THE NASSAU POST: FREEPORT, N.Y, THURSDAY, OCTOBER 29, 1914
1^;
Proposed Long Beiich Highway Would Eliminate Two Death-trap
Grade Crossings and Hazardous, Antiquated Bridge at Wreck Lead
President of Estates of Long Beach Gives Undisputed Facts Concerning Develop¬ ment of Former Town Island; Shows That Present Road is a Menace to Tra¬ vel and Avers That People are Respon¬ sible For Accidents That May Occur There—Gives Liberal Guarantee to Tax¬ payers.
(Continued front page 1) things have been done for years. You -who are familiar with county matters know that it is divided Into three dIatrlcU—the Town of Hempstead, the Town of North Hempstead, and the Town of Oyster Bay. It was only wben I became a resident of your town several years ago that I learned that we resiaenis were paying 66 to «7 per cent, of the entire Uxes of the «ounty; but under a recent decision of the Court you have been relieved at trom. 7 to 10 per cent, of this hur- <len. You now pay 60 per cent, of the taxes of the entire county. Of course €hose in authority are willing to Issue the bonds for a new road and bridge to Long Beach, provided they can have 1250,000 each for the other two dis¬ tricts,, which would mean a total of t7 50,000. Under the decision of which I spoke, you would then be called upon to pay 60 per cent, of |750,000, or $450,- -000, In order to spend $250,000 In your own town. These are the facts. I would be doing you an Injustice and myself an Injustice,—I am a large taxpayer— to stand for a proposition of this sort. Don't you think It better for me, un- •der the circumstances as I have stated tbem, to appeal to you taxpayers di¬ rect and ask you to issue the bonds for this road and bridge even if you have to pay them without outside as¬ sistance? I would certainly be do¬ ing everybody concerned an Injustice by going to the county officials and asking them to issue these bonds, in this way saddling you with $450,000 when all that is needed is $250,000.
The argimient has also been brought forward that it should be made a State road. Well, flrst, the State won't build the bridge; second, the State stands only a part of fife cost of a road. It would expect the cost of the road to be paid by the County, the Town and the State com-1 bined. And that puts us right back against the same proposition with the County. The County undoubtedly would not agree to stand any part of the cost unless twice as much Is ex¬ pended In other parts of the County, and of which the Town of Hempstead would have to pay 60 per cent. Again, you know It takes considerable time, and it means a lot of red tape, even if you are ever able to get the State to build the road, and I am warning you that this Is not a time for dilly¬ dallying, because of the danger of ac¬ cidents, which I will show you more in detail later.
City, to whom you sold the ocean front?
Every Male and Female Tax¬ payer In the Town of Hemp stead, on the last assessment roll, whether living in or out of an incorporated village and whether or not registered, has the right to vote on the Long Beach Road and Bridge propo¬ sition.
Is assessed at $10,000, you will have to pay $91.80, or only $1.80 more than you are now jwying, and so on.
And now I will show that voting fa¬ vorably on this proposition will cost you nothing. As I have already stat¬ ed the assessed valuation of Long Beach has grown from $600,000 In 1907 to over $7,400,000 this, the eight yeai. You probably know the condition of the real estate market. If only threugh conditions existing In this section. They are the same in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, out on Long Island, everywhere. You know
eighteen Inches of this top-soil, and next spring you will 'see rolling hills of green from the Ocean to the chan¬ nel there. You and I could not affora to do ths work; It would cost too much money. Nothing, though, will I stop this syndicate from having just I what It's members want there. They lare also going to build a $1,500,000 Hotel. J
, It Is already financed. I understand I It is to be operated by the Ritz- ; Carlton people, who already have Ho¬
tels in London, Canada, New York and Atlantic City. The new Hotel will
and today It is one eighth of the as¬ sessed valuation of the Town of Hempstead on which Long Beach iJ paying taxes. Every bond this town Issues, whether for a road, a Town Hall, a tuberculosis hospital, a water way or a bridge. Long Beach Is al¬ ready liable for l-8th of the amount. Let us look at some of the other benefits that will accrue to you through this syndicate purchase at Long Beach. In addition to the in¬ creased assessed valuation which I have already mentioned tbe proposed hotel will cost another $1,500,000. The
paying $310,000 a year In this way.
The Town never put a dollar Into this Improveonent; the money invested came from the outside, and you are getting the beneflt from it This road is going through your property. How much do you think It will increase the valuo of It? You own It.
