Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "HAPPY NEW YEAR!":
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/03/nyregion/03cuomo.html?nl=nyregion&emc=ura1
ALBANY — Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo will seek a one-year salary freeze for state workers as part of an emergency financial plan he will lay out in his State of the State address on Wednesday, senior administration officials said.
The move will signal the opening of what is expected to be a grueling fight between the new governor and the public-sector unions that have traditionally dominated the state’s political establishment.
It will also come days after the New Year’s Eve layoffs of more than 900 state workers, an event that union representatives marked with a candlelight vigil on the steps of the Capitol and outside government offices in five other cities.
....“The governor said during his campaign that the difficult financial times call for shared sacrifice,” said a senior administration official, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the governor’s address. “A salary freeze is obviously a difficult thing for many government workers, but it’s necessary if the state is going to live within its means.”
Perhaps it's time for the board to mirror the governor in recognizing that the community cannot afford additional school taxes either.
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Governor Cuomo is beginning his term by engaging in the lowest kind of politics. You’re feeling happy at the thought of the laying off state workers and freezing the salaries of others. Your spirits will no doubt be buoyed if workforces at the state and local levels of government are reduced too. What you and too many others don’t realize is that the services these civil servants provide are much more important to you than they are to Andrew Cuomo and his hedge fund manager friends. They don’t have any trouble living within their means. By encouraging warfare against middle class public servants, you attack your own interests. If your wages have stagnated over the past ten years, if your pension has been cut, your health care reduced, I want to work with you to end the immoral transfer of wealth in this country from the middle class to the ultra-wealthy. The rich love it when you declare us the enemy. It emboldens them to take even more for themselves.
ReplyDeleteThe Governor who I voted for is engaged in the type of politics that is rarely seen, namely "fiscal responsibility". I look foward to the property tax cap of 2% because POB school district at times spends our tax money like drunken sailors and it is about time someone put a stop to it. Even though our school attorney stated in a budget meeting that we would be running a deficit in the coming years , you still demanded a raise for your members . Is that what you call sacrificing the interests of others for your members ? I would say so. This state is on the same road that California is on, and look at where they are now. A state of denial is irresponsible. The longer we delay solving this problem the more teacers that will be layed off, services cut , and weakening of our schools overall. Trying to claim that this is the rich against the working class is far from the truth. This is about fiscal responsibility which we lack in our school district, county, and state . The pension plan we have for state workers is on the path to bankruptcy unless it is fixed that is the reality. As Governor Christie in NJ stated if the pension plan is not fixed their may not be one in the future.
ReplyDeleteMr Rosenfeld:
ReplyDeleteIn your own words you stated "I want to work with you to end the immoral transfer of wealth in this country from the middle class to the ultra-wealthy".
I would think that you would support freezing salaries. How about capping the property taxes? property taxes continually rising an average of 15% last year (a fact) . When is it enough? I would be curious to hear your ideas on solving the problem of the public employees pension plan that is in a 31 billion dollar deficit. That would be $31,000,000,000 that we do not currently have for future retirees many whom are teachers. that deficit grows each day. No one feels happy about laying off state workers. Unfortunately some public sector unions refuse to renegotiate contracts and the governor is forced to layoff workers.
No one is ever happy about the laying off of anyone. That is a very incendiary way to start off and a distracting one as well.
ReplyDeletePerhaps a better way might have been; as the union rep, I realize that we can no longer get blood out of a stone, that people in the public sector right now are grateful to have jobs and some form of insurance, and in order to have all of my members be able to keep their jobs and receive some kind of pension, we are going to put a freeze on current wages. We realize that the lowest form of politics is holding someone buy their "netherlands" and squeezing as we did last year. We realize that if the state goes bankrupt, no one will profit.
I must add as an aside, never before in the history of this country have so few held so much of the country's wealth, and that so much more or a burden is now carried by the middle class that ever before. While this is true, burdening the middle class tax payers who if they are lucky still have a job (often making less then they did five years ago),with the demands of a separate group of financially upwardly mobile middle class earners (union members) who are so privileged to have guaranteed pensions, quasi guaranteed employment and wage increases every year is not what what I would call a moral transfer of wealth.
