Bethpage-Tribune_1975-07-31

              BETHIPGE •fc^MJ
117 14
OLDBETHBftGE
also serving ISLAND TREES
PLAINVIEW PLAINEDGE SEAFORD
VOL. 9 NO. 36 Thursday, July 3 1 , 1 9 75 10 cents per copy
Conti Promoted £ a s o Talks About
School Costs Ahead
Creative Planning Needed
RITCH FAMILLY - or, more accurately, its current counterpart -
poses for a portrait in front of "their" house, the newest addition to
the Old Bethpage village restoration. How Lewis and Charity Ritch
and their six children, represented here at their respective ages in
1830, managed to live in the tiny, one-bedroom, V/i story Cape Cod
built in 1813, is a matter of logistics wrestled with daily by the Nassau
County Department of Recreation and Parks' Museum Division. The
given names of the children (and their modern-day stand-ins) are
(from 1., back row) Simeon Hulse, Thomas Jefferson, Isaac Wilson
and (from I., front row) Mary Elizabeth, Ulysses H., and George
Washington. Ritch, an artisan who made felt hats, had a small shop
near his house and plans are in the offing to recreate a working
replica of that too.
1*3 '
Dr. James J. Conti, Provost of
Polytechnic Institute of New
York and resident of Bethpage,
has been elected a Trustee of
Webb Institute of Naval Ar­chitecture
at Glen Cove.
RUNNERS - UP: Oyster Bay Town Councilman Saivatore R.
Mosca presents Second Place trophies to Kara Silk and Michael
(roan in the Mr. and Miss Bethpage Community Park Bathing
Beauty Contest. Looking on are the "King and Queen", Steven
Verano and Donna Marino. The contest was held at the Bethpage
Community Park.
CONGRATULATIONS: Oyster Bay Town Councilman Saivatore R.
Mosca, second from left, presents awards to the winners of the
Town's lull a-Park Swim Meet, as Charles Schlegel, Head Coach of
the Town's Swim Program, looks on. The Plaiiiview Swim Team
came in First Place, the Bethpage Swim Team came in Second Place
the Syosset Swim Tea in came in Third Place. The event was held at
the Plaiiiview Old Bethpage Community Park.
Dr. James J. Conti, Provost of
Polytechnic Institute of New
York and Professor of Chemical
Engineering at the institute, has
been elected a Trustee of the
Webb Institute of Naval Ar­chitecture.
Founded in 1868 and located in
Glen Cove, the Webb Institute is
the oldest school of naval ar­chitecture
and marine
engineering in the United States.
Professor Conti joined the
Polytechnic faculty in 1959 as an
Assistant Professor of Chemical
Engineering, coming from the
Bettis Atomic Power Division of
Westinghouse, where he was a
senior engineer. He subsequently
served as Associate Professor,
Head of the Department of
Chemical Engineering, including
the Division of Bio-Engineering;
Associate Dean of Engineering
and Assistant to the President of
Polytechnic. He was appointed
Provost in 1970.
He has served as member or
chairman of major Polytechnic
committees, including its
Educational Council, the Plan­ning
Committee of the Long
Island Center at Farmingdale,
the Educational Policies Com­mittee
and the institute's
Academic Council and Ad­ministrative
Council.
Dr. Conti has served as ad­ministrator
of Polytechnic's
University Science Development
Program, sponsored by the
National Science Foundation; as
academic coordinator of the
institute's Executive Technical
Development Program and as
director of the Sloan Project in
Creative Engineering Design.
The latter project was funded by
a major grant from the Alfred P.
Sloan Foundation.
He is currently director of a
major Polytechnic project to
strengthen and provide con­tinuing
support for its liberal-arts
curriculum and faculty. The
project has been financed with a
(Continued on Page 6)
Nassau County's school
enrollment will undergo a
starling decline of 48 per cent by
1985, according to a planning
report submitted to County
Executive Ralph G. Caso.
The report also shows that,
while public school enrollment is
in steady decline, the per pupil
cost of education has increased 43
per cent.
Making matters worse, the
declining enrollment has been
accompanied by a reduction in
state aid to public schools, for­cing
a 34.5 per cent increase in
the amount of school costs to be
raised by local taxation and a
consequent increase in the local
school tax rate of 29.7 per cent.
These are some of the facts
presented in a school enrollment
study just completed by the
Nassau County Planning Com­mission
and presented to Caso for
the use of his Commission on
Priorities.
The study, which deals with
enrollment from 1970 to date, and
projects figures into 1985, in­dicates
the school age population
will drop from 389,102, the 1970
figure, to 201,500 by 1985. That is a
decline of 187,602 in the 15-year
period.
"Declining population, in­creasing
costs and diminishing
state aid 'clearly indicate that
new thinking and planning are
necessary," Caso said. "The
growth of the county's population
has essentially stabilized, with
only minimal increase expected
through 1985. The development of
property within the county has
reached virtual saturation.
"The Commission on
Priorities, which I established
early this year to study new
directions for government, will
take this report into its
deliberations. Moreover, I
believe this report will have great
value to our State Legislature in
its consideration of aid formulas.
"The study should further
assist our school boards and
educators, who face the
responsibility of solving the
problems."
The report indicates that the
county's school-age population in
the 56 public school districts will
drop 146,898 - from 326,598 in 1970
to a projected 159,500 in 1985.
That is a decrease of 45 per cent.
Private school enrollment of
62,504 in 1970 will drop an
estimated 40,500 by 1985 or a
decline of 65 per cent.
(Continued on Page 5)
County Executive Tells
It Like It Is—
On Proposed County Legislature
Nassau County Executive
Ralph G. Caso today presented
his plan for a seven-member
county legislature to the special
citizens commission on county
reapportionment.
"It will give us a modern
legislative body, a truly
representative one, that can
assume the legislative respon­sibilities
in the nation's most
populous and most progressive
suburban county at very little or
no additional cost," Caso said.
Caso outlined his plan in
testimony prepared for
presentation at a commission
hearing tonight, July 28.
"No matter how you slice it, a
15-member legislature...is
inevitably going to cost more
than the r e s e n t board," Caso
said, "I do not beiieve the voters
of Nassau county are going to
approve any form of legislature
that increases the co&ts of
government."
Caso urged the commission to
present a simple and straight­forward
plan for a county
legislature without cluttering the
basic issue with questions about
salaries and staffing. He said that
the elected legislature should
decide these matters, under
public scrutiny, rather than
having them fixed in the county
charter.
Caso also called for two-year
terms for county legislators. If
the commission plan is approved
by the voters, he said, legislators
should run for one-year terms in
1976, and then for full two-year
terms in 1977 so that they will be
running in the same year as
county executive candidates.
Caso said that there should be a
clear separation of powers
between the executive and
legislative branches of county
government. The county
executive should not preside over
legislative meetings, he said, and
should have no role in legislative
proceedings except the
traditional power of veto.
"The task of this commission,"
Caso said, "is to redesign our
county governmental structure
so that responsibility for
legislation is fixed in a body that
is concerned solely with
legislation, a body whose
members do not have executive
responsibilities in another
jurisdiction."