Feuding in Law. Village
Tensions that have been simmering in Lawrence Village government over the past several months boiled over in public during a May 11 village board meeting. Members of the board at its monthly meeting criticized the mayor, Dr. Jack Levenbrown, who had recently won the endorsement of the Lawrence Association and had planned to run uncontested for a second term.
Trustees Martin Oliner, Joel Mael and Simon Felder criticized the mayor at the May 12 meeting. The previous week, Felder had backed out of challenging Levenbrown for the mayor's post to avoid driving a wedge in the community, he said.
Oliner, who backed Felder for mayor, led the criticism of Levenbrown, accusing him several times of micro managing village government and causing longtime village employees to become disgruntled and leave. He added that under Levenbrown, village government has been run unprofessionally. Oliner read a letter from Village Administrator Peter Overs, who indicated that he could not work in the Levenbrown administration and would retire July 1 if an agreement could not be worked out.
Overs, 55, who has worked as the village administrator for 35 years, was eligible for retirement the following month.
Levenbrown, who looked flabbergasted during the attacks at the meeting, said he felt blindsided by them and by the letter. Levenbrown sternly told Oliner that the matter should not be discussed in public, and that he would meet with Overs to iron out any problems.
Levenbrown said that each mayor has a different management style, and his is a hands-on style. He said that after the meeting, the board, Overs worked out their differences.
It's over for Overs?
A week after he agreed to stay for at least another year as Lawrence Village administrator, Peter Overs, who has criticized Mayor Dr. Jack Levenbrown for micro managing village government, said he wanted out as soon as it's practical.
In an internal memo sent to the mayor and board of trustees, Overs, who has been village administrator for 35 years and has worked under seven mayors, said he has had enough, according to sources close to village hall. Even though he said in a May 14 statement that all matters have been addressed to everyone's satisfaction and he will continue for the 2004-2005 year, he apparently had a change of heart and planned to retire as soon as possible.
At a May 12 meeting of the village board, trustee Martin Oliner read a letter from Overs, criticizing Levenbrown's management style since he took over as mayor two years ago. In the letter Overs said he planned to retire since he has reached the retirement age of 55.
LPS budget bombs
District 15 voters defeated the proposed $87.3 million Lawrence Public Schools budget on May 18, the third consecutive time since June 2003 that the budget was rejected.
With the budget going down 3,921 votes to 2,927, the district was in jeopardy of operating for a second straight year on austerity. This would possibly force the elimination of another 30 staff members and cuts in student programs and activities if a new proposed budget could not be passed before July 1.
All three Lawrence school board incumbents retained their seats. Dr. David Sussman earned a fourth term on the board by beating former Central Council PTA president Penny Schuster, 3,920 votes to 3,717. Trustees Pamela Greenbaum and Dr. Asher Mansdorf held onto their seats. Greenbaum beat Shlomo Huttler, 4,047 votes to 3,548. Mansdorf survived a challenge from Stanley Kopilow, 4,005 votes to 3,685.
The Peninsula Public Library budget, which called for a 4.5 percent increase, passed 3,898 votes to 2,545. Incumbent library board Trustee Joseph Fuller ran unopposed for another five-year term and received 3,817 votes.
District 14 budget passes
District 14 voters approved the school budget, 1,488 votes to 1,225.
Voters also returned incumbent school board trustee Stephanie Gould to a fourth term and elected Harold Kislik to the board for the first time. Gould received 1,853 votes, while Kislik, who replaced retiring 21-year board member Richard Braverman, garnered 1,475 votes. Steven Arons, the third candidate running for one of the two seats in the at-large election, collected 812 votes. The approved $74.7 million budget represents an 8.25 percent increase over the 2002-2003 budget of $69 million.
Protest over AB petition
For the second year in a row, Atlantic Beach Village trustee candidate Victoria Simao's petition was challenged. Former Atlantic Beach trustee and deputy mayor Seymour Radow, of the village's Integrity Party, protested some of the 93 signatures obtained by Simao, saying that in reality she may not have collected the required 50 signatures to get on the ballot.
