Cullin, Borecky square off in the 5th Council District

North Merrick civic group leader Claudia Borecky is challenging longtime Town of Hempstead Board member Angie Cullin of Freeport for the 5th Council District seat. Election Day is Tuesday, Nov. 8.

The 5th District takes in all of Barnum Island, Bellmore, Lido Beach, Merrick and Point Lookout, as well as parts of Freeport, North Bellmore, North Merrick, Seaford and Wantagh.

The Herald recently asked each of the candidates to offer their views on substantive town issues. Below are the questions and their answers.

Herald: How do you see the state of the Town of Hempstead’s finances, and where, from a fiscal standpoint, do you see the town heading from here in the coming two to five years?

Borecky: Although the Town of Hempstead touts fiscal responsibility, it should be lowering our taxes, not freezing them. I believe there is a lot of fat in its departments.  The town is proposing to increase an already grossly inflated animal shelter budget by 13 percent, to $7.4 million. While our neighbors are out of work and struggling to put food on their tables, records show that my opponent not only raised her aide’s salary to $89,000, but increased hers and her colleague’s salaries by as much as 10 percent.  When I asked the town to promise not to give themselves raises right after this election, as they had two years ago, Town Supervisor Kate Murray refused.

If the town continues on the same path, it will lose revenue. The town has an obligation to provide incentives to improve its economic climate. Once elected, I would ask the Industrial Development Agency to produce long- and short-term economic development plans that would entice novel industries, such as biomedical and green technologies. We need to change the archaic zoning of our downtown areas that allows for nothing but strip malls, with fast-food restaurants and gas stations in between. In villages with mixed-use zoning, shops are intermingled with small apartment buildings.  People who live in downtowns tend to shop at local shops. This preserve the suburban character of the outlying residential areas, while showing growth in our downtowns. There are few empty storefronts in such communities.