Great Neck Park, the 'Rolls-Royce' of park districts

BY SANDRA PEDDIE | Newsday Staff Writer

April 9, 2007

After the $10-million renovation of the Great Neck Park District pool complex is completed next year, residents will enjoy attractions more familiar to water parks than municipal pools - a water slide, zero-depth entry and a lazy river.

When Park Superintendent Neil Marrin drives his 2005 Dodge Durango sport utility vehicle, he doesn't pay for gas or insurance, or the car itself. Under his contract, taxpayers foot the bill, whether he uses it for work or pleasure.

And although Nassau and Suffolk parks officials said they have not had the money to send employees to the national parks conference in years, Marrin said the Great Neck Park District typically sends five employees to the annual conference.

For years, the Great Neck Park District has inspired envy among parks professionals elsewhere on Long Island. Its clay tennis courts, waterfront theater and cruises to City Island are amenities other park managers can only dream of. District officials and residents revel in its status.

"It's the Rolls-Royce [of park districts]," said district resident Elizabeth Allen. "It's like being a foodie. Do you want a cheeseburger or Beef Wellington?"

With its $11.1-million budget serving 30,000 residents, the Great Neck Park District is the most expensive per capita of the 26 park districts on Long Island. It spends $370 per resident for parks - compared with the $54 per resident spent by the Town of North Hempstead Parks Department. Since 2001, its annual budget has gone up 57 percent.

Special districts typically fly under the radar; but as residents chafe under an increasingly onerous tax burden, state and local officials have called for greater scrutiny and reform of these little-understood government entities. Gov. Eliot Spitzer convened a commission, Newsday exposed the practice of bestowing full-time benefits on part-time board members, and recently, state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli and Nassau County Executive Thomas Suozzi said they would push for legislation requiring special districts to post their financial information online.

While most park districts are operated by town governments, the Great Neck Park District, established in 1916, is one of a handful of independent park districts on Long Island. There are roughly 100 commissioner-run districts statewide managing everything from sidewalks to sewers. Such districts are subjected to little outside oversight. The state comptroller's last audit of Great Neck's park district, for example, was in 1998.

Hefty cost for taxpayers

The district has its own line on the tax bill, where residents pay $26.13 per $100 of the assessed value of their home each year. Great Neck residents pay an average of $450 in taxes for the park district, Marrin said. The district's facilities include the pool complex, an indoor ice rink, indoor tennis courts, a marina, a cultural center and 13 parks on its roughly 250 acres.

Although other levels of local government have curtailed some expensive practices in recent years, records obtained by Newsday through the Freedom of Information Law show substantial increases annually in spending in the Great Neck Park District. Employees still receive generous perks, district consultants have earned more than $900,000 since 2001, and the district currently has a bonded debt of $23 million to cover the cost of ambitious improvements and expansions.

"God forbid that somebody outside Great Neck have something better than Great Neck," said Stu Hochron, a Great Neck Plaza resident who said he loves the parks. "I don't understand why they have to spend so much money."

Even critics of the park district insist they love Great Neck's parks. But they argue the district should be managed less like a private club and more like the public institution it is. "They really don't want the input," said resident Ofra Panzer.

Unlike school budgets, the park district budget is not submitted to the public for a vote, but has to be approved by the North Hempstead Town Board. Last year, the town board cut $1 million from the district's $16-million bond request after residents complained it was too extravagant.

Commissioner Ruth Tamarin and Superintendent Marrin said they're doing a good job, that the park district is the perfect example of how well local control works. "We probably are the model for the county or the town," she told residents, many of whom she knew by name, at a recent public meeting. "Do it our way, and you won't have any problems with your special district."

But that local control comes with a price tag.

Of the more than $900,000 that was spent on consultants since 2001, more than $307,000 went to one financial consultant for slightly more than two years of work providing accounting and payroll services.

Among the unusual perks enjoyed by some Great Neck Park District employees are housing and cars. The district allows the supervisor of Steppingstone Park to rent a three-bedroom apartment at the estate house in the waterfront park for just $875 a month. The state comptroller has criticized such below-market rentals for public employees in the past, but Marrin said the supervisor's presence in the park provides needed security.

Free ride

Marrin enjoys the uncommon perk - stipulated in his five-year contract - of receiving a vehicle, no older than 2004, for both work and personal use. Many municipalities require employees who take home vehicles to limit their use for work.