8th Dist. race comes into focus

As summer fades to a memory and the leaves start to turn, civic-minded local residents are beginning to think about election season.

With the primaries over and the candidates finalized, what local issues are most likely to sway voters come November? The county Legislature’s 8th District encompasses a number of towns, villages and hamlets with disparate concerns, which makes such predictions a challenge. In addition to Garden City and Garden City South — large business districts in which the focus is on commercial activity — the 8th also includes West Hempstead, Franklin Square and portions of Elmont, which are more concerned with neighborhood quality-of-life issues like school and property taxes.

Both Legislator Vincent Muscarella, a Republican who has held the seat since 1995, and his challenger, Democrat Gaspare Tumminello, are assuming that the biggest issue is likely to be taxes. “The top issue on local agendas has been property taxes and school taxes,” said Tumminello. “When it comes to those taxes, people think about the present, but they also wonder, Where are we going to be next year? They’re concerned.”

Tumminello said he believes that people are expecting their local government to come up with new solutions in a world that is changing rapidly. Old ideas, he said, aren’t going to help people keep living their lives in Nassau County. “I’m glad to say that I will be an islander my whole life,” Tumminello said, “but for that to happen, things in Nassau County need to change, and political officials are the end product that drive that change.”

Tumminello’s platform thus far has been a simple one: The county cannot move forward without planning aggressively for the future, and coming up with ambitious projects to keep people here. He said he believes the Lighthouse project is one ambitious piece of county planning that could help Nassau turn a corner, and transform from a county that people are leaving to one that they’re moving into.

“A lot of people who I talk to, door to door, are concerned about the Lighthouse project, and they’re asking me why this project isn’t moving forward yet,” Tumminello said. “People are saying this project’s a no-brainer because it’s going to help the whole county.”

The challenger has his work cut out for him, however, if he hopes to unseat a popular local incumbent. Muscarella, a lawyer, believes he has the answers to all the questions his constituents have been asking.

He agrees with Tumminello that taxes in the area are too high, and says he has a solution. “I’m a believer that people recognize that a certain level of taxes are necessary,” Muscarella said. “It’s when the public believe — in many cases rightly so — that the level of services they’re receiving for the taxes they’re paying is not related, that they’re being repressed.”

For Muscarella, one common-sense solution to the problem comes from looking at the way county budgets are distributed every year. “I think we in the county government need to go back to zero-budget governing,” he said. “You go back and justify every dollar spent from dollar one. That way, you’re re-evaluating what programs work.”

Tumminello said he believes that in order for the county to bounce back, its leaders must think outside the box. He has proposed, for example, selling unused supplies from local school and utilities districts back to taxpayers at auction. Everything from pencils and paper to county vehicles could be turned into profit for the county, he said.

“You have to recycle money back into the community to create lower taxes,” Tumminello said. “When you do that, instead of immediately cutting programs, it often leads to other revenue streams.”

Ultimately, the race may be decided not just by ideas, but by the candidates’ presence in the community. Tumminello has been going door to door, distributing literature, while Muscarella has been making sure he stays involved in the communities that have depended on him for 14 years.

“I think any elected official needs to be active in the community, needs to be accessible to the electorate,” Muscarella said. “I think they need to be someone who is involved in various organizations in the community.”

The county election is Nov. 3.

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