Simao, who lost a race for trustee in 2003, planned to challenge incumbents Sam Mevorach and Deputy Mayor Janice Goorland of the Integrity Party in the June 15 at-large election, in which the top two vote-getters win seats on the Board of Trustees. Simao, running on the Beach Party platform for the second year in a row, said the protest was an attempt to persuade her to drop out of the race. She explained that she thinks her petition was being protested to ensure that the board has only Integrity Party members, since her opponents, Mevorach and Goorland, are also members of the party, along with Atlantic Beach Mayor Stephen Mahler.
LPS board to put up rejected budget
Two days after the proposed $87.3 million Lawrence Public Schools budget was shot down by nearly 1,000 votes, the school board decided to put the same budget before District 15 voters at a planned re-vote on Tuesday, June 22.
The resolution to put the budget up with the same 4.68 percent increase was approved by the board 6-0 at a work session, with Trustee Pamela Greenbaum abstaining.
At one point during the work session, the board considered cutting $100,000 in legal fees, which would have reduced the budget increase from 4.7 percent to 4.4 percent, but Trustee Rose Harris argued that the small decrease would not do any good in terms of gaining the necessary support. Trustee Anthony Licatesi also argued that there was no need to reduce an already tight budget.
Cops: Girl lured on-line
A 21-year-old construction worker from Inwood was held on $30,000 bond after he was arrested and charged with raping a 15-year-old girl he met in a chat room on the Internet, authorities said. Police said the man drove the girl around Lynbrook before taking her to the Merrick train station parking lot, where he forced her to have sex with him in his car.
The suspect, identified as Joseph Rizzo, of Douglas Street in Inwood, was stopped by police while driving a 1989 Pontiac on West Broadway in Cedarhurst, not far from his home, on May 26, detectives said. He was arrested and charged with third-degree rape for the incident, which occurred on April 8, according to Deputy Inspector Jay Caputo, commanding officer of the Major Offense Squads.
The case is still pending.
JUNE
On a mid-June afternoon suddenly people accustomed to covering the news, became front-page news themselves. In a matter of minutes, a decades-old institution was homeless and not long after, an effort to regroup and continue a journalistic tradition had begun.
A quick-moving fire ravaged the Herald Community Newspapers building in Lawrence on Tuesday, June 15, forcing about 120 employees to safely evacuate to the street.
The blaze gutted much of the historic building, at 379 Central Avenue, which was home to Richner Communications, the publishers of 16 weekly newspapers and PrimeTime Guide. The buildings had been in continuous use as the newspapers' home since 1927.
More than 200 firefighters from 10 departments on the South Shore battled the stubborn blaze for more than two hours. Twelve firefighters suffered minor injuries from heat exhaustion and several required hospitalization.
The fire also forced the evacuation of students from the Hebrew Academy of the Five Towns and Rockaway Elementary School, located next-door. Elderly residents of the Plaza senior assisted-living facility also were evacuated from their apartments. The Cho-Sen Island Chinese Restaurant, located a few yards from the Herald building, was also affected as workers and customers immediately left the building once the fire began.
The fire also forced police to close many roads in the Lawrence-Cedarhurst area in order to allow emergency vehicles to enter the site on Central Avenue near the corners of Frost Lane and Washington Avenue; a good portion of Broadway was also blocked off as police and fire vehicles stayed on scene into the night.
Fire officials said the blaze started in the rear of the company's printing press room at around 3:15 p.m. and quickly spread throughout the rest of the building. About eight minutes into the fire, a propane tank, used to power company forklifts, exploded in the rear of the building, sending huge gusts of thick, black smoke towering above the single-story building. The smoke was so thick that it rose high above the Plaza Senior Assisted Living Center apartment building across the street and drifted several blocks into the Village of Cedarhurst. A second propane tank exploded later during the fire, according to Lawrence-Cedarhurst Fire Chief Kevin McHugh.
As the drama unfolded, a large crowd gathered across the street from the Herald building, as several TV news helicopters hovered above the scene, reporting the events for their early newscasts at 5 p.m.
