By Joseph D’Andrea

Town of North Hempstead Supervisor Jennifer DeSena and Councilman Dennis Walsh of the town’s third district both focused on housing and infrastructure at the Mineola Chamber of Commerce’s monthly dinner meeting on Tuesday.

Reiterating criticisms made over the past few months about Gov. Kathy Hochul regarding the state’s proposed housing plan, DeSena emphasized the importance of using the town’s budget and tax revenue in more constructive ways. 

“Gov. Hochul has been forcing us, threatening us,” DeSena said, “and treating us like children, saying: ‘you don’t build, you don’t know how to do it.’ But they did it in Mineola, and they did it in Westbury. So it shows that local government works.”

The governor unveiled her plan to build 800,000 new homes over the next decade to address the state’s housing shortage in January.

Included in the New York Housing Compact are local participation requirements and incentives to achieve housing growth along with requiring municipalities with MTA stations to rezone for higher-density residential development.

The plan is intended to close a shortage of 800,000 housing units in the New York metropolitan area.

Hempstead officials estimated that more than 14,000 additional housing units would be established in Nassau County as a result of Hochul’s proposed legislation. Nassau and Suffolk counties, under the plan, would be required to grow housing stock by 3% every three years along with downstate areas such as Westchester and Putnam Counties, while upstate New York would be required to grow by 1%.

Data from the 2020 Census showed there were more than 78,000 households in North Hempstead. A total of 2,364 housing units would have to be constructed in the town over the next three years to meet Hochul’s 3% goal.

Nassau’s population has also decreased by more than 32,000 since 1970, with 1.35 million residents reported in the 2020 Census. DeSena and the six North Hempstead councilmembers sent a letter to Hochul in January urging the governor to have local officials maintain control of zoning the areas they were directly elected to govern.

DeSena made a point in her speech’s portion about the housing plan that the town’s current infrastructure is not necessarily prepared for such a large-scale plan. Even if it was, she said, once the new state-mandated requirements would be fulfilled, new ones would be waiting for them “every three years.”

“What Governor Hochul has done is ignore the great work that’s been done in Mineola, Westbury, Great Neck — they have plenty of apartment buildings — and it’s not appropriate [to require all of this] for every place downstate,” DeSena said. “It’s interesting that Governor Hochul will require 3% growth for Long Island and Westchester, and then upstate, where there’s much more land, only 1%.”

Saying that local officials are not consulted regarding mandates originating in Albany, DeSena explained that developers would also suffer due to the value of their property likely being negatively affected in the process.

“We have a great variety of housing in Mineola,” the supervisor said. “We are going to make it better throughout the whole Town of North Hempstead, but we’ll do it with community input and with our local zoning.”

DeSena also provided an update on the ongoing audit of the town’s building department being conducted by the office of Nassau County Comptroller Elaine Philips.

“Hopefully in a few months,” she said, “we’re going to have an independent report and we will get the results that our residents deserve. We pay taxes for these services, so we owe you a permit in a reasonable time. We owe our downtown businesses to open — we don’t want closed stores.”

Walsh gave additional context to the housing situation in Mineola, saying that the certiorari debt is down to about $250,000, a significant decrease from what the Village of Mineola was paying from around 2003 to 2007. 

“[This is] because Mineola reassessed all the houses,” Walsh said. “Mineola was able to take advantage of the Homestead Exemption Law because Mineola has approximately 50% of the property owned as commercial and 50% of the property owned as residential. They were allowed to split residential and commercial into two different groups, so residential pay taxes and commercial pay taxes.”

Walsh continued, explaining that commercial tax is four times the amount of residential tax, and so “commercial properties are paying a lot of taxes.” He also explained that many commercial properties grieved their taxes and won “every time,” in which Mineola had to pay the grievance and the court fees.

“Finally, after years and years have gone by,” he said, “we have certiorari debt under control because we reassessed the property.”

According to Walsh, Garden City Park, which is within his district, has been neglected for decades in terms of the lack of sufficient money received from the Town of North Hempstead. However, through the Community Development Fund, “we did manage to get more money to [maintain the sidewalks] with awnings and lights.”

Echoing DeSena in some of his final remarks, Walsh said, “None of this would’ve happened if we didn’t fight. Everything is a battle.”