1973-04-26

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AN OFFICIAL NEWSPAPER OF THE VILLAGE OF FARMINGDALE
SERVING THE GREATER FARMINGDALE AREA, BETHPAGE AND MELVILLE
VOL. 10 NO. 36 Second Class Postage has been paid at Farmingdale, N. Y. 11735
Published by THE OBSERVER, Inc., Box 146, Farmingdale, N. Y. Thursday, April 26, 1973 15c
Choices in School Board Race
Outrank Budget Alternatives
The big day for Farmingdale residents to vote on the school and library
budgets for the coming year has once again arrived. Voting will take place this
coming Wednesday, May 2, between 10; 00 a. m. and 10: 00 p. m. at Weldon E.
Howitt Jr. High School. At stake is a school budget of $ 25,117,201, up $ 954,335 from
last year, a library budget of $ 502,255, up $ 71,220 from last year and a Youth
Council budget which is the only one lower than last year.
CHIEF HONORED: Outgoing Chief, Carl Schlingloff Jr. of the
Farmingdale Fire Department was honored by the Village Board of
Trustees for his term of office as chief of the department. Mayor
John J. Hallan left and trustee Norman Krasnovv, right, present the
proclamation to the new Chief of the Department, William Kinney.
Chief Kinney accepted on behalf of Ex- Chief Schlingloff who was
unable to attend. In addition to his duties as Trustee of the Village
Board, Norman Krasnow also serves as Commissioner of the Far­mingdale
Fire District. Presentation ceremonies took place at the
Village Hall, Monday evening, April 23. The proclamation was
signed by the Five trustees for the board.
Photo: David L. Pokress
Paf/ ence and Perseverance
Paid Off for Permit Foe
It took a lot of patience, per­severance,
presumably money
( for legal services) and a
reversal of position by the Town
of Oyster Bay Board. But all's
well that ends well - and the end
is the judicially upheld denial by
the Town Board of a gasoline
service station permit to Humble
Oil & Refining Co. for the pro­perty
at the northeast corner of
Merritts Road and Motor Avenue
in South Farmingdale.
There is a bit of irony in the
verdict rendered last week in
Nassau County Supreme Court by
Judge Alexander Berman which
seconded the Town Boards
justification for the denial of the
permit. Originally the Town
Board granted such a permit, th­ough
to a different applicant,
thereby incensing Jack Zeldin,
owner of the adjacent nursery
school Camp Monchatea.
Among the arguments ad­vanced
by Zeidin's learned cou­nsel
Jsoeph Stern of Farmingdale
was the state law prohibiting a
service station closer than 200
feet to a school. This was rejected
by the Town Attorney who
claimed that this law protected
only public, not private schools.
When the Town Board later
decided not to renew the lapsed
permit it was sued by the new
applicant, Humble oil & Ret mi
ng. Part of its defense was the
very same argument first ad­vanced
by Stern, namely that
state law prohibits a service
station in closer than 200 ft.
proximity to a school.
Unless appealed, Judge Berm-iia's
decision is final after 30
days.
If the school budget is ap­proved,
the " tax rate for Oyster
Bay residents would could in­crease
up to $ 13.68 per 100 of
assessed valuation, an increase
of $ 1.3% or about $ 84.00 annually
for the average homeowner.
Should the budget be defeated
and the school board eventually
be forced to go on a austerity
budget and cut educational
programs and services, ad­ditional
fees and purchases of
supplies would most likely offset
any drop in the tax rate for
parents with children of school
age.
Residents are faced with a
frustrating decision: no matter
whether they approve or reject
the school budget, their action
will have little effect on the tax
rate.
Probably more important will
be their choice in this year's
school board elections. The
school board is the only elected
body that can affect a change in
the ever increasing tax ratio. But
here again, the choice is not an
easy one.
There is no choice between wild
spenders and fiscal con­servatives
on the present school
board. All candidates running
this year have stressed the fact
that they recognize the tax­payers'
dilemma, that they are
constantly trying to find solutions
to relieve residents of constant
increases in their school taxes.
The real choice is probably
between those school board
candidates who feel that present
educational programs must be
preserved as much as possible
and those who feel that some
programs must be cut in order to
hold the line on school taxes.
Recognizing the difficulty of
this choice, no school board
candidate has so far come out
clearly in favor of one of the two
alternatives.