After the fire was contained, just over half of the building's 120 employees gathered down the street at Congregation Beth Sholom to plan a strategy on how to keep the newspapers operating amid the turmoil. Co-Publisher Stuart Richner told employees that other people in the newspaper business had offered to help the company print the papers to allow them to come out as close to schedule as possible.
Heralds still running despite fire
Despite a devastating fire that destroyed the offices of the Herald Community Newspapers in Lawrence, the 16 weekly papers published by Richner Communications still came out that week, and the company is alive and well in temporary offices in West Hempstead.
The papers were published thanks in large part to a computer salvaged from the fire that backed up all previous work done by the reporters, editors, advertising representatives and the photo, art and production staffs.
Other publishers, some from as far away as Minnesota, offered the use of their printing presses in order for the papers to get printed.
The Heralds' editors and reporters temporarily faced the enormous challenge of not having access to many computers or phones while interim offices were in the process of being set up on Orlando Avenue in West Hempstead, the newspapers' headquarters for approximately the next six months.
Steve Wenk, assistant chief fire marshal for Nassau County, said the fire was an accident, but the investigation was continuing to determine what actually sparked the blaze.
Lawrence champions!
The Lawrence boys' volleyball team brought home the Nassau County championship in early June.
Once Lawrence rallied past upset-minded and neighborhood rival Hewlett in five games in a Nassau playoff semifinal on June 1, there was no denying the top-seeded Golden Tornadoes.
Plainview pushed them to the limit in an epic second game in the June 3 championship at C.W. Post that featured 72 points. But consecutive kills by senior outside hitter Mark Ribeiro gave Lawrence a 37-35 victory that highlighted a three-game sweep and the school's first-ever title in 13 seasons.
Lawrence (22-0) had 10 seniors, most of whom played together for three years.
H-W English test results sink
The Hewlett-Woodmere School District showed a 10 percentage-point decline on the latest English Language Arts (ELA) exam results, while Lawrence Public Schools showed improvement.
Seventy-six percent of Hewlett-Woodmere fourth-graders met the state standards on the ELA exam, as compared with 86 percent in 2003, while the eighth-graders improved slightly, from 67 percent to 69 percent meeting state standards.
According to the results, 81 percent of Hewlett Elementary School fourth-graders who took the exam met the state standards, while 70 percent at Ogden Elementary School did so.
Lawrence Public Schools improved on both the fourth- and eighth-grade ELA exams. The most dramatic improvement was seen among eighth-graders, who improved their performance on the test by 12 percentage points over last year, from 47 percent to 59 percent meeting the state standards.
Lawrence eighth-graders went from scoring fourth lowest in the county last year to tying with Long Beach for 10th-lowest in 2004.
On the elementary-school level, Lawrence showed slight improvement, with 70 percent of fourth-graders meeting the standard compared with 69 percent last year, when the district tied with Roosevelt for last in the county.
Overs not over yet
The on-again, off-again saga of when Lawrence Village Administrator Peter Overs will retire has taken another turn.
Overs, who in mid-May said he wanted out "as soon as is practical" because of his inability to work with Mayor Dr. Jack Levenbrown, said he will remain as village administrator for up to a year.
Overs, who was eligible to retire at age 55 on July 1 after 35 years on the job, agreed to take part in a transition period and to find someone to replace him.
Mayor Levenbrown made the announcement during the Lawrence Village meeting on Wednesday, June 9.
Levenbrown said the agreement is for Overs to possibly stay until July 2005 for a transition year to work with staff and train people.
New principal named at Lawrence High School
The long search for a new principal at Lawrence High School ended after the Lawrence school board approved the appointment of Geoffrey Touretz to replace the retiring Dr. Steven Kussin.
The school board unanimously approved the appointment during the June 8 board meeting at Lawrence Middle School.
Touretz, who received a three-year contract, arrived at Lawrence High School after six years as principal of Walt Whitman High School in South Huntington. Kussin served as Lawrence High's principal since July 1994.
