By Doug Miller
The Long Beach tax revolt that school officials have long dreaded seems to have fizzled before it began: voters approved the school and library budgets by wide margins Tuesday, and overwhelmingly returned two incumbents to the school board.
The $102 million budget, more than 5 percent larger that the current one, won comfortably in five of the school district's seven voting precincts and was approved by an unofficial total of 2,098 to 1,561. The $2.8 million library budget received even broader support, passing 2,258 to 1,345. The district also received 145 absentee ballots, which had not been tallied as of press time.
In the school board race, the incumbents kept the two available seats. Roy Lester was the top vote getter with 2,471 and Franklin Alvarado got 2,377 votes. Joe Sinnona, who ran with the endorsement of the Long Beach Classroom Teachers' Association and the two other school employees' unions, which are each locked in a bitter labor fight with the board, finished out of the money with 1,784.
Fran Adelson ran unopposed for the lone available seat on the library board of trustees.
The preliminary numbers, without the absentee ballots, had the library budget passing everywhere except the West End, and the school budget losing only there and in Point Lookout. Sinnona finished third in all seven precincts, faring best in the West End, which is where he lives and where his real estate business is headquartered.
Alvarado won two precincts in the center of the city, including the vote at Temple Emanu-el, which he carried by eight votes. The other five were carried by Lester.
The five board trustees joined Superintendent of Schools Robert Greenberg in applauding the results Tuesday.
"I hope this election can bring the groups back together," Alvarado said Tuesday. "I'd like to see us all get behind the message the community sent here."
Exactly what that message might be is open to interpretation. Unlike the past three school election cycles, most of the school budgets in Nassau County passed Tuesday. And while Alvarado and, to a greater degree Lester, ran on a platform of pay freezes for the teachers, voters approved a budget that topped $100 million by a very comfortable margin.
Lester said the budget's approval has to be seen alongside his and Alvarado's dual landslide, which came after weeks of attacks on the two from the teachers' union.
"The message that Franklin and I put out is that this is a responsible budget," Lester said. "But only because we held the line on expenses. People understood that."
But Sinnona said the unions' endorsements helped him during this race. "We worked hard on this campaign. The teachers and the labor unions worked hard. Now we have to work to make our schools better."
Another of Sinnona's platforms in the campaign was the creation of independent education foundations to help raise funds for education outside of the typical taxes-and-aid model. He was criticized in a recent Herald editorial for making these proposals four years ago but failing to follow through.
"I'll be working alongside these winners for a 501-3c," Sinnona said, referring to the chapter of the federal tax code under which such foundations are allowed. "And contrary to your editorial I've been fighting all along. The problem is nobody has been listening. But I'm going to keep fighting. Joe Sinnona does not go quietly into the night."
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