Center Moriches Taxpayers Community Discussion Forum

Gone are the goats, geese and pigs that once stocked a farm run exclusively for students at Shoreham-Wading River's middle school.

Now, the once-acclaimed school is cramped and outdated - emblematic of a district in financial distress. And residents are reeling from a newly approved 25.9 percent property tax hike.

"People are upset because they don't think this has to happen, and now they have to dig into their pockets for an extra $2,000 or $3,000 rather than $600 or $700," said John Hopkins, 56, a Wading River homebuilder.

He estimates school taxes on his four-bedroom house will rise $1,950 next year, to about $9,000.

Hopkins serves on the district's Financial Review Committee, which had recommended holding the tax increase to less than 10 percent. Last week, the school board unanimously rejected that advice, and approved a $55.9 million contingency budget with the larger increase. Mistrustful voters had decisively rejected a slightly bigger budget - and tax increase - last month.

The increase still leaves Shoreham-Wading River with the third-lowest tax rate among full-sized districts in Brookhaven Town. Even so, taxes on homes in that town are among Long Island's highest, and the rate hike - the region's biggest since 2006 - shocks many.



District had plenty in past

In years past, Shoreham-Wading River was the envy of neighbors, with a LILCO nuclear power plant that paid nearly 90 percent of district taxes. Schools easily afforded such extras as free Suzuki violin lessons and a subsidized trip to Spain.

But now, 20 years after the plant's closure, Shoreham-Wading River struggles with a new reality. State-aid payments designed to cushion the loss of tax revenue have been phased out, and the district has decided it can no longer keep borrowing to hold taxes low.

Parents complain, meanwhile, that years of deferred maintenance have left schools shabby, and that tax opponents haven't faced up to the need for repairs. Voters said "no" to $39.9 million in middle-school renovations in October, and last month rejected a more limited $3-million repair plan along with the budget.

"Once upon a time, we lived on a subsidy," said Christine Zukowski, 46, an attorney with a sixth-grader. "And then the subsidy ended, and people couldn't accept that."

The largely upper-middle-class district straddles the Brookhaven / Riverhead town line, and enrolls 2,750 students. Tax debates sometimes turn bitter - especially among older residents, who fear higher rates will eat into pensions.

Last week, Shari Santoriello, a mother of two students, defended the board's financial decisions before more than 200 people at the high school. As she finished, one silver-haired resident swiveled in her seat and glared at Santoriello.

"Let's see how you feel when you're our age," the senior said.



Opponents critical of board

Tax opponents contend the board hasn't moved aggressively enough to curb salaries of administrators and teachers. Those critics note that three of seven board trustees have family members who are active or retired educators, and a fourth trustee is a retired teacher.

Much of the outcry comes late, however. In last month's board election, two incumbents won unopposed. Opponents concede that school-board politics isn't a priority for most residents.

District supporters insist that budgets are not exorbitant by Island standards. Shoreham-Wading River spends $18,860 per student - about $1,200 below Suffolk County's average. Cost curbs imposed since the nuclear plant closed have had little noticeable effect on academic achievement.

Since 1988, the number of district graduates earning college-prep Regents diplomas has jumped from 52 to 93 percent - an increase consistent with regional patterns.

The physical impact is more obvious - especially at the middle school.

In July, a state inspector reported the 37-year-old school's narrow hallways were not up to modern fire-safety standards, and many classrooms were undersized and without adequate emergency exits. The school has no cafeteria, so students buy pizza and sandwich wraps in a foyer, then take food back to classrooms for lunch.

Lisa Kelly, 45, a mother of three, feels the school's condition affects morale: "The kids are just not proud of it."

The rise and fall of Shoreham-Wading River's fortunes should be more than the story of a single school district.

It should be the beginning of a re-examination of how local school districts are funded and why.

Years ago, I had a chance to visit an elementary school in Shoreham-Wading River. The classrooms were so well-equipped that I jokingly asked one employee where the storage closet filled with money was.

That's how wildly, crazy rich this carpeted-and-air-conditioned district seemed to be.

The problem was no one anticipated a completed nuclear power plant would be shut down at Shoreham. And the remarkable quick step toward the death of LILCO, the utility company Long Island so loved to hate.

But there's something being lost in the district's riches-to-rags story. And it has little to do with the monster school tax increase Shoreham-Wading River residents now face.

Somewhere, somebody ought to be doing more than asking this question:

Why was a single school district the beneficiary of so much money in the first place?

Why?

Especially since so many other local schools could have used the money. And so many other residents could have used the tax break.

This is not just a query into history, however. It's also a potential peek into the region's future.

Currently, there are two mega developments in the works that could turn two more school districts into latter day Shoreham-Wading River - at its richest.

One is Charles Wang's and Scott Rechler's Lighthouse project in Nassau County.

It's big. The biggest the county has ever known. It would include business, retail and housing. And it also could push the Uniondale school district into the ranks of Shoreham-Wading River at its peak.

Meanwhile, in Suffolk, developer Gerald Wolkoff's Heartland Town Square proposal to build a mega-housing, retail and business development in the Town of Islip potentially would catapult another district, Brentwood, into such rarefied school district ranks.

The Uniondale and Brentwood communities, which go all out to support their public schools, are more than deserving of the prize, especially since residents feel they've been shortchanged in the past.

Still, it's troubling some school districts reap plentiful benefit from construction, while commercial-property-poor neighbors - like Levittown and Roosevelt - get so little.

But that's state law. And it's created a system that's unlikely to change anytime soon.

Over the years, one task force or another has recommended a change in state law that would allow the pooling of commercial-school-tax payments from more than one district and divvying them out more equitably.

That's the way to go. In Nassau, for example, Uniondale could still make a killing - which would be fair, since the district would be responsible for educating children the Lighthouse development would bring. But what's left of that $36 million annually in new school tax payments could be added - along with school tax payments kicked in by surrounding school districts - to a pool, that would then be more equitably redistributed to all.

That way, districts like Roosevelt or Levittown would gain badly needed school tax revenue while neighboring districts would benefit from the development.

Back in the day, Shoreham-Wading River didn't have to share. And nobody, according to my recollection, at least, would even have considered asking.

That's the way things have always worked on Long Island.

Which is why things aren't working out as well these days for Shoreham-Wading River residents or their children.

It shouldn't have to be this way.