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Light Drizzle Fog/Mist Cuts are obliterating services
Five Towns Community Center loses $400,000 in county funding
The loss of $400,000 in county funding has shredded the programs and services offered by the Five Towns Community Center in Lawrence.
Despite a rally by youth center supporters on Monday outside the Nassau County Legislative Building, where the County Legislature was in session, the $7.3 million in annual funding cuts that County Executive Ed Mangano ordered in June and that took effect last month remained in place.
In June, Mangano sent letters to 43 private youth agencies and 15 mental-health and addiction-treatment agencies that have contractual arrangements with the county, informing them that their funding would be eliminated unless they could persuade three Democratic lawmakers to side with the Legislature’s 10 Republicans to approve a measure to borrow $41 million to pay the county’s tax-certiorari debts. (A certiorari is a challenge to a property’s assessment.)
The Democrats refused, saying they wanted to negotiate a plan for legislative redistricting. The 19 legislative districts must be reapportioned after every federal census due to population changes to ensure a roughly equal number of people in each district.
“They are doing it deliberately,” Republican Legislator Howard Kopel said of the Democrats. “Holding the funding hostage, and it’s unrelated to redistricting.”
Democratic Minority Leader Kevan Abrahams said in June that his caucus would not approve the bonding unless Republicans agreed to a redistricting plan that includes a series of public hearings before the Legislature votes in 2013 on a final redistricting map. Democrats have charged that the redistricting map proposed by Republicans would cost Democrats at least two seats in the Legislature and ensure Republican control of it. As things stand, there will be no restoration of the funding cuts without an agreement.
As of July 31, the Five Towns Community Center in Lawrence was forced to terminate its year-round middle school programs, which included homework assistance, counseling services, group workshops, crisis intervention, career guidance and the evening youth recreational program for teens.
