Readers Write: A new mayor in East Williston?

The Island Now

 

It appears that the current mayor of East Williston, David Tanner may not seek re-election when his term ends next year. We thank the mayor for his service to our community, but this decision appears to be good news for our village.

Mayor Tanner’s tenure has been plagued with many issues that impacted residents. Below I will highlight three.

Issue 1. The East Williston village water tower

After thousands of dollars of wasted money. We ended up where we should have – with a revised agreement with Williston Park to provide water to our Village.

The exercise of evaluating this multimillion dollar boondoggle was a complete waste of time, village resources and money.

It also created an atmosphere between the Village of East Williston and Williston Park of tension and opposition.

I am pleased this matter was ultimately resolved, but recent comments from Williston Park about who will fund their new water tower, give me concern that the agreement negotiated will continue to burden residents with unexpected costs into the future.

Issue 2. The broken property tax assessment system

Mayor Tanner is the last remaining village official that supported the adoption of the current East Williston property tax assessment system.

Since its adoption, the assessment system has been shrouded in secrecy and after multiple FOIA requests we now know why.

Years after its adoption, the village can’t demonstrate that residents benefit if any way from this change. More concerning is that it costs us more to maintain and does not treat all residents equally and fairly. This is simply a terrible outcome for a public policy.

Issue 3. Village security and vandalism.

In 2016/2017, when our village was being plagued by an unprecedented crime wave.

The mayor was publicly leadingthe opposition against residents who expressed concern. Even after being presented with crime statistics from the NCPD that confirmed what many residents already knew, he continued to downplay the seriousness of the issue – then ultimately limited public comments altogether.

Luckily, residents banded together and through awareness and persistence, the level of crime ultimately decreased. Some recent events confirm that crime is not gone from our Village but our residents continue to remain vigilant.

Over the past years, each of these issues have impacted our residents and for the most part, the mayor’s communication with the community and actions taken to address these challenges have been largely inadequate.

But today is a new day, and there is hope for residents that the next mayor will take a different path and be more responsive to the concerns of residents.

Early indications are that two existing members of the board could run for the position – the deputy mayor or Trustee Casella.

In addition, a couple of other residents have expressed interest in running. I believe the challenge for existing board members is that they have publicly supported many of the current mayor’s unpopular positions.

I believe the next mayor should focus on the following three things:

1. Are we prioritizing the spending of village taxes to address the concerns of residents?

2. Will we fix the broken tax-assessment system and begin to treat all residents equally and fairly?

3. Are we doing enough to prevent crime and vandalism in our village?

I encourage anyone who is considering running for mayor to use this forum to share your views on what you would do as mayor. I look forward to sharing more on this topic as developments occur.

Stephan Leccese

East Williston

 

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