Only if one looks at the en­dorsements
offered by residents
on page 2 of this issue, can one
obtain a better idea about which
candidate comes closest to the
expectation to the individual
voters who collectively do not
represent an identical view on
how the Farmingdale school sys­tem
should be run.
School board candidate Frank
Ranieri, whose seat not in con­tention
this year, has endorsed
school board Candida/, es Helen
Spinetta, Raymond Par*
Stanley Martyna. Knowing that
Ranieri was the only member of
the school board who voted
against the adoption of the budget
because it again added to the tax
rate, one could deduct from his
endorsement of Spinetta, Mar­tyna
and Parcels that those three
candidates have similar thoughts
on the cost of education as he.
More by process of elimination
rather than anything else, this
would cast the three opposing
school board candidates, Lucille
Goulding, Joseph Molloy and
newcomer Sheldon Bernstein
together in a group which,
although also economy- minded
would resist drastic cuts in the
educational program in order to
bring taxes down.
The fourth candidate for the
school board, board president
Robert Campbell, is running
unopposed and is therefor
assured automatic re- election on
May 2.
In the library board race, in­cumbent
George Fain was joined
only recently by Arthur Kajko,
whose fiscal philosophy seems to
concur with the one of Spinetta,
Parcels and Martyna.
The big problem in the Far­mingdale
school district is the
constant decline in state aid
which has dropped from 51.7 per
cent in the school year of 1966 67
to 38.8 per cent in 1973 74. This in
turn increased the local share in
taxes from 46.5 per cent in 66 67
to a whopping 59.6 per cent in
73 74.
There is still hope that the tax
rate itself will be reduced in the
coming months if efforts of
representatives in the Albany
*~ j" * iture to increase staie aid
to the district are successfull.
The actual tax rate will not be set
until September and it could
decrease if more state aid is
forthcoming.
Besides voting on the school,
library and Youth Council
budgets and on the school and
library board candidates, voters
will also decide on two
resolutions. One is dealing with,
additional expenses of $ 29,000 to
recondition and maintain twenty
baseball fields in the district. The
other one would add library
services on specific holidays and
Sunday afternoons at an ad­ditional
expense of $ 9,000. The
$ 29,000 resolution would add
about two cents to the school tax
rate.
After last Wednesday's
registration, during which 423
new voters were registered, the
number of eligible voters for this
year's elections stand at 10,019,
only slightly less than the year
before.
r Candidate Criticizes Library Board \
Arthur Kajko, a resident of Farmingdale for 19
years, has recently announced his candidacy for
Trustee of the Farmingdale Library Board in
opposition to incumbent George Fain. Kajko
resides at 18 Alexander Drive with his wife and
two daughters. His oldest child is a graduate of the
Farmingdale schools and now is a junior at the
State University at Stony Brook. The younger
daughter attends the Farmingdale High School.
Kajko feels that Farmingdale residents need a
library that "... fulfills their needs at a cost
comparable to those of neighboring com­munities."
Relating comparable costs to statistics
Kajko stated that the circulation cost per book in
Farmingdale is $ 1.81 while in other local com­munities
the cost averages $ 1.40. With the
proposed llJ73 budget, the cost will rise to $ 2.10 per
book.
From such statistics Kajko concluded " the
Library Board is doing nothing to operate our
library economically and efficiently."
Commenting on the January 1973 telephone
survey, Kajko noted that only 54.1 per cent of tin'
respondents to the survey used the library more
than leu tunes a year. Thus, he asks: " Are our
facilities adequate and are the residents of Far­mingdale
using the library facilities of neigh­boring
communities where material is
available?" He continued: " In spite of this low
overall usage, the library board proposes to add
library services for five holidays and to open the
main library on Sunday afternoons from October
to May at an additional cost of $ 9,000. Why on a per
capita basis, does Farmingdale rank 43rd in book
budget, 42nd in circulation, 32nd in book stock and
11th in budget."
Kajko is a graduate of the Polytechnic Institute
of Brooklyn and is employed in the Buildings
Engineering Department- Planning DivisionNew
York Telephone Company as a supervising
engineer. In this capacity he is responsible for
equipment layouts, new building plans and ex­tensions
in Nassau- Suffolk.
Kajko, in his candidacy announcement, con­cludes:
" Before the library board embarks on a
program to further compound inefticiencies and
expenditures, they should direct their efforts to
resolving existing problems. Why not use the
community as a sounding board in resolving these
problems'.' Or better yet, appoint an Ombudsman
to establish rapport between the residents and
library board."