Coalition for Glen Cove

  Mayor Suozzi speaks at April 2006 Coalition for Glen Cove meeting

School board candidate Bob Lupinskie; Glen Cove Mayor Ralph Suozzi; and school board candidates Doug Brown, Kurt Schmeller, and Larry Fischer at the April meeting of the Coalition for Glen Cove

Glen Cove Mayor Ralph Suozzi was the invited speaker at the April meeting of the Coalition for Glen Cove.

The mayor suggested that the Glen Cove schools should make sure the voters know that the schools provide something for every student, from English as a Second Language courses for recently arrived students to advanced placement courses for students preparing for college. He encouraged the schools to cooperate with local colleges to provide tutors for students who need them as well as to offer college level courses in the high school. The mayor offered to open City Hall, if necessary, for a tutoring program that would supplement the programs offered by the schools and by La Fuerza Unida. Helen Kotzky suggested that an adult education program would be important for Glen Cove. She also said that the school district could help by opening its computer labs to students and the community after school hours.

Bob Lupinskie pointed out that the school district is not consulted when the city’s Community Development Agency gives temporary property assessment reductions to businesses that move to Glen Cove. The acceptance of payments in lieu of taxes (PILOTs) for some new buildings and businesses cause trouble when businesses leave town without keeping their payments current. There will be only minimal PILOTs for the development of the waterfront and those will be short term. Rick Smith said that the city gets a lien on properties that do not pay their taxes on time but not on properties that do not pay their PILOTs.

Mayor Suozzi said that he will soon have a child in school and that he has voted for the school budget for the past five years. He admired the graphic way that Assistant Superintendent Kevin Wurtz has presented this year’s school budget, will use similar ideas to present the city budget, and will talk with Mr. Wurtz for a more detailed description of the school budget. He will also make clearer what fraction of the property tax goes to the school district, the county, and the city.

The city now has a full-time property assessor who, however, does not have an annual contract. Since the city reassessed taxable property a few years ago property tax grievances have dropped to fewer than 500 a year out of a total of about 14 000 taxable properties. Ted Holmes pointed out that although one-third of the assessments have increased, one-third have decreased, and one-third have stayed the same, most of the decreases have been for very expensive homes, not average homes.

Kurt Schmeller, a member of the Glen Cove School Board, said that the district has a new attendance officer and has been working on making the attendance rolls more accurate by identifying students who no longer live in the district or never lived in the district. The new accuracy has eliminated a hundred students from the rolls and allowed the district to eliminate several teaching positions in the new budget. The new superintendent and assistant superintendent should bring stable leadership to a district that has not had it for several years. They are respected by the school board and the community and have initiated promising programs.