LPS suffers setback
The Lawrence school district sustained another staggering setback on June 22, when District 15 voters rejected the school board's proposed budget during a re-vote, forcing the district onto austerity for the second year in a row.
The proposed $87 million budget failed by exactly 700 votes, 3,267 to 2,567.
This means that for the second straight year, the district will be forced to work with a contingency budget, with only a 2.4 percent rise from last year's budget. School officials had to cut $1.6 million from the rejected $87 million budget.
Incumbents win in Atlantic Beach
Two incumbents were re-elected to the Village of Atlantic Beach Board of Trustees on June 15 with one winning by a mere 19 votes.
Voters returned incumbents Sam Mevorach and Janice Goorland to their seats in the at-large election in which the two top vote getters win.
Mevorach received 275 votes, Goorland 380 votes and challenger Victoria Libbey Simao, 256 votes. Mevorach and Goorland were both re-elected to their third two-year terms.
Atlantic Beach Mayor Stephen Mahler, who ran unopposed for re-election, received 379 votes.
Number One School
to close in September
Struggling to come up with $1.7 million in cuts to adopt a contingency budget, the Lawrence school board voted on June 25 to close the Number One School and merge the students with the Number Six School beginning in September.
The board voted 4-2 to accept Superintendent Dr. John Fitzsimons' recommendation to shut the school to prevent deep cuts in programs and services to many students in the district as a result of the proposed 2004-05 budget re-vote going down in defeat. School Board President Frank Parise and Trustee Pamela Greenbaum voted against the plan, saying the district needed more time to examine the ramifications of the move. Trustees Kathy Raquet Barry, Dr. Asher Mansdorf, Dr. David Sussman and Rose Harris voted in favor of the plan. Trustee Anthony Licatesi was absent for the vote.
The plan appeared to come as a surprise to the few Number One School parents in attendance during the special meeting held on June 25, a meeting parents complained was not properly publicized.
The school district was hoping to delay the decision to close the school for up to a year, but the defeated budget apparently forced its hand. About a month ago, the board voted to close a school by September 2005, but the board did not name the school at the time. As a result of the budget defeats during a vote on May 18 and a re-vote on June 22, the school board met on back-to-back nights, on June 24 and 25 to develop a list of items to cut totaling $1.7 million. The school board scrambled to make cuts in order to adopt a budget by the June 30 deadline.
Fitzsimons told the board closing the school is the best solution to reduce the budget from the proposed $87 million to about $85 million. The move would save about $900,000 a year, the superintendent said.
Hewlett yeshiva rejected
The Town of Hempstead Board of Zoning Appeals (BZA) rejected the Reenas Bais Yaakov School for Girls' bid to expand its small all-girls' yeshiva at the property of the former Long Island Gymnastics Academy next to the Hewlett train station.
In a written decision by the BZA in late June, the appeal was rejected due to safety concerns raised by the Hewlett Bay Fire District, located down the street from the proposed yeshiva site, and the Hewlett-Woodmere School District. The fire department and school district claimed that, if approved, the school would hurt the response time of emergency vehicles in the vicinity around the school. The fire department and school district also argued that the school would cause major safety concerns for the students who would commute by Long Island Rail Road to the Hewlett station and have to cross railroad tracks to get into the building.
LPS adopts
contingency budget
The Lawrence school board officially adopted a 2004-05 contingency budget at the June 29 board of education meeting at Lawrence Middle School.
The $85,417,887 budget is a 2.4 percent budget increase over last year's contingency budget as a result of District 15 voters rejecting two proposed $87 million budgets on May 18 and June 22. After voters rejected the budget on June 22 by 700 votes, the board was forced to cut $1.7 million. However, when the board voted to close the Number One School and consolidate the students and staff into the Number Six School building, they were able to save $877,791 a result of having one less building to operate.
Some of the cuts in the program area include $100,000 in athletics, $80,000 in building and field use, $90,330 in clubs, $60,000 in legal fees and $45,317 in field trips.
