The village board of Massapequa Park really ought to give the owners of Butera's Restaurant a waiver from the requirement that they be limited to 60 seats. It's true that the time at night that they operate at full capacity is a time when the parking lot at the Southgate Shopping Center is virtually half empty.

With many of the daytime shops and the high school closed after 5 pm, the number of parking spaces available for Butera's Restaurant is surely adequate.

So, when the issue comes up at the next board meeting, It might be wise for the mayor and the trustees to give 'em a break.

When coming home from work last week, making the turn at Wilson St. in Massapequa Park, I noticed something very peculiar. There were, to my surprise, two roads upon which I was driving.

My tires were touching upon the newer black pavement that the village had laid down last summer. And, at the time, it looked great. But now I can see my old street, peeping through in the center and on the sides. Six months isn't quite what I'd consider to be a healthy life span for our streets.

It's budget time for the village, and the question of how much to spend on what projects is destined to come up. The mayor should drastically increase how much is spent on road service in his '98-99 budget. Let's do the job right this time.

For the past few months negotiators for the Massapequa Board of Education and the Massapequa Federation of Teachers have been meeting behind closed doors to hammer out a compromise settlement between the two parties.

It's definitely positive that the two sides are working together, but getting a settlement for the sake of settling upon something doesn't imply a success. The last time the board of education made a new offer to the teacher's union, it was more then generous. It called for an average salary increase of 9.37 percent per year, or 40 percent over five years. It would seem to be incomprehensible for the board to offer any more than that.

So, for the negotiators behind closed doors, some advice might be in order. Remember, think of how much money you make at your job, and how much your neighbors make, and try to consider what it would be like to have three months off in the summer. How much would you pay yourself?

Think about that before raising taxes on the residents of the Massapequa School District.