Photo Credit: projects.newsday.com
When there is a four-alarm fire raging in an apartment building at 3 A.M, who do you call? The Fire Department. When there is an issue in your local town like a litter-filled playground or an ever-growing pothole that you can’t seem to avoid every time you drive to work, who do you call? Your local councilman. But what if your local firefighter and local councilman are the same people?
That person would be Terence McSweeney, a life-long resident of The Town of Babylon. McSweeney who is a councilman for the town is also a sixteen-year veteran of the FDNY in South Jamaica, Queens. “I got my start in politics kinda by accident” said McSweeney. “I didn’t want to go to school for it, all my life I wanted to be a fireman.” McSweeney first bought his house in 2010 and started seeing things go on in his community. “When you buy a house and you start paying taxes, you start to pay attention to things you don’t like.” So, he started to get in touch with his elected officials by asking questions on how to rectify issues in the community. Eventually, he started to attend civic meetings to address issues in the community and even invited Town of Babylon Supervisor Rich Schaffer. “I started seeing abandoned homes and people entering them, setting up shop, so I ran for civic board.” Said McSweeney.
In 2014, Schaffer asked McSweeney if he wanted to be a Civic President of the Suffolk County Parks Department in which McSweeney was baffled. “I was flattered, but I’m not an agricultural guy. I don’t know where the bay and ocean meet.” But Schaffer told him that it wasn’t about the nature, it was about management. When McSweeney became a Civic President, the parks department had $23 dollars in a bank account and when he left in 2018, they had $7,000 dollars.
After McSweeney proved his role as president, Schaffer asked him to become his special assistant. The role of a special assistant is to attend event with the supervisor and represent the town. McSweeney also listened to community concerns and report back to the supervisor. In 2017, Councilman Tom Donnelly decided to run for Suffolk County Legislator which means the position for office was open, but McSweeney didn’t see it as a total opportunity. “One day Rich calls me up for lunch as says ‘what are you doing?’ and when someone asks you to go out to lunch, it’s a matter of what did I do? He’s gonna get rid of me!” Schaffer had a good feeling that Donnelly was going to win the election and needed someone to run for office. Schaffer asked him to run “I almost broke into tears!” McSweeney said excitingly. While McSweeney is a full-time firefighter, it wouldn’t interfere with his town position.
McSweeney also had plans to keep the community safe. In 2019, the huge issue was the increase vape shops. “Vaping became this new epidemic amongst kids” McSweeney wanted to eliminate the commonality of them since they target kids. “What we can’t do is tell people to not open up for business, but what we can do is steer them away from displaying Disney or cartoon related flavors.” So McSweeney wrote a legislation which prohibited them from opening within a certain amount of feet between schools, parks, playgrounds, churches, and near one another. They also couldn’t open in regular business areas or downtowns. So where could they open up? “We put them in industrial areas like most of Sunrise Highway or by the Babylon dumps.”
McSweeney also worked on the massage parlor issues within the Town of Babylon. “I started looking at massage parlors that were rapidly opening up.” McSweeney said “We went into a lot of these places and they didn’t have proper permits and if you get hurt? You can sue the operation and the town.” The town did a sting operation in April of 2019 where they sent an officer into a parlor to get a massage. The women solicited the officer for sex and the raid began.
Two of the women were arrested and the building inspectors found faulty plumbing and living quarters in the back of the shop.
McSweeney does not have current plans to run for Town Supervisor in the near future. “I’m still pretty young and would not want to run for election. That position comes with experience and I have a long way to go.” McSweeney says he accomplished more than he ever has in life. “Whoever wins, I would hope they will still continue to support our police and firefighters.”
