Larry Werther, a former Village of Mineola trustee who briefly served as mayor, has entered what is now a four-way race for two trustee seats on the Village Board.
Along with former Mayor John Colbert, Werther is the second candidate to emerge skeptical of Mineola’s residential development, which he said is “doing incredible damage to the village.”
While he supported the 275-unit Modera Mineola and 315-unit building at 250 Old Country Road, Werther said he thinks the Village Board has approved other projects without sufficient regard for residents’ concerns and allowed too large tax breaks for them.
“I hate the fact that these guys are bringing Levittown to our village,” Werther said.
Werther was elected as a trustee in 2003 and served as deputy mayor under Jack Martins. The board voted to make him mayor in 2011, current Deputy Mayor Paul Pereira said, after Martins was elected to the state Senate in 2010.
Werther served out the rest of Martins’ term ran for trustee that year. Current Mayor Scott Strauss ran unopposed to succeed him.
Werther served as a trustee until 2013, when he lost in a three-way race with Trustee George Durham and current Trustee Dennis Walsh.
The two completed residential developments have not passed on many benefits to residents despite the host community benefit agreements the village brokered for them, Werther said.
He supported them because he thought they would generate a large amount of school tax revenue and ultimately ease the burden on residential taxpayers, he said.
But the long-term property-tax breaks the Nassau County Industrial Development Agency has awarded them have prevented that from happening, Werther said.
“Why do we need to make rich people richer at the expense of our people?” he said. “… You’ve got a situation where these people come here and they must think we’ve got the word ‘stupid’ tattooed on our foreheads.”
Werther said he would like to tie residential tax breaks to the project’s occupancy so developers gradually lose tax breaks as their buildings fill up, an arrangement he said the Village of North Hills has already successfully used.
While he views the recently approved development on Searing Avenue at the former Corpus Christi Elementary School as a special case, Werther said he would have fought “tooth and nail” against the controversial 315-unit Village Green project at 199 Second St.
Mineola could do with one or two residential developments, Werther said, but he doesn’t think the projects are inherently positive for the village.
Now running with his own My Home Party, Werther was a founding member of the New Line Party, which currently holds four of five seats on the Village Board.
The field of candidates also includes Pereira of the New Line Party, incumbent Trustee Paul Cusato of the Hometown Party and Colbert, running with the Save Our Suburb Party.
In an interview Feb. 12, Pereira said the village has received millions of dollars from the residential projects and put properties on the tax rolls that weren’t taxable before.
The money the developments have generated has paid for things such as the renovations to Memorial Park, road repaving and updates at the village’s swimming pool, Pereira said.
“That’s all money that is coming from these developments, either through the PILOTs (payments in lieu of taxes), or through the amenities, or through the host community benefit agreements,” he said.
Cusato said the village was able to purchase a new fire truck with money from the host community benefit agreement for the Modera Mineola project.
The residential development has attracted many restaurants and other businesses to Mineola, and the buildings would not have gone up without the right tax breaks, Cusato said.
“We need to offer incentives to builders to come into our village and build,” he said. “Everybody’s doing it. It’s not just Mineola.”
Colbert, who has said the Village Board has proceeded to hastily with development, said he is surprised the issue didn’t bring forth more candidates for the trustee race.
“It would be a lie to say I want more competition, but more competition brings out more ideas and more strategies and maybe more careful thinking of what takes place in the future,” Colbert said.