The athletics cuts included the elimination of high school boys' and girls' winter indoor track, high school boys' and girls' bowling, freshman tennis, middle school boys' and girls' tennis as well as middle school cheerleading. The varsity and junior varsity football and cheerleaders will also travel on the same buses to away games this fall. The cuts also include two elementary school teachers, one special education teacher and a Literacy Coach.
JULY
Diver dies at sea
Tragedy occurred in the ocean off Atlantic Beach, when four scuba divers went out for a late-night dive only to have one of their group not come up alive. Forty-six-year-old Anthony Lobue, of Valley Stream, drowned, according to detectives at the Fourth Squad.
According to police, Lobue and three other divers went into the water near the century-old site of the Iberia shipwreck, about three miles off Atlantic Beach, at around 9:40 p.m. Lobue drowned, police said, when he lost his regulator and got tangled in his line shortly after 10 p.m. on June 30.
One of the other divers, who was on the ocean floor looking for lobster, noticed that Lobue was not moving, and brought him up to the boat. There the diver performed CPR, while the skipper of the 42-foot dive boat called the headquarters of the Atlantic Beach Fire and Rescue Squad, police said. The divers were in contact with the rescue squad via radio as they raced back through Reynolds Channel, according to squad Chief Jonathan Kohan. When the boat arrived at rescue squad headquarters next to the Atlantic Beach Bridge, squad members attempted to resuscitate Lobue for three minutes before he was removed from the vessel and taken to nearby St. John's Episcopal Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 11:37 p.m., according to Kohan.
The drowning was ruled an accident, but an investigation is continuing, according to detectives.
LPS board approves
district audit
In response to recent financial scandals that have plagued other Long Island school districts, the Lawrence school board passed a resolution on July 6 to encourage local legislative leaders to conduct a state audit in order to increase taxpayers' confidence in the ways their money is spent.
The resolution meant that the board could send letters to Assemblyman Harvey Weisenberg (D-Long Beach) and Sen. Dean Skelos (R-Rockville Centre), to encourage them to seek permission from the New York state comptroller's office to conduct the audit. A letter will also be mailed to Comptroller Alan Hevesi.
Other school districts, including Lawrence, are being urged to study their expenditures to make sure there has been no wrongdoing, in light of an investigation by the Nassau County district attorney's office that led to the arrest of former Roslyn Superintendent Frank Tassone on a grand larceny charge. Tassone allegedly stole more than $1 million of the district's money and spent it on vacations, meals and other personal expenses, according to the DA. Roslyn's former assistant superintendent for finance, Pamela Gluckin, was also arrested on a grand larceny charge following the DAs investigation.
The initiative taken by the District 15 school board to conduct an audit of its expenses came two days before Nassau County DA Denis Dillon suggested that audits be done of school districts statewide in light of the recent scandals.
Two new principals join Lawrence public schools
Two longtime district principals who have departed have been replaced, and the district did not have to go very far to find their replacements. The Lawrence school board has approved the district's literacy coach, Melissa Krieger, and Number Four School teacher Ann Pedersen as the new principals of the Number Five and Number Four schools, respectively.
Yvonne Nicholas retired after 10 years at the Number Four School, and Gerald Goldsmith left after nine years as principal of the Number Five School.
H-W private-school
parents threaten lawsuit
Chana Perl has been at ease for the past two years, during which District 14 has transported her son Abraham from the Rambam Mesivta High School for Boys in Lawrence to the Perl home in Hewlett. But she didn't think she would have that luxury during the coming year. Due to rising transportation costs, the Hewlett-Woodmere school district decided to cut bus transportation to private-school students after 5:30 p.m., and as a result, some of the parents affected contemplated filing a lawsuit against the district.
After a letter was sent to 19 families in District 14 on June 16, informing them of the transportation change, parents showed up at the July 6 school board meeting to raise the possibility of a lawsuit if the board did not provide the transportation they have received in the past. The district planned to provide funding for the students to take the public bus that travels on West Broadway, between Far Rockaway and Lynbrook, to get home, but parents were not happy with that solution.
