Congratulations on your gutsy, journalistic investigation of the Westbury BID that appeared in The Westbury Times.

It opens a can of worms that is long overdue and I hope that you are not through with it because I feel that many questions have to be answered. I am particularly interested because I consider myself victimized. I own a small building on Maple Ave. which houses two tenants. The income produced is $34,800. Taxes amount to $15,048.60 including the BID tax of $395.42. The assessment is $19350. You state in your story that 39 property owners have gotten assessment reductions, some of which were substantial. I have applied for reductions through my attorney, Irving Storch, who succeeded in securing two reductions on my home, but my application was denied. I am going to follow up on the information which you have supplied to see why these reductions were allowed. I spoke to Mr. Malone on several occasions about my feeling that my building was over-assessed. He says that he will investigate the matter but proceeds to ignore it.

You say that all information regarding assessments, income, expenditures etc. are available to the public. Perhaps you can tell me how I can find out how much buildings such as the large ones on the Avenue and the professional buildings are assessed at. It seems to me that if my small building warrants almost $400, the other, much larger ones should bring in a lot more than $72,000.

My father opened a cigar shop at 215 Post Ave. in 1921 and our family of five lived behind the store. Westbury was a quaint little village in those days and it grew in an orderly fashion from that time forward until many factors caused it to deteriorate into its present condition. When you compare Post Ave. with so many other main streets, you see a complete lack of esthetic consideration. Instead of some attempt to conform with a compatible decor, each store has haphazardly chosen its own canopy color or pasted its window with garish signs and the result is a hodgepodge of unsightly disorder. The final blow is the yellow and black banner in front of the latest addition to our main street - the golf liquidation store that reminds me of the closing out signs that adorn 8th Ave. in New York City.

Our town is really unique. The Westbury Theater is probably the only theater in the world that does not offer senior citizen reductions and has been showing the movie Titanic for the past six months to an audience of a handful of people, I have been in that theater when I was the sole customer. The owner is a complete mental case.

You showed pictures of a few choice locations in the village. You could expand upon them with a picture of Schenck St. exhibiting the side of Stefan's and my father's former cigar store.

I do not like to be negative but I feel that the BID is knocking its head against a brick wall. I do not see where Mr. Propper is deserving of $30,000, almost half of BID's income. I hope that some of your readers will question some of the listed expenditures. And incidentally, why do we have a director from out of town? Wouldn't a local person be more concerned with the village's welfare?

I have spoken with Mr. Propper and he is a smooth talker, but some of his comments astound me. When he states that he has requests for 100,000 sq. ft. and what he has to offer is 1000 sq. ft. - give me a break! Also his comments about Latino store owners and that raising rents will drive marginal tenants to second story locations, are hardly going to endear him to these people who are now occupying so many establishments.

You state that over 50 percent of the business owners were needed to institute BID. If these enlightened owners were given another opportunity, do you think that they would opt for it?

Hopefully, your initiative will result in some improvement of the situation. I look forward to your continued probe.

Julian B. Schack