In building this road a dredge could be placed In the middle channel and pipes extended In opposite directions and the said pumped into the line of road at six cents a cubic yard. Such dredges were unknown when the old road wos built,
Picturesque Long Beach Homes and a Panoramic
View of Parkway During the Busy Summer Season
After I bought it In 1907, you assessed the Island of L>ong Beach at $600,000; In 1908 you raised it to $1,000,000; in 1909 you made it $1,500,000. Then they came along with that proposition, which I think all of you were as badly fooled about It as I was, to the effect that they multiply the assessed valua¬ tion by 2 1-2 and proportionately re¬ duce the rate In order to equalize with the north side of the county. The tax rate did come down for one year, but the next we had the same old rate to pay. Do you know that the assessed valuation of Long Beach this year is
Proposition to Appropriate $250,0p0 ('ontempIaUng Dawning Epoch of Civic Advancement in Hemp¬ stead—is Presented Fairly to Taxpayers by One of Them—County Proposition Would Entail Great Ex¬ pense and State Can Pay But a Third of Highway and Build no Bridges^
widow of one of the men killed the sum of $40,000. That was an accident in which the ariver of the car tried to beat a train. The view for two mllee either way was unobstructed. Not¬ withstanding these facts, the Long Island Railroad was obliged to pay one of the parties involved $40,000.
there Is no business In such a market, and Long Beach Is no exception. As a matter of fact.
I say to you that if I had not accom-1 ^ Qp^^ j^ ^^^ pubUc. They will also pushed what I have In the last eight j t,y„j ^ Casino, cottages and bathing months, I do not know what Long. payuiong Rig^t alongside of the Beach would have done. In spite of
what you may hear of the millions that have been made there. I was, however, sufficiently fortunate to make a sale of some of the land still under water which you sold to me over $7,400,000. Long Beach Is now | eight years ago, to a syndicate, the paying to the Town ot Hempstead 1-8 members of which have named their of the entire taxes of the town. In ' purchase "Lido", after a little place eight years vre have paid you nearly jt^it outside of Venice, Italy. I men- $600,000 in taxes. Now, did you sell i tlon the names of some of the gentle- that property too cheap? 'men comprising this syndicate, not Some of you may say that the Town because of their social standing, but has given us something in re-1 to show their Importance In the busl- turn for that $600,000 In taxes. But It ness world. Among them are Otto H. has not—not an electric light, not a | Kahn, of Kuhn, Loeb and Company; police offlcer, not a piece of roadway; Cornelius Vanderbilt, Henry Rogers not a cubic yard of fill on those muck! Wlnthrop, E. T. Stotesbury, of Drexel and marsh lands, nothing, not a dollar, and Company, and Robert Goelet. It
property now under development they have taken an option from me for $3,-
Every Male and Female Tax¬ payer In the Town of Hemp stead, on the last assessment roll, whether living In or out of an incorporated village and whether or not registered, has the right to vote on the Long Beach Road and Bridge propo¬ sition.
We have not complalnet'; wt have taken our medicine; we have, as I say, paid nearly 1-8 of the entire taxes of the Town of Hempstead this year. In eight years you have Increased our assessed valuation from $600,000 to over $7,400,000. Through your minds is probably flashing the thought that notwithstanding this fact, your tax
bills are no lower. But that Is not my
fault. The money has been paid to the ^ hundred thousand"°cublc yards'of ma'-
was no easy task to make this sale, I assure you.
They bought about two thousand feet on the Ocoan front, a irile and a half east of Long Island R. R. station and running back a mile to the channel. For the last three or four months they have been doing something which has never before been done anywhere else. "They are pumping two million flve
Every Male and Female Tax¬ payer In the Town of Hemp¬ stead, on the last assessment roll, whether living In or out of an Incorporated village and whether or not registered, has the right to vote on the Long Beach Road and Bridge propo¬ sition.
000,000, more worth of property, from Ocean to channel, and this property Is to be also filled rolling, with no boardwalk, and to be laid out In villa plots, not in blocks, as has been done by me, but with winding roads, and anyone who purchases there must be¬ long to the club.
Can you not Imagine what tbis means to th€ Town of Hempstead and to Long Beach? It means that next year, and I make this statement in all sincerity, that your assessed vnlu- ation will be Increased $1,500,000, through this sale to the Lido Corpora¬ tion.
An assessed valuation of $1,500,000 the first year, at 90 cents a hundred means $13,500 to be received in taxes. That is more than the Interest on these bonds that I am asking you to vote for, and that new source of In-
Hotel Nassau cost $1,000,000, and you know how small a hotel that is.
Can you not see mat when this Lido proposition Is further along on the boardwalk a pier will be ur-^ensary, with boats running to New York, as they do now from Rockaway. If one year's added improvements at Lido will increase your tax receipts $13,500, what will five years do?
