A committee has been appointed by Mayor Jack M. Martins to study the feasibility of the Village of Mineola having its own police force. The committee is made up of residents of the village who will eventually make a recommendation to the board of trustees about whether to pursue having a village police cover Mineola as opposed to the Nassau County Police 3rd Precinct.

Although he believes that police officers assigned to Mineola do a fine job, Mayor Martins has been concerned with the amount of police coverage the village receives from Nassau County.

The village's police patrol coverage amounts to three and a half police cars assigned to Mineola. In times when more is needed, more cars can be pulled from other areas to cover Mineola if an incident arises. By the same token, cars can be pulled out of Mineola to provide additional coverage to other areas close to Mineola. The Village of Mineola pays $6.1 million to Nassau County for that police coverage.

Mayor Martins has maintained that if the village can provide more police coverage for its residents, it would be worth looking into. However, Mayor Martins said the village having its own police department must be cost effective for the village to proceed with the plan and that residents would have the ultimate say with a referendum vote.

In order to study whether it is cost effective, Mayor Martins appointed residents Scott Strauss, John Curry, Ray Leonhard, Linda Doell, Jim LaMonica, Larry Speciner and Tom Rudolph.

The committee contains residents with a wide array of talents and experience in law enforcement, finance and putting together budgets.

Trustee Lou Santosus questioned why a professional consultant wasn't retained to look into how much having a police department would cost the village. "When you embark on such a serious matter as this, I think we should have professional people doing it. I take nothing away from these individuals [the mayor appointed to the committee]. They are all good people," he said.

However, Trustee Santosus believes the village needs a professional consultant to determine such complexities such as how much money it would cost to have a village police department and what having a police department entails.

Mayor Martins also said one of the responsibilities of the committee would be to recommend who the board should hire as a consultant if, in fact, the committee determines a consultant is necessary in determining if it is economically feasible to have a village police force.

Mayor Martins said the village needs people from the community to explain to a consultant what the needs of the community are and then work with a consultant to make a recommendation. "The credibility and viability of that committee will really speak for itself," he said, adding that he tried to assemble a committee of residents from different backgrounds in order to get different perspectives.

The committee includes the current Mineola Fire Department Chief Scott Strauss, who is also a retired police officer, having earned the Medal of Honor from his heroics on September 11, Curry and Rudolph, who also have experience in law enforcement, Doell and Leonhard, who are both active in the community, as well as LaMonica, who has experience in administration and finance, and Speciner, who has a college degree in economics, an MBA degree in finance with a specialization in money and banking, an advanced diploma in educational leadership and administration and is a certified New York State business administrator.