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Nassau school property tax bills should start going out next week. But, remember, the bills are based on pre-reassessment values. The new property values generated from Nassau's countywide reassessment will not be used until Oct. 2020. So if you think your your tax bill is too high, it isn't because of reassessment. Not yet. If you're expecting lower bills because of reassessment, you won't see any reduction this year unless you successfully grieved last year. Basically, property tax bills are calculated by multiplying the assessed value by the tax rate. If tax rates go up, bills go up even if assessments stay the same. This year's school bills likely will go out on time, at least in the town of Oyster Bay. Tax Receiver James Stefanich said Friday the county assessment office had already sent over a preliminary tax roll and he found no glitches. "Everything adds up nicely," Stefanich said. "We're getting everything ready to start printi...

Why does Long Beach have an elected city council if non-elected employees can make policy decisions? That's the obvious question after city management on Monday responded to critical state audits without consulting the full City Council. Two draft audits by State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, delivered to city officials last month, found that some current and former employees were paid thousands of dollars for unused leave time in excess of city code limits and without council authorization. Auditors also noted the city was running budget deficits, masked by borrowing reported as revenues. Among the appointees who received outsized payments were former city manager Jack Schnirman, who is now the Nassau County Comptroller, and Corporation Counsel Rob Agostisi, acting city manager until he resigned at the close of business Tuesday. Auditors also reported the city's two former comptrollers received excessive termination payments. The two audits made ten different recommend...

It's easy to make typos when writing on blogs or creating posters for a news conference. This blog will probably have one or two. But giving the wrong directions for emergency evacuations on a full-color mailer sent to county residents? Sure,  on Tuesday, Hempstead Supervisor Laura Gillen gave a news conference standing next to a poster that said: "Supervisor Laura Gillen's 2019 budget proposal.....1.5 percent tax cut" even though she was clearly talking about her 2020 budget.  Mistakes happen. Nobody was misled. But a county mailer from Nassau's Emergency Management Office describing four emergency evacuation routes for residents south of Sunrise Highway gives the wrong directions for "Route D." The mailer directs evacuees to Farmingdale via the Seaford Oyster Bay Expressway, to Hempstead Turnpike and then Clinton Street. "Turn left into the Suny Farmingdale College Campus ice road to exit at Charles Lindbergh Blvd." Wait. What? Ch...

Nassau Republicans have chosen Christopher Carini, a Port Authority police officer from Seaford, to run for the Hempstead Town Board seat vacated by Erin King Sweeney, a Republican party spokesman said. Carini will also be taking King Sweeney's place on the Independence, Conservative and Tax Revolt party lines, spokesman Michael Deery said. News reports show Carini recently talked at a Seaford school district meeting about the need for school safety and Deery said he successfully pushed for Nassau police to take control of school security cameras when the district's panic button is pushed. He also was a member of the Security Guard Staffing Review Advisory Committee appointed by the school board last year. Carini is Seaford vice president of the Wantagh-Seaford Homeowners Association. Republican King Sweeney, the daughter of U.S. Congressman Peter King (R-Seaford), suprised many people two weeks ago when she announced she was moving from Wantagh to North Carolina becau...

Animosity is growing between union and elected officials in Nassau. In the county, its about contract negotiations. Nassau unions are into their third year without a new contract, and without cost of living raises, while the number of county workers declines. In Hempstead Town, its about politics. Democratic supervisor Laura Gillen is being challenged by Republican Tax Receiver Don Clavin in a town that elected Gillen as its first Democratic supervisor in a century two years ago. Jerry Laricchuita, president of Nassau's Civil Service Employees Association, took aim Monday at County Executive Laura Curran's chief deputy Helena Williams, accusing her of making decisions that has left the county without enough workers to provide the services needed. For months, both Republicans and Democrats have said privately that Curran, a Democrat,  seems to leave all decisions to Williams, a deputy for former Democratic County Executive Thomas Suozzi and former head of the Long Isla...

Friday was the last day Hempstead Town candidates could mail out "important" messages on the taxpayers' dime before next November's election, according to the town's revised ethics code. Some Republicans thought they were going to catch Supervisor Laura Gillen, a Democrat who is seeking re-election to a second term, violating the rules when they saw the town print shop working on flyers this week that tout Gillen's economic initiatives. They predicted that Gillen would have to  destroy the material rather than bend the rules. But Gillen spokesman Michael Fricchione scoffed at the rumors. "We printed pieces for Laura to hand out at her upcoming community budget meetings and for local street fairs and that type of thing, but all of them will be used and nothing is being destroyed," Fricchione said in an email. He said he wasn't surprised at the Republican gossip. "Everyone who works down in the mail room, including their supervisor...

It took more than a year for State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli to report on Long Beach finances and employee payouts even though his office said most audits take six to nine months to complete. Even then, the comptroller issued only confidential “drafts” late last month, rather than final reports. The drafts were supposed to be seen only by city officials, not city taxpayers, with a response requested within 30 days. But for all the time and effort, the comptroller’s findings appear remarkably shallow. Nassau District Attorney Madeline Singas, a fellow Democrat,   was more hard-hitting in a letter delivered on the same day as the draft audit to city officials, who had asked the status of her investigation and the comptroller’s review. “Because our criminal investigation is ongoing, I must exercise restraint in my comments, “ Singas wrote. “However having reviewed the records obtained by the comptroller and the auditors’   findings and recommendations, it is...