I wish you taxpayers to bear In mind that If we had not made good at Long Beach, its assessed valuation would not have grown from $600,000 in 1907 to over $7,400,000 in 1914, and I would not be able to ask you to believe my statements.
Dr. Schmuck is one of your fellow citizens. 1 think that four years ago he ottered you $500,000, or flve times as much as I offered you for the same property. He recently sent word to me through one of my connections that If there Is to be a new road to Long Beach he would like to have it go through his property and that he
Every Male and Female Tax¬ payer In the Town of Hemp stead, on the last assessment roll, whether living in or out of an incorporated village and whether or not registered, has the right to vote on the Long Beach Road and Bridge propo¬ sition.
and the material had to be carted Into place. On top of the sand, macadam would be placed, for, say 50 feel wide; it Is not necessary at once to make the road its full width of 100 feet.
Do you know that your Town Board has already i>assed a resolution to the effect that the Long Beach bridge
Every Male and Female Tax¬ payer in the Town of Hemp stead, on the last assessment roll, whether living In or out of an incorporated village and whether or not registered, has the right to vote on the Long Beach Road and Bridge propo¬ sition.
Every Male and Female Tax¬ payer In the Town of Hemp¬ stead, on the last assessment roll, whether living in or out of an incorporated village and whether or not registered, has the right to vote on the Long Beach Road and Bridge propo¬ sition.
Then came the Pell-Lalmbeer acci¬ dent, with which Cornelius Vanderbilt, who had been at Long Beach in con¬ nection with the Lido proposition, waa Involved. Suits aggregating $500,000 are now pending against the . Long Island Railroad on account of that catastrophe. Suppose these people had been killed through your Insecure bridge. Can you Imagine what would bave happened to the purses of the taxpayers of the Town of Hempstead? You would not only have had to pay damages, but now would also have to build a new bridge.
OBEOGCS MAKINO channels and riLLINO JXABSM U\N OS.
Civic pride should enter in a pro¬ position of this kind, as it does in oth¬ er parts of the country. There s no de¬ velopment like Long Beach anywheru else. You assessed us In 1907 at
would be very glad to give the right
come Is not only for this year, but tor °' ''^'^y ^»»'-°"«'» ^^^ property to the the years to come as well. When T'^*''. °^ "«°»P«^e'*^'<"- »!• Why do
the money once goes Into the pro¬ perty you begin to get taxes from it.
town, and If your duly elected officials ! tg^ial out of the channel on to the have taken this $600,000 and expended ; ^uck and marsh lands which you sold It somewhere else, they and not 1 j me. Starting at the Ocean and with should be held to account. j no board walk In front, they are filling
Now if you vote in favor of this pro- the tract up, rolling, some of the hills position to spend $250,000 for a road i being from 30 to 60 feet above the sea When I bought Long Beach in | and bridge fo Long Beach the annual i level, and already covering it with top- 1907 there was quite some opposition ; interest cost, at 6 per cent, would eoll. If any of you can t^ke the time to my doing so, as you will recall. 1 i amount to $12,500. The entire amount to do so. It will well repay you to visit think many ot you heard prominent ^ of taxes received by the Town of i this Improvement. It Is so Interest- gentlemen speak In opposition to that | Hempstead annually is something [ ing that I myself have already visited
sale. They told you that you should! over $600,000, and 1 am asking not sell at the price named, aa you • yo" to increase It about $12,- would be giving away your birthright, 500 a year. We will call It "^eo to speak.. I told you that it was $12,000 for the purpose of Illustration, not exactly the price at which you; $12,000 Is one-flfth of $600,000. Your w«re selling, that was Involved, but taxes would, therefore, be Increased that you shoAld consider the benefits, one-fiftieth of the present amount. As- whlch would iM:(:rue to the taxpayers. | sume that your home is assessed at Do you know that up to the year 1907,1 $5,000 with a tax rate of 90 cents a you tax|>ayers in all the years since | hundred, and you have an annual tax Christopher Columbus discove r e d of $45. If you Increase it one-fiftieth, America, reoeived a total of only $25^ I the added amount is only 90 cents mo in taxes from the island of Long | for the year, and the total tax would Beaoh, and that that amount had been be $45.90 or only 90 cents more than Vtid to you only after Iltlgfttlon with l you are now paying, if the Tote«n t)Ms former ownen, trom, I think. Atlantic j proposiUon ia fovorable. From this €tt|'.'to irteia jrmi bad, void the ezaatple yqa oan aee that if yonr boom
It at least twenty times. They are building the finest Golf course in the world. In the middle they are putting an Island. A good golfer will be able to clear the Island with his ball, but the one who does not will bave to walk over two hundred feet of bridge to retrieve his ball and then over an¬ other bridge two hundrod feet long. You are probably thinking, some of you, that this is a syndicate of mllllon- aries with nothing else to do; but don't forget they are doing something for the Town of Hempstead.
