The Manhasset Republican Club made automated phone calls commonly known as robo calls in opposition to the Manhasset school budget to Manhasset residents believed to be conservative leaning prior to the May 21 vote in which the budget failed to gain a supermajority needed for approval.
“Some people in the pro-spending crowd were displeased with it, but [the calls were] very well-received and the ultimate result was that the tax hike was defeated,” club president Martin Dekom said.
Dekom said calls informed residents their school taxes would increase by $1,000 if the district’s tax cap-busting $89 million passed with a supermajority vote.
Town of North Hempstead Republicans distanced the party from the local group, saying that the Manhasset Republican Club is not sanctioned by either the town or county Republican committees.
“For the impression to be left, even innocently, that the Republican party was involved in trying to defeat the school budget is a wrong impression,” said Frank Moroney, chairman of the North Hempstead Republican Committee.
Moroney said the party does not take any interest in school district matters, which it considers to be a local, non-partisan issue.
“That group of people is free to do whatever they want to do, but the distinction has to be drawn publicly because it forms a misimpression as to who’s behind it,” Moroney said.
Moroney said the party’s Westbury headquarters received an influx of calls from concerned constituents – including the county’s Manhasset Republican Club president, Donald O’Brien – wondering why the local GOP had taken an interest in the Manhasset School District.
Efforts to reach O’Brien were unavailing.
Moroney said the committee considered issuing a second robo call, distancing itself from its non-sanctioned counterpart, but reconsidered on the grounds that it would only further confuse residents.
The North Hempstead Republican Committee instead issued a letter dated May 23, which was obtained by Blank Slate Media, to members of the Manhasset Board of Education that distanced itself from the Manhasset Republican Club and from the budget vote, Moroney said.
“Please be aware that the Manhasset Republican Club is not a club that is sanctioned or operating with the approval of either the North Hempstead or Nassau Republican Committees,” the letter says. “Moreover, the Republican Party does not take any position on any school district matters, which are strictly local and non-partisan.”
Dekom disagreed with the party’s mind-set, saying tax increases are “very much a partisan issue” and that by issuing the automated calls, his organization sought to uphold the “garden variety of Republican ideals,” which he said included “lower taxes, less regulation, [being] pro-gun [and] pro-life.”
“The fact is the school board originally supported an almost 9 percent tax hike and then brought it down to a little under 6 percent,” Dekom said. “It represents real dollars for real people, many of whom are elderly Manhsaset residents who are hanging on by their fingernails, and they’re the same people who helped pay for my education 20-plus years ago,” Dekom said.
The Manhasset Board of Education presented a $89,296,198 budget to voters in May, which called for a 2.56 percent rise in spending over the 2012-13 school year and a 5.98 increase in the tax levy that required a 60 percent supermajority from voters to be adopted. The budget presented to voters was down from the 2.71 percent budget-to-budget increase and 6.47 percent tax levy increase announced April 4 and considerably lower than the initial 4.61 percent budget-to-budget increase and 8.78 percent tax levy increase that was introduced March 2.
Manhasset residents who received the automated calls said the information provided so close to the budget vote was “misleading.”
In a Letter to the Editor sent to Blank Slate Media, Manhasset resident Nancy Sullivan Holweger wrote, “none of us are happy with increasing taxes,” but “the information provided so close to the vote is misleading. There was no time for those who received such calls and who may have had questions to get clarification.”
Other residents addressed their concerns about the robo calls to members of the board of education in the days after the budget failed to receive the supermajority vote needed to pass, specifically at town hall-style meetings last week in which some suggested opposition groups had specifically targeted older residents who no longer had children who were students in Manhasset public schools and may not regularly follow the district’s budgetary process.
Residents who have argued in favor of the school budget and against anti-budget groups like the Manhasset Republican Committee and the Manhasset Proponents for School Accountability have said the higher taxes come as a result of the district’s inability to control certain figures within the budget, which are determined by the state, such as increases to employee retirement and pension contributions.
Dekom said the district had the opportunity to control those figures when it last negotiated teacher and employee contracts, and must operate moving forward in a manner that will not allow the teacher’s union to gain so much power over the state of the district’s budget.
“On the one hand you have parents concerned about the education of our children, but we have to balance the issues of all the public and we can’t be taxing citizens out of manhasset,” Dekom said. “The budget ultimately lies with needing a superintendent and school board that needs to grapple with the unions, not go out of their way to please them.”
