Council Candidates Talk City's Top Priorities

While five of the six candidates running for City Counciladdressed the issue of transparency at City Hall, in response to a question about what they regard as the two top issues facing the city at a Candidates Forum in October, they also cited various issues, from storm preparedness to spending.

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Janna Jachniewicz — who is running with two other first-time candidates Michael Franceschini and Damian Walsh as a team of “clean slate” independents — raised the issue of a decades-long lack of trust among citizens of city government as a priority that must be addressed, as well as the homeowners who remain displaced since Hurricane Sandy struck. Jachniewicz estimated, based on her door-to-door campaigning, that one-in-five homes are in various states of distress in the West End.

“I think that should be a major focus of the city right now, is to be getting those people back into their houses and getting their lives back to normal,” she said.

“One of the ways of getting lives back to normal is to get people in the West End voting in the West School,” she added about the closure of the school as a polling site.  

Eileen Goggin, one of three Democrats vying for the three open seats on the council in the Nov. 5 election, said the city was doing everything in its power to ensure residents return to their homes.

“We have constantly, regularly, daily been advocating on behalf of our residents to New York state and also [the Federal Emergency Management Agency],” said Goggin, noting that the city has hosted open community forums with both state and federal agents to help educate the public about post-storm recovery. “We will not stop until our residents are home, and that definitely is a priority,” said Goggin, who was appointed to the council in February.

She said another priority is to rebuild the city, noting a number of infrastructure projects, including the drainage system, that are in the works through the capital budget to make Long Beach “stronger and safer.”

“It’s very important that we rebuild with this in mind, because if there’s another storm we need to be protected,” she added.

Franceschini said that in his talks with people on the campaign trail, he learned that their greatest concerns are storm preparedness and the ability to afford to live and do business in Long Beach.  

“The affordability issue can be indemnified in a form very simply: no increase in taxes any longer,” Franceschini said. “People need whatever they earn in order to move forward to improve their quality of life. More tax payments do not fit into that equation.”

Regarding storm preparedness, he said that a contingency plan can only be made with further research with outside experts and by utilizing the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in choosing the correct solution for Long Beach, whose needs differ from other beachside municipalities based on the state of the city’s infrastructure. “And therefore we need to find a plan that works best for us under the conditions of the city,” he said.  

Mandel, the city council president who was elected to a two-year term in 2011, said that part of the equation of returning residents to their homes is building back the city “because, even before Sandy, our infrastructure was horrible, our reputation throughout Nassau County was deplorable. When this administration came in, we cleared that up even before Sandy hit.”

The city has taken any opportunity on the state and federal levels to obtain finances to help city homeowners and businesses, Mandel said, adding that Long Beach is way ahead of neighboring communities, Oceanside and Island Park, in this regard “because we’ve taken on steps to make sure that we get the priority that our voice is heard.”

Anthony Eramo, a newcomer, called storm and fiscal recovery the two most important issues that the city faces. He noted the present administration’s approval of a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ storm protection project, which will feature rebuilt dunes along the city’s entire oceanfront, as one long-term measure to protect Long Beach’s coastline.

“100 percent federally funded and passed by this Democratic administration,” added Eramo, who also noted the city’s approval of a similar bayside protection project as he called for a better drainage system and fixed tide flex values as ways to reduce flooding.

On the city’s ongoing recovery from a $10 million deficit that was uncovered in late 2011, before the present administration took office, Eramo said the city has made great strides.

“As we all know, the previous Republican administration bankrupted our city in 2011,” he said while also noting that Moody’s Investors Service recently upgraded the city’s outlookfrom negative to stable.

“Pretty soon we expect to see some bond upgrades,” Eramo said. “So as long as we continue with this Democratic team, the fiscal recovery will continue moving forward.”

Walsh, a first-time candidate who owns a cheesesteaks restaurant in Island Park, said that one of the two main reasons he was running for City Council was to help make the city more financially conservative. “If I ran my business the way this city runs the city, I would not be selling cheesesteaks anymore,” he said.

Walsh asked the audience that turned out for the Candidate Forum, held at the Long Beach Library on Oct. 17, how many among them received anywhere from a $200,000 to $500,000 payout from their employers. “No one’s raising their hands; that’s something we need to change,” he said while calling for cuts to retirement payouts the city was contracted to honor in recent years.

Walsh also cited taxes as a top issue, saying the city raised them 16 percent and has borrowed more than $50 million the past year-and-a-half.