One statement that was stated in the last post is very misleading by Calling union members "upwardly mobile middle class earners" . Private sector unions have been hit pretty hard in this recession. If you looked at the construction industry in this country their overall unemployment rate stands at over 30% . The issue here is the public sector unions such as the teachers as was stated before who have pension plans that give unrealistic returns to the pension plan while the plan builds up a deficit year afetr year. That is the reality. There is the problem of the rich getting richer as well as public sector unions refusing to bend and demanding more and more every year. The states are promising more than they can deliver to future pensioneers.
ReplyDeleteIt is not a "fact" that everyone's taxes went up 15%. It may have happened to you because of the counties busted assessment system.
ReplyDeleteThe reality is that more then half of Plainview had their taxes decrease and over a quarter had their taxes go up by less then 4%. See the chart published by Newsday here http://www.newsday.com/long-island/education/school-tax-bill-changes-for-nassau-homes-1.2450943
THIS IS WHY WE NEED A CAP ON PROPERTY TAXES
ReplyDelete2009-10 2010-11 Change
Budgeted spending $127,895,982 $130,888,845 2.3%
School tax levy $107,374,705 $110,487,800 2.9%
School enrollment 5,040 4,947 -1.8%
Reserve Fund balance $12,034,816 $16,019,611 33.1%
Appropriated Fund balance $2,400,000 $3,286,398 36.9%
Undesignated Fund balance $5,115,830 $5,235,554 2.3%
Undesignated Fund as percent of total budget 4.00% 4.00%
The school is holding 16 million dollars iin a reserve account and 5 million dollars that is "undesignated funds"
Try asking the board what undesignated means when they raised our taxes an average of 15% last year
Another reason why we need a tax cap
ReplyDeletetitle total compensation
Superintendent of Schools $308,208
Asst Supt For Personnel $211,635
Asst Supt For Curriculum & Instr. $195,074
Asst Supt For Business $172,078
This according to Newsday and these are the records for the school years 2007-2008 which means that these salaries are probably alot higher this year.
According to "Newsday" the "average" tax increase in Plainview was 15% . It was never stated that everyones tax bill went up 15%. This was listed several months ago in Newsday
ReplyDeleteThe Governors speech highlighted the problems out state faces
ReplyDeleteWe are #1 in spending on education
ranked #34 in education in the country
There are 33 states that performing better
In 1998 the state was paying 1billion dollars to the state pension plan. Today the number is 6 billion dollars. A 400%+ increase
next year it continues to grow. He also stated that we have too many agencies in the state . Why do we need a water commissioner for Plainview, one for Bethpage, one for Syosset etc this is just one example of waste . Coumo also put forth the 2% property tax cap . Why? because Westchester county has the most expensive property taxes in the country and Nassau county is the second highest in the country. I hope the school board is prepared to make some tough decisions because , more than likely we will not be getting the same amount of school funding next year as we are getting now.
Wow. I sure pressed the angry button with my comment. If Cuomo get his tax cap,remember I told you that the supporters of it will regret it. I suggest that some of you put aside your anger and read a new book - Winner-Take-All Politics, by Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson. Doesn't it strike some of you as odd that when 37% of the nation belonged to trade unions, the middle class thrived.
ReplyDeleteThere needs to be something done about the regressive property tax. That's for sure. But just capping them is just plain dumb.
Even when 37% of the nation belonged to labor, 36.999% did not have Tenure or step increases. The 37% labor fought for a fair days pay for a fair days wage not to get a raise for just 'being there" aka step raises. You may deem these posts as anger while they are more about frustration of the greed of some to keep demanding raises regardless of the effects it would have on anyone else. When the middle class thrived they were not paying thousands and thousands of dollars in school taxes. I look foward to the tax cap and the day that my taxes stop skyrocketing out of control. If we have to cut sports programs and layoff teachers it will be because huge labor contracts that this school district has irresponsibly agreed too. There was an article in the wall street journal the other day about how the public sector unions are thriving at the expense of the private sector unions who are highly unemployed. Why because NY state can not invest the money needed in the state because the Public sector unions are costing the state so much money in out of control pension plans and sweetheart contracts .that is just one of the problems that The governor must fix .
