.

It lit a fire inside of me," the Coram resident said. "I've been a public servant for a long time, and I just said to myself, 'Something's got to change here.' With my experience in leadership, working directly for a superintendent of highways, I have the knowledge and the skills to get the job done." Kaplan noted that some areas of Mastic Beach haven't been restored since Hurricane Sandy and said he has driven on some "very horrible" town roads recently in Lake Ronkonkoma, Sound Beach, and other areas.

"I speak to a lot of residents, and it's very unsettling and upsetting to me that they are complaining about the problems with their roads," he said. "I want to take care of the residents; call them back when they call. I feel like I'm a great leader, and the biggest thing about being a great leader is someone who knows how to listen. That's the driving force as to why I'm doing what I'm doing." Spending 10 years in the army and two-and-a-half years in Middle East combat zones, leading soldiers in convoys getting "blown up every day," Kaplan stressed he is a "true public servant, just a regular guy, wanting to do the right thing for the people."

He said he did not seek the endorsement of the Working Families Party line, which many of his running mates have, because of some of their controversial positions. "There's no politics involved in taking care of roads," he said. “Whoever lives in Brookhaven, whether they're a leftwing or right-wing or Democrat, Republican, it doesn't matter. When I go to your door, and you have an issue, I am going to fight my damnedest to fix it."

Losquadro pointed to some major projects that are being completed under his watch, including the rebuilding of North Country Road, replacement of the 117-year-old Sheep Pasture Road Bridge in Port Jefferson, "Rails to Trails" on the North Shore, and the expanded Hospital Road Bridge in Patchogue. "New York State did not want to take responsibility for the bridge because the wear surface over the top was the town's, but they said the bridge underneath was theirs," Losquadro explained.

"I secured $20 million in federal funding and $4 million in state funding, and put in another $1 million in town funding, and I proceeded forward as if I was going to replace the bridge. The Department of Transportation at the 11th Hour swooped in and said 'whoa that's our bridge' after years of saying it wasn't their bridge. I replied, 'There's no pride in authorship and here's $25 million.'" The Brookhaven superintendent is responsible for the third largest road system in New York, with only the state and the city Department of Transportation handling more.

"Other than that, no one else even comes close," the current officeholder said. The town has about 3,700 lane miles of road to take care of and the highway department accounts for about half of Brookhaven's $330 million budget. Its 300 employees are responsible for road maintenance, including pothole repair, street sweeping, and snow and ice removal. They also handle signage, lighting, drainage, tree trimming, and removal, and recharge basin maintenance.

The department also operates the town's Holtsville Ecology Site, Park and Animal Preserve. The superintendent makes $130,762 per year. "Brookhaven celebrated its 350th anniversary a few years back, and now we're trying to retrofit modern infrastructure into areas where it was never a consideration where roads should be built," Losquadro said. "Many roads are in natural drainage areas because that's where the trees had been washed out, and it was easier to clear a path down to the water. So, we do spend a lot of time dealing with drainage issues where you have paved, non-permeable surfaces."