What Have They Actually Been Doing?
So many aspects of the Town of Hempstead have been neglected for so long it is difficult to understand what, if anything, the Town Board and previous supervisors have actually been doing with taxpayer money.
The town’s aging infrastructure is stuck in a 1970s-time warp. It’s worth noting that several scenes in Martin Scorcese’s recent movie, “The Irishman,” were filmed in and around the town for that reason.
Town buildings, pools, parks, senior centers, and computer systems are woefully outdated. In fact, the Town Attorney’s office has no computer program to handle files, and almost everything is kept on paper. When Supervisor Gillen first took office, the town wasn’t even equipped to handle credit cards, leaving most transactions to be handled in cash or by check.
The Town of Hempstead’s 1,309 units of affordable housing haven’t had a substantial capital upgrade in decades. Nor, in several decades, has any new inventory been built. I oversaw the improperly named Department of Urban Development.
Its only function is to give out Section 8 vouchers for affordable housing. Though the town is allotted over 400 Section 8 vouchers by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, when I arrived at the town, Jan. 1, 2018, there were roughly 200 unused vouchers and a waiting list of 3,000 residents in need of affordable housing.
Nothing has been done by the Town Board to build additional housing, or to alleviate the need of housing for the working poor.
More Wasted Taxpayer Money
When I came to work for the town, I immediately started looking at what they were paying for commodity-type products. Because I previously owned restaurants in New York City, I had experience in purchasing everyday commodities at the best prices.
With that in mind, I noticed the town was paying $40 a bag for a 50-pound bag of rock salt. Grainger, a national supplier of items such as rock salt, sold the same bags for $16 each. This wasted about $1,000 per pallet when purchased in bulk! I instructed the purchasing department to immediately switch vendors.
I also tried to modernize the purchasing process (which is all done through paper) and bring in an electronic purchasing platform to create transparent bidding, so wasting taxpayer’s money on items such as rock salt would never happen again.
The town went through an exhaustive RFP process, with vendors flying in from around the country to pitch their online programs. An exciting prospect named SpecBid was chosen internally, by committee, but was never allowed to be approved by the Town Board. As of today, all town purchasing is still done using paper bids.
The Town Owns What?
Another interesting project I spearheaded was the creation of an inventory of real estate assets for the Town. When I arrived at the Town of Hempstead at the start of 2018, I checked with every department to see if there was a database of town-owned properties. None existed, and I was asked several times, “Why do you need one?”
As the supervisor’s deputy chief of staff of Economic Development and Government Efficiency, I needed a database of town-owned property, by zoning, assessed value, and lot size, to see if there were developable lots for affordable housing, local businesses who might want to expand, or new businesses who would locate here.
We hired an appraisal firm that took several months to create a database of Town-owned property. I was shocked to learn the town owns a total of 786 properties, at an assessed value of $4.85 billion.
While many of these properties consisted of municipal buildings and parks, there were at least two dozen properties that could be developed, scores of underutilized properties, and over 30 sliver lots.
Supervisor Gillen’s staff then audited the list, and came up with nearly 400 properties, assessed at around $850 million, that were vacant or underutilized. The Town Board responded swiftly, to try to negate its long legacy of mismanagement.
In an attempt to downplay the findings, on Oct. 17, 2019, Councilman Bruce Blakeman, told Newsday that the numbers were “flawed” and “bizarre.”
Adam Haber is the former deputy chief of staff of Economic Development and Government Efficiency for the Town of Hempstead
