Taxes Cited in Budget Defeats SOUTH SHORE Edition

• Published in: Newsday
• Main Author: By Letta Tayler
• Format: Newspaper Article
• Language: English
• Published: Long Island, N.Y Newsday LLC 08.06.1990
• Edition: Combined editions
• Subjects: Keyes, Sterling

Of the two dozen school district budgets voted on Wednesday throughout Long Island, seven were defeated: Bayport-Blue Point, Wyandanch, Brentwood, Central Islip, Copiague and Lindenhurst on the South Shore, and Longwood in Brookhaven. School officials and leaders of tax watchdog groups agreed that the main reason for the defeats was concern over taxes. Most of the defeated budgets contained tax increases that were higher than the median hike of 3.9 percent for Long Island school budgets voted on this month. The most dramatic examples were in Wyandanch, in which a 13.2 percent tax hike was proposed, and Longwood, in which two separate proposals to increase taxes by either 23.3 percent or 30.1 percent were offered. "Our budget was very, very reasonable, and the main reason it was defeated was Tax-PAC," said Jerry Steiner, a spokesman for the Brentwood school district, which had proposed a 5.5 percent hike in the tax rate, from $5.09 to $5.37 per $100 of assessed property valuation. "Unfortunately the literature disseminated throughout the community {by Tax-PAC groups} about the budget was downright untrue." Tax-PAC officials denied those claims.