We in Glen Cove can look forward to the New Year with hope. We have a new County Executive Tom Suozzi, who hails from Glen Cove and did many good works while serving as its mayor. His successor as mayor, Mary Ann Holzkamp, is of the same party and worked as part of the Suozzi team during his term in office. Our county legislator, Brian Mullers, is a friend to Glen Cove, and he has stood alone in the county legislature to try to correct an injustice that has left us holding the dirty end of the stick for many years. Taken together, this is the best opportunity for Glen Cove to finally be rewarded on several issues. Additionally, the Nassau Legislature has a majority of one from the same party as the county executive. In short, the executive and legislative branches of Nassau County government, and the city of Glen Cove's administration, are all controlled by the same party - an event that is as notable for its infrequency as all of the planets being in conjunction. We look forward to the combining of these political and gravitational forces to finally setting things to right for Glen Cove.

After Tom Suozzi took the lead on the inevitable reassessment of homes and businesses in Glen Cove, there was an oral commitment from the county that they would accept the city's new assessment rolls when Nassau County finally got around to doing their own reassessment, which, by the way, had been ordered by the courts nearly 10 years ago as a result of a lawsuit. The failure to reassess until now in Nassau County, has drained millions of dollars from city and county budgets, and from Glen Cove's School District in particular, over many years.

When Glen Cove established a new tax assessment roll last year, Nassau County reneged on this agreement to accept the outcome, and has included the City of Glen Cove in the overall county reassessment program now underway. The result: your home is likely to have two different assessments; one for city and school taxes and a different one for Nassau County real estate taxes. This will also require you to double your efforts should you feel the need to file for adjustment of your assessments. It would be nice to see Nassau County now accept the Glen Cove City assessment roll as its own.

The ultimate outrage, however, is that Nassau County has for years guaranteed the flawed tax assessment rolls of every community with the exception of Glen Cove, and the county has covered the discrepancies in school tax revenues for every school district resulting from successful tax adjustments ('tax certs') throughout the county, except for Glen Cove's school district. We pay the other districts' shortfalls as well as our own. When Legislator Mullers introduced a bill last year to discontinue this discriminatory practice, his was the only yea vote. If they cannot find the funding to pay the tax rebates for the Glen Cove school district, the legislature should immediately stop the funding for all of Nassau County's other school districts, and let those communities make up their own shortages.

I think we can and should expect significant progress on these issues from our elected officials in the coming years. If we in Glen Cove do not see these changes while we have such stellar figures on our side in both the county and city administrations, then we never will. Like an astronomical event, this opportunity may never occur again in our lifetime.

David S. Nieri