Can I please have $400 million? I need to know by August 1, because if you can't do it, I'll find someone else who will. Need more time to think about it? To figure out how you're going to finance the loan you'll need in order to show me the money? Tell you what. I'll make you a deal. If you can do the math, analyze the long-range implications, consult your advisors, and you decide in my favor, I'll reimburse you for any expenses you incur in the process. But if you decide against me, the costs are on your balance sheet, not mine.
What idiot would take that deal? Apparently, Charles Wang is hoping we will. We being the taxpayers of Nassau County.
The $400 million in question is the amount of the bond Nassau County will have to float in order to finance a new Coliseum and minor league baseball park at Mitchel Field. Wang projects that the new complex will throw off at least $14 million a year in sales, as well as additional tax revenues from those sales, which will largely offset the debt service.
Whether or not that is true, and whether or not the project is a good or bad deal for Nassau, incentivizing us to make sure the vote goes his way seems like a stacked deck to me. Wang should either cover the costs of the referendum, however it turns out, as an investment and a show of good faith, or the county should finance it on the merits of the proposal. Paying off financially strapped taxpayers to effect a particular outcome feels suspiciously like graft.
Don't we already have enough of that kind of problem in Nassau without entering into bondage to make that sort of thing official?
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Sunday, June 12, 2011
Sugo: Don't Go
Sugar is a necessary if hidden ingredient in many pasta sauces. It cuts the acidity of the tomato and enhances the richness of the flavor. But when the sauce is sweet enough to substitute for dessert, or to provoke the onset of diabetes, someone has used a heavy hand. Such was the case at Sugo a few nights ago, where our disappointing meal was gamely delivered by a frazzled server working the crowded room solo. All in all, it was not a great experience, and although I've always enjoyed Sugo's electic dining room as well as it eclectic menu, we will not be returning any time soon without a clean bill of health from our dentist.A Pothole for Every Pot Roast
The potholes are back at the Waldbaum's parking lot. Driving there is like navigating a moonscape. For a store that is fighting for its life against the backdrop of a parent company in chapter 11, you would think local management would go out of its way to assure that the shopping experience at their location is as accommodating and enjoyable as possible. Not so in Long Beach. I wonder if the local auto body repair shops will honor Waldbaum's coupons?
Catching Up
Somehow, Memorial Day -- the moral equivalent of New Year's in Long Beach -- has come and gone without proper acknowledgement from me. The oversight is especially grievous since this year the momentous beginning of beach season arrived with uncharasterically magnificant weather -- a reason to shout out, if ever there was one. Nonetheless, I managed to let it pass without comment.
So, too, did I miss the opportunity to publicly observe the closing -- and subsequent reopening -- of the Long Beach Cinema, developments so significant that they made the news pages not only of the Long Beach Herald and Long Beach Patch, but also of Newsday. I am too late to share the photos I took of the shuttered theatre, the paint peeling from its facade and the poster cases emptied of coming attractions, or even the ones of workmen on ladders redressing these wounds as they prepared the theatre for its second debut, which has since come and gone. Shame on me.
I also failed to rail about the sudden renovation of the restrooms on National Blvd. beach.Not that the refurbishment is unwelcome or unneeded. To the contrary, we neighborhood residents who have frequented National Blvd. beach and suffered the filthy cement-block restrooms season after season, we taxpayers who have repeatedly requested modernization of the unsanitary facility year after year, are suddenly being treated to a makeover. Why? Because the Quik Silver Pro Surfing Championship is coming to town this Labor Day, and the substandard men's and ladies rooms to which we locals have been subjected since anyone can remember are apparently not sufficient for the out-of-towners who will flood our beach for 10 days in September. Adding injury to insult, the renovations are taking place as I write this, and will keep the facilities closed until at least July 4 weekend.
Leave it to our wise City Council to inconvenience the taxpayers, when the work could easily have been completed in the spring, well before the Memorial Day beach start. Only in LB would upgrades be undertaken for the comfort of visitors, the sheer number of whom are almost certain to trample the very improvements that will have been completed for their benefit, presumably on our tax dollars. Leaving local residents, once again, to make do with substandard accommodations for which we have paid one way or another (in dollars, inconvenience or both). In other words, it's business as usual here in Long Beach.
So, too, did I miss the opportunity to publicly observe the closing -- and subsequent reopening -- of the Long Beach Cinema, developments so significant that they made the news pages not only of the Long Beach Herald and Long Beach Patch, but also of Newsday. I am too late to share the photos I took of the shuttered theatre, the paint peeling from its facade and the poster cases emptied of coming attractions, or even the ones of workmen on ladders redressing these wounds as they prepared the theatre for its second debut, which has since come and gone. Shame on me.
I also failed to rail about the sudden renovation of the restrooms on National Blvd. beach.Not that the refurbishment is unwelcome or unneeded. To the contrary, we neighborhood residents who have frequented National Blvd. beach and suffered the filthy cement-block restrooms season after season, we taxpayers who have repeatedly requested modernization of the unsanitary facility year after year, are suddenly being treated to a makeover. Why? Because the Quik Silver Pro Surfing Championship is coming to town this Labor Day, and the substandard men's and ladies rooms to which we locals have been subjected since anyone can remember are apparently not sufficient for the out-of-towners who will flood our beach for 10 days in September. Adding injury to insult, the renovations are taking place as I write this, and will keep the facilities closed until at least July 4 weekend.
Leave it to our wise City Council to inconvenience the taxpayers, when the work could easily have been completed in the spring, well before the Memorial Day beach start. Only in LB would upgrades be undertaken for the comfort of visitors, the sheer number of whom are almost certain to trample the very improvements that will have been completed for their benefit, presumably on our tax dollars. Leaving local residents, once again, to make do with substandard accommodations for which we have paid one way or another (in dollars, inconvenience or both). In other words, it's business as usual here in Long Beach.
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