ReplyDeleteLet's do it your way. Since you don't appear to understand or believe that step increases are a management tool to depress teacher wages, let have a system in which you do the same work, you get the same pay. I agree with you that that is a fairer way to do things. That is, after a teacher's probationary period they go to what is now the top step and never get a step increase again. I'll do that deal tonight.
ReplyDeleteThe average tax increase in Plainview is equal to the tax levy increase of 2.9%.
ReplyDeleteIt has to be that way. It's a fixed sum of money the school district raises. What can happen is that your taxes can swing wildly because of the counties broken assessment system. But in the end, the folks paying more are offset by folks paying less. The end result average is the tax levy. Which in our case was 2.9%.
If your taxes went up by 15% that is because your assessment changed. Probably because your house maintained it's value - a very good thing - while the rest of Plainview did not.
If our discussion of teacher pensions is to be useful, it must be anchored in facts. Those interested in facts can watch this short video prepared by the New York State Teacher Retirement System, a non-partisan organization http://www.nystrs.org/main/library/videos/how-public-pension.htm.
ReplyDeleteI think that the reason people have such a problem with the pay structure teachers have is not that they expect teachers to necessarily make less, but that there shouldn't be so many guarantees. If you aren't good at your job, the rest of the world gets fired,- and you don't have to be horrendous, just not doing the level of work that was expected. Not so for teachers. If you raise the bottom line for the company, you may get a bonus, or a raise. The word "May", is important here- it usually depends on how the company is doing. Receiving a pension is a maybe thing also. Maybe your company has one, Maybe there is a matching fund. Maybe if the company has a bad year or two, the company will freeze it, as so many have done this year. Or one company I know lowered or froze all of the benefits in order not to lay anyone off.
ReplyDeleteMr Rosenfeld. The labor contract specifically states that a teacher completes a certain amount of years(7,15,20,25,30) they automatically receive a bonus. For what? Just for being there.These raise are in addition to the raises they get for taking classes and attaining education degrees and then there is the standard negotiated raise. There is no way to justify a raise for just being there. I understand the educational raise not the raise for just being there
ReplyDeletethe tax levy and the taxes you are 2 seperate things. The tax levy is the amount of money the school needs to operate with. If the budget is 100 million dolars and the new budget is 103 million dollars then the tax levy would be 3%
ReplyDeletethe tax rate is set by the county .They set the rates and the rate multiplier by several determinig factors. # of homeowners,value of homes, etc. Last year the county changed the multiplier and the taxes went up big time. We got shafted by the screwed up tax system in this crooked county we live in. I know what I paid last year in taxes and the value of my home went up less than 2% . My tax bill went up almost 15%.
Many of the postings on this blog are focused on systems in place throughout the US and in many other countries. The concept of civil service raises and tenure are not unique to Plainview.
ReplyDeleteWhat is noteable in Plainview is the fact that so much of our staff (teaching as well as management) was hired and/or earned tenure status more so as a result of who they knew/are related to than any other worthwhile credentials. Combine that with a somewhat militant outlook during contract negotiations and high property taxes and you've got many extremely disappointed parents.
Yes tenure is common throughout the country . Does that make it right? no. New york spends the most money of any state in the U.S. yet we are ranked #34 in the country. We are getting the short end of the stick .The teachers union is the only union in the country that have members who have tenure. In any other union job, If you do not do your job . After due process you will be fired. I have heard all the excuses that teachers can still be removed. The reality is that there are laws in New York state that make it almost impossible for a school district to eliminate tenure. As far as the militancy of the PCT was displayed in the last contract negotiations by their reckless demands.
ReplyDeleteMr. Rosenfeld you so ardently support your position of increased salaries and supported pensions. Not once do you ever mention the needs of our students or the support of our parents. Perhaps it is time you look to your peers for the right thing to do. The Syosset teachers union has frozen salaries to save money and guarantee teachers' jobs. Your two year contract is up. Money is going to be tight. Will you do the right thing for our district or will you create strife again like your last contract "negotiation" that will further drive a wedge between parents and your membership? You have an opportunity here to rebuild a bridge that had been severely damaged in the last couple of years. Go into your negotiations with not only your personal agenda in mind but what this community needs. Just remember black clothes, snide pins and striking teachers don't build bridges or enhance childrens' educational experiences.
ReplyDelete