By Marley Seaman
About a dozen Baldwin Harbor residents gathered in the Town Hall Pavilion in Hempstead on Tuesday morning, Oct. 18, to watch Deputy Town Attorney Tom McKevitt open sealed consent forms and tally the results. In an unusual mail-in decision, property owners with footage along the Grand and West End canals in Baldwin were asked to send in signed and notarized approval forms to create a Special Benefit District and to commission a survey to determine the cost of dredging the two canals.
Residents owning at least two thirds of the property along the canal had to approve the measure for it to go forward. The property owners began receiving the consent forms in mid-September, and voting ended on Oct. 7, though a few forms arrived after that date and were still counted.
Just after 11 a.m., McKevitt announced that residents owning 3,086 feet along the Grand Canal, approximately 56 percent of its length, had voted yes - some 580 feet less than the required two-thirds. McKevitt estimated that the measure fell five to 10 houses short of passing.
Forty homeowners sent in consent forms, as did a corporation that owned five parcels of land on the canal. Another eight homeowners sent in unofficial nonconsent forms to register their disapproval of the district, and McKevitt said that other residents called his office to say they were "emphatically against it" but did not send in the forms, including a few who said they had torn their forms to pieces.
Later in the hour, McKevitt announced that the totals from the West End Canal were nearly identical: 57 percent approval, about 560 feet short. Everyone in attendance supported the district, and the crowd was particularly shocked that the West End measure did not pass.
"That was a slam dunk!" said Vincent Russo, who lives along the Grand Canal.
"It's really sad, because it would have been a wonderful improvement," said Nancy Scarola.
Some of the measure's opponents were surprised that it did not pass, but said they were pleased, because they would save money. They said that the engineering surveys, which would have cost $168,000 had the measure passed for both canals, were far too expensive. Dredging the canals could have cost $3 million over 20 to 30 years.
"I'm on a fixed income. My husband died two years ago," said Rose Herrmann, who lives along the Grand Canal. "I can't afford it."
"There's two houses sold across the street," said Burt Bauer, who also opposed the measure. "They can't afford to stay - they have to get out."
'Ineptness'
Many also voiced anger with the details of the election. The town attorney's office mailed the forms on Sept. 14, but they arrived in Baldwin Harbor sporadically over the next week. Some residents said they received the mailing days after their neighbors, and did not understand why.
By the time some of the letters arrived, their recipients had missed a session with a notary public scheduled for Sept. 20, and voting, at that point, was scheduled to end in little more than a week. Many of the forms bore mistakes. On some, the Grand Canal was called the Grand View Canal; other Grand Canal homeowners got letters saying they lived on the West End Canal. In a few cases, names were misspelled.
"The ineptness of this whole thing was horrible," said Russo.
Some property owners asked for corrected forms, but others did not wait. A few, after waiting almost a week, asked for new forms. The repeated mailings resulted in a number of duplicated votes.
On Sept. 23, the attorney's office sent a hand-delivered letter that said the deadline had been pushed back a week, to Oct. 7. A new session with the notaries was also scheduled.
After the deadline passed, the problems continued. The attorney's office mailed a letter on Oct. 14 informing residents about the public counting and announcement of the results. But it didn't arrive in Baldwin Harbor until the day after the votes were counted.
Residents on both sides of the argument were displeased with the way the issue was settled. Supporters of the canal district said it was unfair that they had to sign, notarize and mail the form, while opponents did not even have to mail anything back. Others found the balloting system undemocratic, saying each household should have had one vote. By that standard, the measure received roughly 60 percent of the vote.
"We did not make up [the law]," McKevitt said. "I think probably, the thinking was ... if you're going to go on board with a project that's going to be a very expensive project, there should be a very, very high threshold."
Canals run dry
One thing that is not in dispute is the condition of the canals. At low tide, they are nearly empty, and residents complain about the smell. "I have to plan when I'm having a barbecue on my son's birthday around the tide tables so my guests wouldn't get skeeved out," said Michele Russo. "People are getting really fed up. ... You can go three streets over, off of Bertha - they can use their boat anytime."
Many homeowners blame the Town of Hempstead for the state of the canal. "It's a shame. They're ruining everything," said Burt Bauer. "Sometimes you go out at the right tide, the water's all brown."
Bauer says the town is dumping sewage into the canal through a storm drain, and as a result, it should have to clean the canal. "We have a storm water drainage system ... in accordance with all state and federal regulations," McKevitt said.
Others point the finger at their neighbors, saying that soil erosion from lawns is filling the canal. There are bulkheads behind every home that are intended to block that erosion, but some are in poor condition, leaving residents wondering if they will soon collapse. On Oct. 19, at least three 35-year-old bulkheads failed along East Rockaway's Thixton Creek.
"There's a house for sale two doors from me," said Sandy Camenzuli, a Grand Canal resident who headed the effort to create the district. "The bulkhead is blown."
What happens next?
Supporters of the district are disappointed, but say they are weighing their options, which include suing the Town of Hempstead, lobbying the state Legislature again, as they did before the town took up the issue, and simply trying to pass the measure later.
"There's certainly a majority of people who are in favor," McKevitt said. "This is not by any means a closed book today. We'll put our heads back to the drawing board. We're not giving up o
