2011-03-10

              Elf
Village Board candidates
on ballot Tuesday
March 15 from 6 am to 9 p.m.
|e usual November polling places
see pages 6 and 7
*
Th;e Community Newspaper Thursday, March 10, 2011
From the historical society: The blizzard of 1888
HEODORE CARMAN'S
Store on Main and Front
Streets, Hempstead
LONG ISLAND HOTEL on
Main Street, Hempstead
March 12 marks the 123rd anniversary of the Blizzard of 1888. In New York
City, the snow began to fall just after midnight on a Monday and did not stop until
Tuesday evening. Hurricane force winds caused whiteout conditions and left snow-drifts-
two^stories higtr^On Long Island, the»EQadsl)ecameJni^assable-and. below._.
freezing temperatures forced people to .stay indoors for days. Lifelong Freeporter
William E. Colder described the storm in his memoirs:
"March 12th 1888 was the memorable blizzard [that] afflicted business and traf-fic!
My clerk went to the city on Sunday the llth and wasn't able to return until the
following Wednesday as there were no trains running to Freeport and no trains out
to Riverhead for two weeks!"
._- The Freeport .Historical Society recently discovered a series of glass negatives
taken after the Blizzard4bf 1888 in Hempstead. These pictures are available online
at www.longislandmemories.org
Regina G. Feeney, Librarian/Archivist, Freeport Memorial Library
FreeportTs school board dissects 11-12 budget
by Mark Iteske
The details of Freeport's $149,787,547
budget was the chief focus of the March 2
Freeport school board meeting. The total is
a 2.39% increase over last year, and
includes reductions of 26 positions - three
administrators, 14 teachers, 8 teachers aides
and one office staff member.
After thanking everyone involved for
their efforts, Superintendent Dr. Kishore
Kuncham turned presentation of the bud-get's
component parts - administrative, pro-gram
and capital - over to assistant superin-tendent
Dr. Kenneth Rodgers.
The administrative component will see a
rise of $498.785, or 2.98% for a total of
$17,223,766. The largest portion of this is
employee benefits (pensions and health-care)
of $410,591 and "Supervision - regu-lar
school" of $130,000, a large portion of
which will go to extra security personnel
and contractually mandated increases in
security costs.
Some portion of this will be offset by a
central services reduction of one position
($41,975) and $7,000 for the removal of the
district clerk's stipend.
The largest part of the budget is the
Program component, weighing in at
$116,928,375, an increase of $2,382,549 or
2.8%. The largest portions of that were
employee benefits, going up $1,546.978, or
6.54%, and children with disabilities and
special ed, rising $1.3 million or 6.84%.
Reductions will be seen in the budget
lines for professional development ($30,000
less) and a reduction of $646,214 in pupil
transportation expenses - a reduction that
Dr. Rodgers attributed to impoved routing,
efficiencies and a decline in transportation
for private and parochial schools.
Teaching and Textbooks, the largest por-tion
of this component at $50,707,563,
would see an increase of only 0.22%, attrib-utable
in part to reductions in textbook
expenditures and a $600,000 reduction con-nected
with the restructuring of pre-kinder-garten.
The capital component (maintainence of
the schools) will see an increase of
$620,186, or 4.13%, to $15,635,406. The
chief culprits are once again employee ben-
.efits, $334,477 and an appropriation of
$131,000 to pay the Nassau County sewer
tax - the audience was reminded that the
district is joining a group of other schools in
seeeking relief from this tax in the courts.
Special project allotment is increaseing
$14,000 to $86,850, to be allotted to the
following projects: the gymnasium floor at
Columbus, carpet, security lighing and
floor work at Archer, parking lots and
security lighting at Giblyn, storm drains
and a fence at Atkinson, a kichen ceiling at
Dodd and flooring and parking lots at the
high school.
The audience was also reminded of the
capital reserve fund expenditures (which
will not effect the tax levy) that will also be
-on the May 17 ballot. A new item has been
added to the list - locker replacement at
Dodd. Other projects on that list are win-dows
at Dodd, HVAC at the high school
auditorium, boiler work at Atkinson, and
parking fields, sidewalks and lavatories at
Bayview.
In public comment, Al Renken summa-rized
the increase in expenditures over
recent years and warned the board it would
have to either freeze salaries or reduce staff
"or there .will be more unemployed."
Board President Debra McQuillan
responded that the teachers in Freeport had
co-operated with the district in terms of
salaries.
. Nadine Burnett spoke as a parent with
children entering pre-kindergarten age soon,
and wants to known how pre-K restructur-ing
"would effect me and my property val-ues."
Dr. Kuncham reassured her, "We
would never dismantle pre-K," and that the
plan was to restructure pre-K by asking for
bids for services through a nonprofit agency
or university.
Odette Wallace wanted to know more
about BOCES' role in the schools, specifi-cally
why the district did not run its own
summer school last year (summer school
could be done through BOCES for less
money).
Dr. Kuncham explained that the Board of
Co-operative Educational Services is
financed by the school districts and has a
board selected by the districts (including
Ron Ellerbe from Freeport's board) and
enables schools to join together to provide
supplies and services on a more cost-effec-tive
basis than individual schools could
achieve by themselves. BOCES can also
offer enriched, additional instruction (an
aviation class, for example) that school dis-tricts
could not afford alone.
The board met again Wednesday, March
9, the next of many impoprtant upcoming
meetings: Wednesday, March 23 - a budget
presentation; Wednesday, April 6 - a budg-et
workshop/planning/action meeting;
Wednesday, April 13 - action meeting and
budget adoption; Wednesday, April 27 -
action meeting and BOCES administrative
operations and trustee election, Wednesday,
May 4, budget public hearing and planning
meeting, all leading up to the May 17 vote.
Set your clock U
| ahead this 1
'Sunday 2 a.m. 1
Bye-bye, Long I
Island Bus 1
page 2 fI Bayman Corey U
Weyant dies 1
page 3 fl
Robbery in
Baldwin
page 12 |