Public comments on 'East Garden City' bill have begun

In January, Nassau County Legislator Siela Bynoe introduced legislation that would eliminate the use of the term East Garden City, “in every instance where the name Uniondale is both legally appropriate and accurate.”

For years, activists and community leaders have been pushing officials to recognize the 3-square-mile section of northern Uniondale known as East Garden City — which they say does not actually exist — as Uniondale.

Those activists had the chance to voice their opinions and concerns to the Legislature on Feb. 26 at a public comment session, where they demanded that Bynoe’s bill not only be added to this year’s legislative calendar, but that the legislators support, it and understand why this issue is important to the Uniondale community.

“We have an identity,” said Paul Gibson, a Uniondale resident for 40 years. “We are proud of our existence in Uniondale, and we’re going to fight, again, and explain it to you all — individually if we have to — why it makes sense.”

The bill would eliminate the county’s use of East Garden City in “all county documents of any kind.”

“I am here today to request and, actually, demand that the legislation that was proposed by our legislator, Siela Bynoe, back in January get placed onto the Nassau County Legislature calendar,” Jeannine Maynard, a community activist and co-facilitator of the Greater Uniondale Area Action Coalition, said.

Referring to a portion of Uniondale as East Garden City, Maynard added, isn’t just “classist” and “economically racist,” but “dangerous” as well. In 2020, after 20 years of fighting what they insisted was a misidentification, local activists succeeded in getting East Garden City removed as a “census designated place,” meaning that it would officially be recognized as part of Uniondale in the 2020 census.

But despite that action four years ago, Bynoe said, some powers that be continue to use East Garden City in county communications, alerts, police reports and official documents, despite its “inaccuracy and divisiveness, including “no less than 44 press releases” by the Nassau County Police Department in 2023.

In 2021, the Nassau County Emergency Communications System recorded delays in site hazard information being relayed to the Uniondale Fire Department as a result of the geographic confusion.

“So in January of that year,” Maynard explained, “Congresswoman Kathleen Rice stepped into the discussions with Google and Google Maps to help correct the problem so that we would get real-time safety information. This is the kind of danger to the community that shows up periodically because of this mapping issue, and we’re not content to sit here and do nothing about it.”

It is mistakes like this, Bynoe said, that “illustrate the need for codifying this directive.”

Since 2000, the area has been referred to as East Garden City in an effort to separate the prime real estate north of Hempstead Turnpike from the neighborhood on the south side of the road, according to community activists like Maynard and Pearl Jacobs, president of the Nostrand Gardens Civic Association.

These efforts, they say, have proved to be profitable for area real estate agents. According to Homes.com, the average price of a home in the area designated as East Garden City is $223,000 more than those listed just south of Hempstead Turnpike, despite the fact that they are in the same school district.

“They wanted a better name for certain areas they wanted to promote north of the Hempstead Turnpike,” Jacobs said. “They wanted it to be more attractive to real estate developers, so they call it East Garden City.”

“The residents of Uniondale are rightly proud of their rich heritage, and they advocated diligently and conscientiously to ensure that their historic, diverse and inclusive home would be accurately reflected in the census,” Bynoe said. “Through my legislative proposal, Nassau County will fulfill its responsibility to complete the realization of this important change — one that is a matter of fundamental respect for the people of Uniondale.”

For those who would like to voice their opinions on Bynoe’s bill and its addition to the legislative calendar, the next public comment session is March 25, at 1 p.m., at the Theodore Roosevelt Executive and Legislative Building, at 1550 Franklin Ave. in Mineola. Statements can also be emailed to the county clerk, at LegPublicComment@NassauCountyNY.gov.