By Laura Lane
"The town will abide by the will of the people, but the town feels it's important to educate the people," said Trenkle. "Start-up costs would be extraordinary."
Incorporating Merrick was one suggestion discussed by civic leaders at a recent Joint Council of Merrick Civic Associations meeting, in an effort to resolve residents' and civic leaders' frustrations with what they say is an unresponsive local government. "Essentially what we're trying to do is open up a dialogue with all the branches of local government," said Barry Fox, president of the Merrick Park Home Owners Association. "My civic members call and they're upset."
Incorporation would give residents more control over quality-of-life issues, Fox said. "Our interests would be to make sure we had the smallest possible government. The purpose is to give us control over the local services, and some aren't a problem, like sanitation. I'm not aware that [incorporation] would be expensive."
Trenkle said that services like sanitation wouldn't be accessible to an incorporated village unless they are contracted out, which would be costly. "Incorporated villages can use the town parks, nature preserves, the animal shelter and senior-citizen services, which would be paid for with town taxes," Trenkle explained. "But the incorporated village would have to pay the costs for a village hall, a village clerk and the staff at the village hall."
Fox believes town taxes would go down for residents of an incorporated village. "You wouldn't pay [the town] for services you don't want to contract with them," he said. "Twenty years ago, garbage pickups in town weren't satisfactory, and the town fired their own garbage people. They hired the Donno Corporation, who did a great job. After around five years, the town rehired their own sanitation people back."
Fox said that civic leaders are discussing other options besides incorporation. "The town could increase the number of town [council] representatives from six to 20 or 30," he said. "They'll say increasing representatives will cost more money, but you may save money. You'd be able to more efficiently provide the services this way."
Civic leaders would also like to see the council representatives hold regularly scheduled meetings apart from the town sessions. Civic leaders say residents complain that the meetings are held at night, and finding parking at Town Hall is difficult. Residents say that even if they do attend a meeting, they aren't able to speak to their council member, but must speak to an aide instead.
"Each councilperson has 160,000 people. The council people are who we should have our most intimate conversations with, but we can't because of the sheer number of people," said Joe Kralovich, president of the Old Lindenmere Civic Association. "They hired aides to try to help the situation. But I have to do all of the homework before I can call. Why do I have to do this when I have an elected official?"
Civic leaders also say that part of the problem is a councilman's job description. Council members, who earn $60,000 a year, aren't required to meet with civic leaders, and work part time.
Civic leaders also discussed creating community councils similar to New York City's. "They would vote on zoning and report to the community boards," said Fox. "Each community would have a board similar to the school board. They would have direct input to the commissioners, who would have to attend meetings that the community board holds. Then the different services would be accountable. Right now, there's no access to the commissioners."
Fox said that issues like illegal apartment rentals would be handled more effectively this way. "The members of the community board would live in the community, like our school board members do now. There wouldn't be an education process needed," he said. "They'd know what streets need lights, where the garbage isn't being picked up, and where the illegal rentals are. As it is now, we're just too big."
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