Nassau Legislator, Roger Corbin, School Consolidation
November 4, 2005 @ 12:00 am EST
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Members and friends
Today’s speaker was Roger Corbin, Majority leader in the Nassau County Legislature. His focus was on the cost and complexity of our many taxing districts. His perms is that leads to duplication of departments and services.
According to Corbin, the city of Great Neck has six police departments, and none of them have the resources to properly investigate a serious crime. Therefore they turn over those crimes to the Nassau County Police. There are too many school districts, with each of them having an overburden of management personnel. He cited many other examples including sanitary districts, fire districts etc.
He is anti ‘big box.” Corbin says these big box stores bleed the economic life out of the downtown areas. He gave the example of Steinway Street in Queens as a functioning business district. People in the area are near the stores they need to visit. Money tends to recalculate locally and feed back to the indigenous stores.
Mr. Corbin would like to see tax revenues distributed countywide instead of the way it is used now. He gave an example of the large tax revenues that are collected in and around the Roosevelt Mall, and most of it does not go to Westbury, and Westbury suffers.
There are islands of poor districts that have very little commercial tax revenues while neighboring areas have an embarrassment of riches. Roosevelt was given as an example of that. In the case of Roosevelt there should be no school district at all, according to Corbin. Roosevelt is only one mile square, and could easily transport the students from that locale to the surrounding schools. Roger is not shy about telling you that the racial factor is the reason that does not happen.
I pointed out the politics of his proposals are difficult, but his attitudes. “Do what Reagan did, take it to the people.” Moving his agenda along will be difficult, but he is energetic and I wish him luck.
Action Item. LIMBA would like to see the proposal that addresses transportation issues passed. This proposal will, I believe be good for Long Island
Next week there will be no meeting because of Veterans Day.
Have a nice weekend.
Ernie Fazio