What Have They Actually Been Doing?
So many aspects of the Town of Hempstead have been neglected for so long it is difficult to understand what, if anything, the Town Board and previous supervisors have actually been doing with taxpayer money.
The town’s aging infrastructure is stuck in a 1970s-time warp. It’s worth noting that several scenes in Martin Scorcese’s recent movie, “The Irishman,” were filmed in and around the town for that reason.
Town buildings, pools, parks, senior centers, and computer systems are woefully outdated. In fact, the Town Attorney’s office has no computer program to handle files, and almost everything is kept on paper. When Supervisor Gillen first took office, the town wasn’t even equipped to handle credit cards, leaving most transactions to be handled in cash or by check.
The Town of Hempstead’s 1,309 units of affordable housing haven’t had a substantial capital upgrade in decades. Nor, in several decades, has any new inventory been built. I oversaw the improperly named Department of Urban Development.
Its only function is to give out Section 8 vouchers for affordable housing. Though the town is allotted over 400 Section 8 vouchers by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, when I arrived at the town, Jan. 1, 2018, there were roughly 200 unused vouchers and a waiting list of 3,000 residents in need of affordable housing.
Nothing has been done by the Town Board to build additional housing, or to alleviate the need of housing for the working poor.
More Wasted Taxpayer Money
When I came to work for the town, I immediately started looking at what they were paying for commodity-type products. Because I previously owned restaurants in New York City, I had experience in purchasing everyday commodities at the best prices.
With that in mind, I noticed the town was paying $40 a bag for a 50-pound bag of rock salt. Grainger, a national supplier of items such as rock salt, sold the same bags for $16 each. This wasted about $1,000 per pallet when purchased in bulk! I instructed the purchasing department to immediately switch vendors.
I also tried to modernize the purchasing process (which is all done through paper) and bring in an electronic purchasing platform to create transparent bidding, so wasting taxpayer’s money on items such as rock salt would never happen again.
The town went through an exhaustive RFP process, with vendors flying in from around the country to pitch their online programs. An exciting prospect named SpecBid was chosen internally, by committee, but was never allowed to be approved by the Town Board. As of today, all town purchasing is still done using paper bids.
The Town Owns What?
Another interesting project I spearheaded was the creation of an inventory of real estate assets for the Town. When I arrived at the Town of Hempstead at the start of 2018, I checked with every department to see if there was a database of town-owned properties. None existed, and I was asked several times, “Why do you need one?”
As the supervisor’s deputy chief of staff of Economic Development and Government Efficiency, I needed a database of town-owned property, by zoning, assessed value, and lot size, to see if there were developable lots for affordable housing, local businesses who might want to expand, or new businesses who would locate here.
We hired an appraisal firm that took several months to create a database of Town-owned property. I was shocked to learn the town owns a total of 786 properties, at an assessed value of $4.85 billion.
While many of these properties consisted of municipal buildings and parks, there were at least two dozen properties that could be developed, scores of underutilized properties, and over 30 sliver lots.
Supervisor Gillen’s staff then audited the list, and came up with nearly 400 properties, assessed at around $850 million, that were vacant or underutilized. The Town Board responded swiftly, to try to negate its long legacy of mismanagement.
In an attempt to downplay the findings, on Oct. 17, 2019, Councilman Bruce Blakeman, told Newsday that the numbers were “flawed” and “bizarre.”
Adam Haber is the former deputy chief of staff of Economic Development and Government Efficiency for the Town of Hempstead
It’s such a shame in this day and age that the town of Hempstead is allowed to carry on as it does the zoning planning and building departments completely corrupt and inefficient Of course they don’t want to go electronic it’s easier to steal cash I really believe Laura gilian was going to do great things for the town of hamstead unfortunately she did not get reelected the fed needs to move in clean house and get rid of these greedy corrupt people
So you only worked for the town for a short time, why ?
New administration wants their own staff. Regardless, on the last board meeting before the election, when the winner was uncertain, the Republican Town Board Majority voted to eliminate my job.
Thank you for your information. We must continue to
for change
Sadly with Kate Murray back in the picture, it will only get worse.
So what do we residents do? We all know about the mass corruption. How do we move the wealthy corruption out and get good people in? Where’s the leadership and the solution?
To effect change positive change show up in numbers at every Town Board meeting and advocate for any one of the issues presented in any one of the six articles. The next Town Board meeting is January 21st at 10:30 am, at Town Hall.
Screw Hempstead screw the town of Hempstead African-Americans don’t exist to them they slowly pushing us out and away and yall are making housing and apartments for nothing but Spanish people tell the truth they tryna make Hempstead white & Spanish
Like for example the housing on south franklin st. That was just built not too long ago who y’all made that for Spanish people
We should not be surprised by these findings at all.
January 6, 2019
This article nicely details why I am so dismayed over the recent election loss of Laura Gillen and Sylvia Cabana as Town of Hempstead Supervisor and Town Clerk respectively. What both Gillen and Cabana sought to do was to bring transparency and clarity to the workings of the TOH. Modernizing the running of TOH by bringing it out of the 20th century with typewriters and paper files to a more streamlined and modern updated systems. This also helped to improve transparency, necessary in a TOH and Nassau County political system rife with partisan corruption and nepotism for the 100+ years the TOH & Nassau County political machines have been run by the GOP. Without any checks to this machine, corruption has been able to run rampant as seen by the many recent indictments of various Long Island politicians.
Gillen and Cabana were obstructed at every turn by the majority GOP at Town of Hempstead and swam upstream through most of their two year tenure. They did a great job anyway – and were supported by the TOH employees and constituents. But they were up against a corrupt machine that had no compunction about spreading lies and disinformation to win elections. We are becoming familiar with this playbook and it is very unfortunate for residents of the Town of Hempstead. Instead, with Gillen & Cabana’s loss, with Don Clavin & Kate Murray’s election, we have more foxes guarding the hen house. What could possibly go wrong?
Sincerely,
Elizabeth Stack
Rockville Centre, NY 11570