Albany's real priority must be school costs

Your editorial writers apparently never see the school tax bill ["Albany has a full slate," Editorial, May 1]. The No.1 item to pass is the 2 percent tax cap, with no exceptions. No.2 is to repeal the Triborough Amendment so that we will no longer have to pay annual step raises when there is no contract in place.

Teachers earning $100,000 for 180 days' work, with 20 hours a week in the classroom, can no longer be tolerated. Many also use many sick days during the school year, requiring millions more for substitute teachers. In the private sector, a 20-hour workweek is a part-timer with no benefits.

No. 3 is to repeal the Wicks Law that adds 15 percent to 20 percent to the cost of school construction. No.4, mandatory consolidation of school districts with fewer than 4,000 students. In Nassau County, eliminating administrative staffs in these districts would save taxpayers more than $70 million.

No. 5 is pension reform. A Tier 6 for new employees may help the pension system in 30 or 40 years, but we need present-day reform. Pensions should be based only on final salary. They should not include overtime, or sick or vacation payouts. Apply state tax to any pension payments of more than $100,000, eliminate pensions for convicted criminals, and do not permit double-dipping.

We also need SUNY reform. Do we really need million-dollar college presidents, and professors who teach five hours a week? The cost of college is a high-paid bloated staff, modeled after school districts, with no end in sight to control costs.

Joseph F. Birk, Port Washington
 

Newsday reported that the proposed Elwood school district budget for 2011-12 is one of the highest in the region ["LI's tax burden," News, April 27]. The article went on to present reasons for such increases, such as heightened pension and health care contributions and state mandates, while counterbalancing these explanations with expressions of angst at why school costs have spiraled out of proportion to the rate of inflation, particularly when combined with heightened energy costs.

The situation is that all municipal governments are to blame by degree, with school districts, as the largest average percentage of a residential property tax bill, arguably the most responsible. The cost of government has not only killed the goose that laid the golden egg, it has continued to kick the carcass down the road at heightened expense to all property taxpayers, while consistently holding any district's children as hostages for their rallying cry for additional revenues.

In the absence of a state-mandated property tax cap of 2 percent or similar, it appears that any effort to rein in inflated and runaway governmental cost is similar to the title of a book by TV's Judge Judy: "Don't Pee On My Leg and Tell Me It's Raining."

Edward B. Ryder IV, Greenlawn
 

Perhaps if the Seaford school district would eliminate the two assistant superintendents and the assistant principals, we would not need to raise our taxes by 8.99 percent. We only have 2,568 students. School districts with larger enrollments have managed to keep their taxes lower.

Jean Brennan, Seaford