How the county exec can beat high property taxes

Updated: Dec. 9, 2009, 1:51 p.m.

As it turns out, we have a new Nassau County executive. Democrat Thomas Suozzi conceded defeat to Republican challenger Ed Mangano last week. Suozzi lost by a mere 386 votes. 

Days after the election, Suozzi wrote an opinion piece in Newsday titled “Let the county executive run the schools.” His position was this: People are mad as hell about property taxes, and they voted against him to send a message to government. They want their property-tax increases stopped.

In Nassau County, the biggest portion of our property-tax bills goes to the schools — roughly 66 percent. Suozzi proposed — as he has for some time — that the schools be put under the county executive’s control. This way, he said, the county’s 58 school districts would unite under one system, eliminating 57 school superintendents. It would be similar, he said, to Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s takeover of New York City schools.

Such talk, to my mind, was in part what got Suozzi in trouble in this election. People might rant and rave against high taxes, but for the most part, residents are satisfied with the quality of education our children are receiving. Suozzi himself often boasts that Nassau has among the best school districts in the country, with 10 of the nation’s Top 100 high schools. Generally speaking, county students test well above state averages, dropout rates are low and college acceptance rates are high. So why would we want to consolidate districts that are working well and replace them with an unknown system that could significantly alter the way in which our children are educated?