Already they are' bringing in the top-soil and fertiliser and they are goinf to coTer the aand pumped with
Every Male and Female Tax¬ payer In the Town of Hemp¬ stead,, on the last assessment roll, whether living in or out of an incorporated village and whether or not registered, has the right to vote on the Long Beach Road and Bridge propo¬ sition.
So you see that you are not going to pay the interest on the l>onds, don't you? Some of you may say, "Well this disposes of the Interest problem, but when Long Bf.'ach becomes a city we will be saddled with all the bonds". Any lawyer, politician or layman familiar with such things will teU you that Long Beach cannot separate Itself as a City without it stands for its proportionate amoont ,^ tbe bonds tben outstanding and unpaid, and by "proporUonate amount" I mean on the hmaim of oor raluatlon at tliat time.
ou think he feels that way? Simply
because such a road through his Pro-I t^J'ng'^pp~Qg
perty would make It a great deal more
valuable. And this road is also going
through your property. Right here
let me say that If you could get some- j
body to take your ffi^adows and in i eight years increase their assessed |
valuation from $600,000 to over $7,-1 400,000, you could afford to give them J the meadows for nothing. Someone j will say they are worth millions; but I what are they worth lying out their! on waste land? Do you now get any-' thing from them? j
Some i»eople will say the Long' Beach property was given away, and | that we are after something else, but | don't let that fool you. If I could go \ back eight years, and you would | give roe my money back with- i
is unsafe? I do not know how many | of my readers have gone over It, but | each time I go over it I wonder if it j is the time the accident Is going to i happen. Do you know that your Sup-1 ervlsor has been down there on SunrI days and kept the automobiles pass¬ ing over the bridge 50 feet apart and at the rate of four miles an hour; that on one Sunady 3500 automobiles pass¬ ed Into and out of Long Beach, or a total of 7,000 for the day. This Is something I should have to ask the peo pie of the Town to do for me; this lo something you have got to do. It is only a question wben you will do it, whether while I am warning you, or when you have paid ten times the cost of the road and bridge from a catastrophe. It Is your property; it is your bridge, and you will build the bridge or pay the penalty. And I am now going to |600,000, and to day our assessment Is put the responsibility upon you. No $7,400,000, a period of eight years.
Every Male and Female Tax¬ payer in the Town of Hemp¬ stead, on the last assessment roll, whether living in or out of an Incorporated village and whether or not registered, has the right to vote on the Long Beach Road and Bridge propo¬ sition.
taxpayer now has an excuse if any
Every Male and Female Tax¬ payer in the Town of Hemp¬ stead, on the last assessment roll, whether living in or out of an Incorporated village and whether or not registered, has the right to vote on the Long Beac'i Road and Bridge propo¬ sition. I
With nineteen villages In the Town of Hempstead Long Beach is now paying 1-8 of its taxes. The Lido peo¬ ple are bringing la fresh money. Can I you not imagine wbat that means id '; you?
rate will be only 90 cents on each Remember the Increase In your tax Jfi.oOO of your assessod valuation if you vote for this proposition, and that the Lido property cotaing und«r assfss ment at Long Beach wext year will more than take care of that small dif¬ ference in your taxes.
The issue Is in your hands; the responsibility Is now yours and not mine.
The Ivong Island Railroad has said to me that If 1 can get the taxpayers out interest I would get out of Long' of the Town to agree to Issue these Beach at once. Do you know we axe | *>ondB It will pay 1-6 of the entire cost In there with $4,000,000 of bonds on' of the road and the bridge. Tbey the property, and worse off than we ^*nt a roadway across the meadows
were eight years ago. These bonds bear 6 per c«nt interest, or $240,000 a year. We pay you $70,000 in taxes. Those two Items total $310,000. To be frank with you, unless the real estate market picks up. you will see a reorganisation at Long Beach. We wont "bast", bot we eaonot continue
without any grade crossings. They have had their accidents; and 1 am trying to prevent you taxpayers from having your accident at that bridge. I reached the second crossing a few minutes after the accident on the Long Island Railroad Jn whlc'a the" Court at Appeals awarded tbe
Vote 'Tes"
on this
Proposition