Touché: Hewlett resident makes
his point in Athens
Hewlett resident Jon Tiomkin lived the Olympic dream, when he was chosen to represent the U.S. in the Summer Games in Athens.
Tiomkin, 25, qualified for the Olympics when he placed second at fencing's national championships in Atlanta earlier in the year. The 1999 Hewlett High School graduate was to compete in the men's individual competition as well as team foil.
Since he qualified for the Games, the 5-foot-11, 190-pounder and his U.S. teammates trained hard, attending a 10-day training camp in Charlotte, N.C.
Tiomkin and his U.S. teammates then headed to Greece for more training before the opening ceremonies in Athens on Aug. 16. Tiomkin was excited about the opportunity to represent his country on fencing's biggest stage.
Business boost
In what was billed as the Five Towns area's first new commercial development of its kind in more than 20 years, Long Island Heart Associates of the North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System and Signature Bank planned to open in the same business complex in Woodmere.
The 10,000-square-foot building on the site of a former gas station, next to CVS Pharmacy, at 923 Broadway, was expected to open in late August. The Signature savings bank will occupy 6,000 square feet, while Long Island Heart Associates, which specializes in cardiology care, will occupy the remaining 4,000 square feet. A parking lot to accommodate 50 cars will be constructed underneath the building, which will be supported by concrete stilts.
'Playing out my brother's dream'
When Max Cohen, of Woodmere, was undecided about whether to play lacrosse in college, his older brother Adam was the one who pushed him to succeed in the sport. Max is now on his way to playing major-college lacrosse at Hofstra.
Cohen, who recently graduated from Hewlett High School, is an attackman who was also recruited by Notre Dame and Syracuse. He hadn't planned on attending a local college, but the tragedy that befell his family and the Five Towns on Aug. 12, 2003 changed all that. A year ago, Adam Cohen and two of his 2002 Hewlett High classmates, Jordan Satin and Jonah Richman, drowned in an upstate river while trying to save their friend David Altschuler. The drownings occurred in Elizabethtown, near Minerva, where the four were counselors at Camp Baco.
Cop fires at teen
An off-duty police officer fired several shots at a 16-year-old boy who allegedly pointed a replica handgun at the cop after a car driven by the boy struck the officer's vehicle in Hewlett, police said. After the collision, the off-duty cop followed the car from Hewlett into Lynbrook, where the youth got out of his car and, toting the gun, approached the officer's car, according to police. That was when the officer reportedly fired at the youth. The shots missed the boy, who was arrested a short time later, police said.
5 Towns crime cut in half
Led by a precipitous drop in burglary, assault and auto theft, major crime in the Five Towns plummeted by nearly half in the first six months of 2004, compared with the same period last year. Crime dropped 44 percent during the six months from Jan. 1 to June 30, according to police statistics, providing sharp contrast to the same period in 2003 in the categories of murder, rape, robbery, residential burglary, commercial burglary, felonious assault and auto theft.
AUGUST
Lawrence schools
chosen for state audit
New York State Comptroller Alan Hevesi took the Lawrence school district up on its invitation to audit the district's finances.
Hevesi announced that Lawrence was one of four districts on Long Island to have its finances examined to ensure that there was no wrongdoing in light of financial scandals that have occurred in other Long Island school systems.
"We are delighted that our request for an audit was granted, and that there will be no expense to the district," said Lawrence Superintendent Dr. John Fitzsimons. "The only results that will come from the audit is that we may find better ways to conduct things, but I don't think we will find any problems with our accounting practices."
The other school districts chosen by the state to have their finances audited are Manhasset, Hempstead and Brentwood. A bolt from the sky
Low on funds, members of a Hispanic congregation have been struggling to make repairs to their church in Lawrence, which has deteriorated in recent years. Church members were dealt a severe blow, when a bolt of lightning struck the steeple during a thunderstorm, starting a fire that ripped through the bell tower, officials said.
