Road safety, tax breaks for builders
At Heritage Westminster, which includes a 2-acre courtyard with barbecue grills, pickleball courts and a pool, the asking rent for the most popular one-bedroom layout was about $3,450. Credit: Newsday/John Paraskevas
A costly lesson in ignoring road safety
The article about the dangerous intersection near Elmont Memorial High School in Nassau County is spot on in showing the dire consequences when advocates’ calls for safety reviews of a troublesome intersection are not heeded “Nassau ‘ignored’ intersection, and may owe millions,” News, Oct. 25].
The same can be said about many more intersections throughout Nassau County. The article underscores the economic impact and human suffering that result from ignoring safety pleas. It’s unfortunate that engineering staffing levels lead to backlogs in conducting vital traffic safety studies. We know that roadway improvements save lives and reduce crashes and may have prevented this 2018 Halloween crash. It didn’t need to be this way.
The funds should have been spent years ago to make this intersection safer and prevent such crashes. Instead, because the county was found partially negligent, money may now go to support the teens unfortunately critically injured.
As a result, a judgment that large may divert the county from investing in necessary traffic safety studies and roadway improvements countywide.
— Elizabeth Lee, Franklin Square
Break for builders, bust for taxpayers
The developer Heatherwood secured tax benefits from the Town of Hempstead Industrial Development Agency to build 428 units of Heritage Westminster luxury apartments in West Hempstead without a single affordable unit [“Tax breaks but no affordable units in apartment complex,” LI Real Estate, Oct. 23].
The mission of IDAs is to give tax benefits to developers in the expectation of providing benefits to the community. Of the 11 market-rate apartment buildings that received tax benefits from the Hempstead IDA since 2022, only three included any affordable units. That looks like a giveaway, not a fair exchange.
In the future, I urge the IDA — at a bare minimum — to require developers to set aside 10% of units to be affordable to people earning 80% of the area median income, and an additional 10% of units to people earning 120% of that median.
Tax benefits that developers receive without providing community benefits hurt the communities. If developers get these breaks without giving anything back, someone has to pay, and it will be working class taxpayers.
— Bob Eilbott, New Hyde Park
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