Letters to the Rockville Centre Herald July 21, 2011

Time to deal with the tax cap

To the Editor:

Now that we’ve settled on a new mayor, village trustees and school board members, we’ve got to start getting serious about addressing the new annual 2 percent tax cap just enacted by the governor and the State Legislature. If any town officials plan to get around these new requirements with a referendum, they should state that publicly and immediately so we know where we stand. On the assumption that that would be politically unacceptable, and with inflation running at 2 percent or more, the need to have a plan in place for budget time next year is immediate.

There has been much debate about reducing costs by consolidating public services. Since these are time-consuming legalistic endeavors, town officials have a fiduciary responsibility to start now, or formulize and articulate an alternate strategy to lower costs. Furthermore, all newly elected officials have an obligation to let us know how they plan to fund promised campaign endeavors.

Rockville Centre is not immune to the financial problems the rest of the world is facing. We are the rest of the world, so let’s not be ducking our head in the sand.

Steven Atlas

Rockville Centre

How will lost revenue be replaced?

To the Editor:

Newly elected Mayor Fran Murray is to be commended for honoring his campaign promise by announcing that parking meter violations will not be enforced after 6 p.m. (“Parking now free after 6,” July 14-20).

However, as Nassau County Executive Ed Mangano’s action on a campaign promise, repealing the fuel oil tax, left a hole in the county budget, the action by Mayor Murray will leave a hole in Rockville Centre’s budget. How big a hole? In the 2011-12 budget, revenue from parking is listed as approximately $1.2 million. Revenue from fines is approximately $1.5 million. Using a conservative estimate of a loss of 5 percent of revenue from not enforcing metered parking (a loss of both parking revenue and fines for violations), it will cost the village about $135,000. Neither Mayor Murray nor any of his newly elected trustees has stepped up and informed us how the revenue will be replaced.

The time for them to do so is now.

Marc Wieman

Rockville Centre