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Partly Cloudy Index maps Long Island special districts
For the first time, information on all service providers available in one place
The Long Island Index recently completed one of its most ambitious projects to date: a year-and-a-half long quest to map all of the special districts and service providers in Nassau County.
For the first time, residents can now look up their communities and easily find out who provides their water and garbage services, who runs their fire and police departments and more.
“These maps give Long Islanders a fantastic new tool for understanding the complexities that exist within our numerous special districts,” said Kevin Law, president of the Long Island Association, in a release. “It is really the first time that we can see who has what and where. It provides an opportunity to think out of the box about consolidation, which has the potential to improve efficiencies and stabilize taxes.”
The maps, which are available at www.longislandindexmaps.org, are easy to use. People can put in an address and select which different service providers they wish to look at. The website can show and of the 240 different fire, garbage, library, parks, parking, police, school, sewer and water districts in Nassau County (Suffolk County will be rolled out later this year).
Getting the information to make the maps was extremely difficult explained Ann Golob, director of the Long Island Index. The workers at the Index contacted the towns in Nassau County, but not all of them would provide the data for the special districts. Eventually, workers realized they could get the information from the office of Nassau County Assessor James Davis.
“Once we got everything from the assessor, we felt we had to validate the information separately,” Golob said. “So we did extensive research to make sure we captured every one of the water districts, fire, garbage, library, school, etc.”
Golob said that she hopes people will use this new resource to not only satiate their own curiosity about Long Island, but also to start thinking about some issues. “Given the issues that are facing us, is this the best way to organize the delivery of services?”