The fire, at the Christian Missionary Alliance, 150 Rockaway Turnpike, erupted at about 5:15 p.m. on Wednesday, Aug. 11, causing about $15,000 in damage to the roof and steeple, church officials said.
The fire could have created much more damage if an anonymous passerby hadn't seen the lightning strike and immediately summoned the Lawrence-Cedarhurst Fire Department, which is about two blocks from the church. During the storm, some department members were standing by at the firehouse, at Washington and Central avenues, in case of just such an emergency, said Second Deputy Chief Donaven Wright.
Hewlett site placed
on Superfund list
The Federal Environmental Protection Agency formally placed a Hewlett groundwater contamination site on a Superfund priority list for cleanup.
The EPA's announcement about putting the site on its Superfund National Priorities List guaranteed funding for the cleanup of the Peninsula Boulevard Ground Water Plume in a process that could take several years. The site is located about 100 feet from the Woodmere Middle School and was found to contain tetrachloroethylene (PCE), a manufactured chemical widely used in dry cleaning and known to cause liver damage and an increased risk of cancer. The area was home to a former dry cleaner, which may or may not have been responsible for the contamination, officials said. EPA officials said no link was found between the contamination and any specific companies.
It could take 18 months to four years to study the extent of the problem, conduct a feasibility study and then identify the cleanup options.
The plan will then be presented to the public for comment. Until that point, it is not known how much in Federal cleanup funds will be dedicated to the project.
Train cuts on track in 5T
Five Towners accustomed to traveling to Manhattan on weekends via the Long Island Rail Road may soon have to arrange for an alternative mode of transportation.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority contemplated the elimination of weekend service on the Far Rockaway branch beginning in 2006, as part of $467 million in cuts the agency was considering to close a deficit of more than $1 billion.
The cuts to weekend service on the Far Rockaway branch would mean no service on Saturdays and Sundays at the Five Towns stations - in Inwood, Lawrence, Cedarhurst, Woodmere and Hewlett - along with the Far Rockaway, Gibson and Valley Stream stops. Weekend stops at Valley Stream on the Long Beach branch would still be made. The proposed cuts would also eliminate the West Hempstead, Oyster Bay and Greenport/Ronkonkoma branches in 2005. The MTA's plan to close the budget gap would also call for a 5 percent fare hike for all commuters.
MTA spokesman Brian Dolan said that the reason weekend service on the Far Rockaway branch was being considered for elimination was that those train stations draw very few commuters on weekends, as well as on weekdays.
The proposed cuts to weekend service in the Five Towns would mean that the closest LIRR station for area residents would be on Sunrise Highway in Lynbrook, about six miles from the Inwood station and nearly three miles from the Hewlett station.
Cedarhurst parking
meter plan blasted
Cedarhurst business leaders reacted angrily to a proposal by Cedarhurst Village to extend by three hours the time that parking meters would be in effect, insisting that area businesses, especially restaurants, would be hurt by such a plan.
Steven Schneider, chairman of the Cedarhurst Business Improvement District, Norman Steen, the BID's executive director, and Lino Viola, owner of LaViola Restaurant, appeared before the mayor and village board of trustees at a meeting in an attempt to convince the board not to implement the proposal.
The board had proposed extending the hours the meters are in effect from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. instead of 6 p.m., and held a public hearing on the proposal at the meeting.
Board members said they are taking a cue from Lawrence, where the meters are in effect 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
But the following month, the Cedarhurst board reconsidered and abandoned the proposal.
PPL may get more
parking, safer driveway
After years of waiting, the Peninsula Public Library in Lawrence may soon be granted additional parking spaces and an improved driveway.
Lawrence school board member Frank Parise suggested at the Tuesday, Aug. 10 school board meeting that the board consider allowing the library to use the adjacent parking lot of the now-vacant Number One School. It will help provide a safer entrance and exit for library patrons while a decision on what to do with the Number One School property is determined.
The school's parking lot was made available recently after the board decided to close the school and place the students and staff in the Number Six School in Woodmere as part of a consolidation plan to save the district money and make better use of classroom space. The board was still considering leasing options for the school building to generate more revenue for the district. A subcommittee of trustees, comprising Rose Harris, Dr. Asher Mansdorf and Pamela Greenbaum, was set up to study the options.
