Viewpoint

What We Name Things Matters

After an ongoing controversy about the future of recreational and catering facilities in the “Roslyn Country Club” section of Roslyn Heights, the North Hempstead Town Board has created a special district to run a tentatively named “Levitt Park at Roslyn Heights.”

Levitt & Sons, homebuilders, was a family-run business. But from the late 1930s on, the front person in every way was William J. Levitt, one of the sons. Bill Levitt was a complicated figure, a man of multiple dimensions and motivations. This was a man who, prior to the Second World War, sold homes in Manhasset with restrictive covenants banning sales to Jews, even though he himself was a Jew who lived in Manhasset. This man had layers.

Coming To Local Skies?

Does the Nassau County Police Department intend to buy robot drones for surveillance? How about your village police department?

The Federal Aviation Administration was compelled last year to release documents about drone authorizations. Legislators in several cities and counties were stunned to find out that their police departments were already using robot drones for surveillance or investigation.

What Was An Annual Meeting?

“Give us back the old-fashioned town meeting where one can ventilate his views in a demonstrative way upon all matters of political interest,” lamented the Oyster Bay Pilot newspaper in April 1891, days after the town elections. “This ballot reform business has largely killed out the enthusiasm of these annual occasions where the fate of the town, of the state and of the nation is determined.”

The Pilot, now part of this newspaper chain as the Enterprise-Pilot, was expressing a popular viewpoint. The state’s new Town Law set down new requirements and procedures for voting at multiple polling places in the large the towns. It also laid the groundwork for the slow transformation of a board of officers that met once a year to audit financial records into more of a legislative body that could take independent action without taxpayer consent. Across 250 years, the annual meeting was the basis of Long Island self-government, and “a sort of annual fair for men and boys” according to the recollections of one Oyster Bay old-timer in 1931.

The Lost Library

We enter another round, after dozens of rounds over 50 years, of figuring out what to do with the last 97 acres of county land at Mitchel Field. We’re down to less than one-fifth of the original, priceless canvas, and mostly we’ve gotten hundreds of acres of Ugly. What a waste.

The Nassau Veterans Coliseum was not originally intended to sit out there in a sea of parking lots, like a giant white whale. It was designed to anchor one end of a 186-acre J.F.K. Center of Education and Culture that has been the only plan ever offered for Mitchel Field that actually got the public interested and excited. The coliseum, which was to be surrounded by lawns and gardens, was one of seven elements of the complex, which itself was one component in a potential unified landscape larger than Central Park or Eisenhower Park.

The Premise

1. It’s a simple premise. No one should have to see six-year-olds with the 2,000 Yard Stare.

2. Real Americans don’t want to see it ever again. If there is a silver lining to any of this, it’s that rank-and-file citizens, inured enough to mass killings that we can’t remember most of the previous twelve in 2012 without difficulty, are now saying, “No More. No.” We don’t know how and we don’t know what, but we have to change some things.

3. I’m writing this a week before you’ll read it, so you will know much more than I know. Developments are unfolding almost hourly, including some that were unrealistic only days ago. The NRA, whose power and influence is based not in cash but in lists, has taken down its Facebook page.

Property Tax Crisis Puts Long Island At Risk

Earlier this fall, County Executive Mangano suggested that the only way to keep Nassau’s unraveling real property tax assessment system in balance was for every owner to challenge their assessment every year. The Seventh Seal of local public administration has been broken.

Our state and local finance problems are just as much a part of the Superstorm Sandy story as pillorying LIPA officials and refilling beaches. So far, nearly all attention has been focused on Washington for damage relief funding. Already, there is pushback. Some House and Senate Republicans want offsetting spending cuts for the aid, which delayed disbursements for Irene damage last year. This will work itself out, one way or another. What’s really scary are the still-abstract long-range costs that will begin transforming into solid wall, soon.

What Was Civil Defense?

In the 1950s and 1960s, Nassau County local governments built a formidable Civil Defense (CD) complex designed to keep residents safe and alive in case of catastrophe. That CD system is gone, although bits and pieces are still with us today. Our auxiliary police units are vestiges of CD. First set up during the Second World War and revived during the Korean War, the “auxies” weren’t formally folded into the Nassau County Police Department until three decades ago. In 1965, the Levittown Public Schools contracted with the local unit to keep order during special events, and slowly the auxiliaries came to be thought of as “anti-crime” units.

The WWII civil defense system had been almost completely dismantled when the Soviet Union’s acquisition of atomic technology in 1949 jump-started the creation of CD systems at all levels of government. In less than a year, Nassau County had a working emergency headquarters, a series of air raid warning stations, a Civilian Air Patrol of volunteer pilots and detailed plans for police, fire, health, public works, transportation and other services for every village and unincorporated area.

Long Islanders Can Handle The Facts

All parts of a power transmission and distribution system can be put underground. The larger transmission lines that usually run along main roads and railroad tracks, the “tap lines” that branch off into neighborhoods, the substations and transformers, all of it. Underground systems are not perfectly protected, but they are better protected from wind, ice and trees.

The cost of underground wires in new developments is only a little more than putting in overhead wires. Replacement of existing overheads with buried wires is something else. It costs more, but how much more and if it’s worth the cost are questions that need serious study from some objective source, once and for all.

LIPA: Kissing the Pooch

“Due to the high call volume we cannot assign you a representative. Please try again later.”

By the second week, that’s what LIPA was saying.

In government, there is a direct link between performance and trust. LIPA has lost that trust, and not just for itself. This just sets back everything in our local public weal. Long Island is damaged.

Underground: The Reprint

(This was originally published in September 2011, in the aftermath of Hurricane Irene. It is reprinted exactly as it appeared 13 months ago.)    

There was a palpable shift in attitude toward LIPA on Wednesday, August 31. Frustration and outright hostility spilled over as the flow of useful information about outages and repairs slowed and sometimes stopped. A lot of good will has been lost by LIPA. Perhaps they can start to earn some of it back.