Media Release
August 22, 2016 9:30 a.m.
Citizens for a Better Nassau County sent the letter below to the Chairman of the Nassau County Board of County Commissioners on August 16, 2016:
Dear Chairman Boatright,
On behalf of Citizens for a Better Nassau County, we’re writing you in regard to the request from you and Commissioner Spicer for us to be present at the upcoming Board of County Commissioners meeting tomorrow, August 17, 2016, to discuss budget cuts to eliminate waste. We regret to inform you that we will not be able to be in attendance as we have prior family commitments. However, we would be more than happy to appear at a later date if given enough advanced notice. In our place, we kindly ask that you accept this letter, which you can read into the record during the hearing.
To start, we’re happy that a conversation has been sparked, where big financial issues are being transparently discussed in front of the people of Nassau County. We deeply appreciate your leadership in keeping these issues in front of our citizens as these are the big issues that affect all of us and the future of Nassau County. Our position has remained consistent since the founding of our organization about 10 months ago. Nassau County is facing serious fiscal challenges that will be felt countywide in the next few years if we don’t start to implement solutions that will maintain a high quality of life and low residential property taxes for all Nassau County taxpayers.
In order to grow smarter in the future, while protecting our existing taxpayers, we need to look toward the following:
- Diversifying the tax base with private capital investment in office, commercial and industrial/advanced manufacturing land uses;
- Bringing new and higher wage jobs to the county; while also
- Encouraging compact, mixed-use community development that provides new mobility solutions and largely internalizes its traffic impacts.
As you well know, we support efficient and effective government, but we have never taken the position that we can cut our way toward prosperity. We have invested a great deal of time in understanding Nassau County finances, the operating budget, capital budget, and reserve accounts and are quite certain that there is not a magical $7 million in waste that can be found to solve the current budget woes. In fact, we firmly stand behind the position that, given our population increases demanding government services and the cuts that have already been made to weather the Great Recession between 2008 and 2013, there is little left to cut unless the people of Nassau County are willing to accept significant cuts to services.
If the county ever wants to be able to significantly reinvest in its almost fully depreciated assets – roads, bridges, buildings, parks and rolling stock, etc. – our Board of County Commissioners will have to maintain its long-term commitment to smart growth principles in managing our growth and economic development to diversify the tax base with private capital investment in office, commercial and industrial/advanced manufacturing land uses. People want to live here and the residential development will continue. However, it must be balanced with other types of land uses that build our tax base to pay for our growing pains.
While there is still a long way to go before the county gets on a financially sustainable path, we’re pleased to see that the dialogue is beginning to change, shifting toward tackling solutions about the fiscal challenges that the county is facing rather than getting hung up on false claims that there is still more to cut and misinformation about economic development.
Respectfully,
Robert (Bob) Spaeth Jimmy Higginbotham
Co-chairs of Citizens for a Better Nassau County