Parents to District 15:
Spare bowling team
While attending kindergarten at the Number Four School in 1993, Eric Rothbard, of Cedarhurst, wrote in his yearbook that he wanted to be a professional bowler. He followed his passion for the sport for five years at Lawrence Middle School and then at Lawrence High School, as a member of the schools' bowling teams.
Recently, however, his hopes for a career in the sport faded. The team was one of the casualties when School District 15 was forced onto a contingency budget for the second straight year after the public voted down its proposed budget. The Lawrence High bowling program was one of the extracurricular programs eliminated, meaning that Rothbard will not get to bowl his senior season.
But his mother, Cori, is trying to salvage the program for her son and his teammates through some fund-raising efforts. At the school board's Aug. 10 meeting, she proposed that the school resurrect the team if parents agreed to help raise money and provide transportation for the team, in addition to finding a teacher to serve as a volunteer coach.
Later in the year, the district restored the bowling team.
Cops: Inwood garden goes to pot
Police busted a 38-year-old Inwood man for tending a garden - but those weren't tulips and daisies he was caring for, authorities said.
Police arrested the suspect, identified as Dino Psaras, and charged him with growing several marijuana plants adjacent to the Long Island Rail Road tracks near his home on Pearsall Place, police said.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority Police, Fourth Squad detectives and the Nassau County Narcotics Bureau made the arrest after an investigation. The suspect was reportedly found to be in possession of about 20 marijuana plants, police said. Detectives from the Fourth Squad said the MTA police were the first to spot the alleged marijuana garden alongside the train tracks. Police were astonished to discover that someone would plant marijuana there, officials said.
The MTA notified police at the Fourth Precinct, seeking assistance, and a patrol supervisor was dispatched to the scene, police said. The supervisor directed officers to canvass the neighborhood to determine who owned the garden, police said. The investigation led police to the suspect, who admitted that it was his garden, saying that it was for his own personal use, and it was not for re-sale, police said.
The plants were confiscated and invoiced, then taken to a Nassau County Police Department lab for further inspection.
The case has not yet come to trial, according to the Nassau County DA's Office.
Suspect nabbed
An 18-year-old man was stabbed in the buttocks with a knife in Inwood during a heated argument with the stabbing suspect, police said. Two hours later, Fourth Precinct police officers Stephen Firestone and James Lorenzen arrested the suspect, Jermaine Pitter, 21, of Lawrence Avenue in Inwood, authorities said. The stabbing took place at Mott and West End avenues, where Pitter allegedly pulled out a knife and plunged it twice into the victim's buttocks. The suspect then ran away, according to Fourth Squad Detective Christopher Randazzo. Det. Lt. Gregory Detwiller of the Fourth Squad said the suspect approached the victim to continue an altercation that they had begun days earlier. The victim, whose name and address were withheld by police, was taken by police ambulance to St. John's Episcopal Hospital in Far Rockaway, where he was treated for puncture wounds to his buttocks and then released. Pitter was convicted and sentenced to 1-1/2-to-3 years in prison on Oct. 21.
Hewlett yeshiva closes
Officials at Reenas Bais Yaakov School for Girls in Hewlett, which was recently defeated in its bid to move near the Hewlett train station to expand, have decided to close the school, leaving parents and students scrambling to find other schools for the coming year.
The all-girls yeshiva recently lost a two-year legal battle to move from Young Israel of Hewlett, where it had operated during its seven-year existence. In late June the Town of Hempstead Board of Zoning Appeals rejected an application from the school to relocate to the former site of the Long Island Gymnastics Academy, at 1199 Railroad Ave. Had the application been approved, the yeshiva high school would have increased enrollment from 50 to 200 students. According to Reenas Bais Yaakov Executive Director Rabbi Ari Ginian, the school was in contact with all of the families of students who were enrolled, informing them of the decision to close.
