Herald Community Newspapers
Support school and library budgets
We are pleased to once again offer our support to the Long Beach Public Schools and Long Beach Library for their budgets, which voters will accept or reject on Tuesday. Both include tax increases of less than 5 percent that look big on paper, but, in the perspective of modern times, are more or less routine.
The trustees of the Board of Education struck a blow for their bosses - that would be you, the taxpayers - by negotiating a one-year zero increase in teachers' salaries during last year's contentious negotiations. It was a difficult battle that cost them political capital, but it was in the overtaxed public's interests. For years, school boards in Long Beach gave away the store to the powerful teachers' union, since, this being a union town, it was deemed politically risky not to. The current generation of taxpayers have gotten the bill for that bad public policy, in the form of some of the highest-paid teachers in the country and a high school on the state's watch list.
The current board, which held the line on behalf of the taxpayers, and Superintendent of Schools Robert Greenberg, to whom we wish a speedy recovery, have fulfilled their public responsibility with the current budget, which cuts nothing while promoting the district's growth. We support their efforts and encourage the public to do likewise.
As for the Long Beach Library, our support is just as enthusiastic, but comes with a warning that any future budgets that pay for eminent domain land seizures will likely not be supported.
The library's Board of Trustees is engaged in a foolish campaign to seize the small sliver of land west of its West Park Avenue main branch, which the trustees claim is needed for future expansion.
We feel that the land is not only not needed by the library - which has turned down free use of the lot's air rights, offered by the developer who owns it - but that the library is acting against the public good in pursuing it. The developer has acquired the permits needed to build on it, and he should be able to. To waste public money seizing it - and taking it off the tax rolls - is unsupportable.
But this campaign by the library is not reflected in its proposed budget, which thankfully provides for the library's real mission of enlightening and delighting the community. We love our library and encourage the public to both support it and patronize it. For now, vote yes.
A slight edge to Lynn Gergen
This year's Long Beach Board of Education election pits two qualified, caring community activists, Kathleen Dwyer and Lynn Gergen, against each other in the race for a single vacant seat. Whoever is the victor on Tuesday, the students win.
Gergen and Dwyer have both demonstrated a commitment to the district stretched out over several years. However, after considering both candidates, we endorse Gergen for her experience working with the board and with the PTA.
Gergen has spent years working as a student advocate, up to and including her years as president of the Central Council PTA. She has lobbied the board from within and without and can hit the ground running.
Dwyer will complete her second year on the library's Board of Trustees, and if she does not capture the school board seat, the library will remain in safe hands under her trusteeship for the remaining three years of her term. We would have preferred that she stick to the job she was elected to do rather than disrupt the library's administration with the possibility of a vacancy.
We do feel Dwyer is somewhat tainted by her support of the library's threatened eminent domain seizure, a boondoggle that could cost taxpayers a fortune.
On the other hand, we preferred her indignant reaction to the outbreak of school violence at Long Beach High School last month to Gergen's more dismissive response. If she is elected, we hope Gergen's anger over this riot - to call it what it was - will catch up to that of the rest of the community. That it has happened before, as she points out, should make it a cause of greater concern, not less. Parents demand answers and accountability, and they will either get them or this district will lose the steadfast support it has enjoyed from the community for the past decade. It's hard to imagine a more important issue than the safety of the students.
We were troubled that neither candidate demonstrated the slightest understanding of why the middle and high schools were placed on the state's watch list, or what it will take to get the high school, which is still listed, off the list. We hope the next trustee brushes up on this topic in a hurry.
Similarly, neither candidate seemed willing to tap into the recent public outcry for fiscal restraint. Both candidates favor continuing the trend of escalating teacher salaries, refusing to seek a pay freeze in the next contract negotiations. But we predict that, once elected, the next trustee will reconsider when she finds no money available for any of her pet projects. This should be a close race, since the candidates are so closely matched. No matter whom you support, please vote on Tuesday.
Re-elect Vegh
While it seems unnecessary to make an endorsement in a one-candidate race, Warren Vegh merits the support of the public for a full five-year term on the library's Board of Trustees.
Since being elected three years ago, he has proven to be a hard-working advocate for the library and a good man for the job. We wish him well in his next term.
The new candidate school
With Long Beach Library Trustee Kathleen Dwyer's candidacy for school board, she becomes the latest in a string of library trustees to announce for higher office. Residents who love and patronize their library should hope she is the last, at least for a while.
In the old days, when the Democrats' hold on City Hall was unchallenged, it was the Zoning Board of Appeals that had a reputation as a political farm system, launching the careers of City Council President Leonard Remo and former Councilman Denis Kelly, to name two.
Now that the machine is hibernating and no longer rules the zoning board, starry-eyed candidates are testing their electability and aptitude at the library. It's a smart choice for the ambitious, since the races are cheap to finance and are frequently unopposed. Dwyer captured her seat two years ago with just 165 write-in votes in a year when no one petitioned to get on the ballot.
Once elected, there's a small budget to watch over and a respected library director, George Trepp, to defer to. All that's required after that is to pose for the pictures and show up at the right dinners. It's the new candidate school.
Dwyer might worry that the library board has not had the success of the zoning board in promoting its trustees. Two years ago, Trustee Warren Vegh, who is unopposed in the race to keep his seat in Tuesday's election, lost a Democratic primary for the Nassau County Legislature to Robert Solomon.
Then, last summer, Trustee Eugene Colon challenged Nassau County Legislator David Mejias for the 4th Congressional District's Democratic nomination, positioning himself as a far-left, anti-Iraq war candidate to challenge the hawk Peter King. Colon suspended the campaign after failing to collect the signatures needed to get on the primary ballot.
Elected officials try to trade up all the time, but we would prefer it if the trustees focused more on improving the facility and less on all the Mays and Novembers to come.
