Letters to the Rockville Centre Herald March 17, 2011

She’s done —with parking tickets

To the Editor:

I wrote a letter to the editor a few months back about the tickets I received while running in to purchase soup at a local merchant. Well, now I’m done. I have paid my last Rockville Centre parking ticket! That is, at least until my youngest gets her license in a few months and has to park near her school. But I digress …

I went into the nail salon yesterday after putting the maximum number of quarters in the meter. I made a note of the time, and when I thought the meter was due more money, one of the employees went out with my quarter to feed the meter. Ten minutes later, when I went out, there was a ticket. I was confused because the times on the ticket and when the money went in didn’t add up. Then I remembered that we no longer get 30 minutes for a quarter — we get 25. Yes, that’s my fault. I forgot. I’m lucky I remembered where I parked!

So I drove home with my $30 ticket and related the story to my daughter, who, ironically, also had a manicure at the same salon earlier in the day. She got a ticket, too! But that was because she ran out of quarters.

Either way, we’re done. With what it cost us between services and tickets, I think we can go into the city for manicures and have lunch at the Plaza while we’re there!

Nancy Gough

Rockville Centre

RVC police are value-added

To the Editor:

The letter “Village should consider county police protection” (Feb. 10-16), recommending that the Rockville Centre Police Department be consolidated into the Nassau County Police Department, failed to recognize the value of our very fine Police Department and what would be lost to Rockville Centre.

As someone who grew up here, served as fire chief for six years, working closely with the RVCPD, and who was employed in management for two other villages that didn’t have their own police departments, I don’t want some arbitrary tax cap imposed that will lessen the value of services I receive in Rockville Centre. And one of the most beneficial services we are fortunate to have is our Police Department.

In the villages I worked for, only 1½ Nassau County Police Department officers were assigned to the boundaries of the village, and there was often zero police presence because they would be assigned to other urgent calls in surrounding communities. Without a visible police presence, the quality of life in those communities often became intolerable. Constant vandalism to property by youths wandering neighborhoods, excessive graffiti and drug dealing from private residences would go unchecked in spite of numerous calls to the NCPD. While they are excellent officers, they just did not have the manpower to devote to those isolated situations. There also was a lack of traffic enforcement on the less-traveled residential streets.

For the six years that I served as a fire chief in Rockville Centre, the one constant at the more than 1,000 fire alarms and aided cases I responded to each year was that when I arrived, there was a qualified village officer already on scene. I was fortunate to work with some of the most professional and dedicated police officers anywhere. They made it their business to know the neighborhood, the residents and businesses in town and to be active in the community.

We all look at our total taxes — village, school, town and county — and wish they were less. But we need to look at each portion of our taxes and ask whether we are getting value for that portion. In the case of the Police Department, I see the value it adds to my home, the security it means for my family and the quality of life I enjoy as a result. That is value I am willing to keep paying for.

John A. Mirando

Rockville Centre

Limit hate speech

To the Editor:

Members of American Legion Post 303 and the Rockville Centre Tea Party attended a press conference on March 7 held by County Executive Ed Mangano at the legislative offices in Mineola.

Mangano announced that the county would pursue legislation that would prevent the vile and hateful disruptions of military funerals by such people as the Westboro Baptist Church, who have, in a most grotesque manner, protested military services across the country, causing enormous emotional stress for grieving family members, vilified members of the Jewish faith, and condemned homosexuals and the “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policies of the federal government.

Members of the Gold Star Mothers/Fathers — parents whose sons or daughters were killed in the line of duty — and numerous veterans and civic organizations were present to laud the county for its efforts to grant families, friends and other loving American citizens the right to pay their final respects to young American heroes without being harassed, insulted and cursed by any hate group hiding behind the First Amendment.

All who attended agreed that freedom of speech must have its limitations when it contains words or actions that mar religious services, military interment honors or family grief.

Mickey Clark

Rockville Centre