Recently, the Mineola Village Board approved a residential building project, Searing Group LLC, which allowed the developer to be build to 60 feet high, which is over double the zoned areas permissible height.  This is not the first granting of a building project which allowed new building zoning heights that was approved in the village and it has led to exponential growth whereas over 1,000 apartments have been built in the last few years.

Once the developer, Searing Group, received their variance to build the oversized building, they just had to drive over the LIRR bridge to the Nassau County IDA offices and apply for a 20-year property tax abatement for this project, elimination of mortgage recording fees and an exemption for sales taxes on all materials used for the property.  The Nassau IDA will be holding a public hearing on this project application on March 27 to hear oral and written comments.

As has happened in the past, the Nassau IDA will approve this project and all of its tax favored benefits with little to minimal public comments.  Once the IDA approves the project, the land and new building will become an asset to a public agency, the Nassau County IDA.  To the detriment to the existing local taxpayers, the IDA tax abatements on this project will shift the full taxable valuation of the new building until sometime in 2043.  Hence, the local taxpayers, including the towns of Albertson, Roslyn Hts, and some of Garden City Park, will be subsidizing the school and county taxes that should be paid by this building for 20 years.

The County IDA has taken over multiple properties in the village and this process doesn’t seem to be ending soon as there are many more projects in planning and design.  In addition to the Nassau IDA generous , NYS through Kathy Hochul’s Housing Compact is proposing to redevelop land within a half mile around LIRR stations in a similar fashion as the IDA process has been implemented in the Village of Mineola.

If the Hockul Housing Compact is approved, state agency staff will be directing local development, tax abatements will be applied and the system will be administered by folks who don’t live here, don’t understand the local impacts, don’t pay taxes here and will all be dictated by law.  Developers will line up to take advantage of these tax advantaged projects just as they have been in the Village of Mineola.

I believe Mineola is a microcosm of what will be coming to all local train stations on the island if the NYS Hochul Housing Compact is approved by the state this April.  Now is the time to make your voices heard on this plan to ensure that Long Island communities don’t become run by state bureaucrats who may or may not agree with the current way of life here in Nassau County.

Andrew Ward

Mineola

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