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If anybody should be complaining, its NYC. Our commercial tax base supports the entire state, and without it, New York State would resemble South Dakota.
Why not though? It's worth looking into. And just for contrast, the ghettoes of Westchester are on par with some equal bad parts of NYC...LI has nothing that even remotely rivals a southwest Yonkers.
Westchester has done better than Nassau and Suffolk in terms of jobs. The LI counties were hard hit when manufacturing companies like Lockheed and Grumman left and nothing comparable replaced them.
Westchester still benefits from the large, albeit shrinking, presence of IBM, GE and the financial companies in Stamford plus Mastercard and Pepsico. It also attracts a fair number of expats who rent in Scarsdale and Larchmont as well as Wall St. types. Eventually I think it will hurt but it will take a while.
So while the poorest of the poor in Westchester could be worse than the poorest of the poor in LI - assuming this is true, the middle and upper middle class of Westchester are probably doing better then their counterparts in LI.
Note that not all of LI is doing bad. The north shore areas are faring quite well because of the large hospital campuses and on a per capita basis, Nassau is wealthier than Westchester. Suffolk is struggling. So what you really have here is parts of LI doing better than others. The pain is not equally felt.
As you can see, it wasn't easy initially, but it appeared to be the right thing to do for the community at large.
And there have been many challenges for this large school system over the years with regards to busing, school choice, and moving into a neighborhood only to find out that you cannot go to the school down the street. Go to the Raleigh forum some time and do a search on Wake County Schools and you will find out all the wonderful side effects of a large county school system.
Having said that, Pennsylvania has lots of little school districts and doesn't have the high taxes that Long Island has. It has to be more than that.
Leaving LI was the best decision I made. Most people I know my age (26) are still living at home with their parents. Yikes. That's probably good for getting a date...
And we're all so happy for you. Now that you went away, why don't you GO AWAY!
All these expatriate LIers need to get on with their newfound lives and leave us Long Islanders alone to commiserate. Geesh!
Westchester has done better than Nassau and Suffolk in terms of jobs. The LI counties were hard hit when manufacturing companies like Lockheed and Grumman left and nothing comparable replaced them.
Westchester still benefits from the large, albeit shrinking, presence of IBM, GE and the financial companies in Stamford plus Mastercard and Pepsico. It also attracts a fair number of expats who rent in Scarsdale and Larchmont as well as Wall St. types. Eventually I think it will hurt but it will take a while.
So while the poorest of the poor in Westchester could be worse than the poorest of the poor in LI - assuming this is true, the middle and upper middle class of Westchester are probably doing better then their counterparts in LI.
Note that not all of LI is doing bad. The north shore areas are faring quite well because of the large hospital campuses and on a per capita basis, Nassau is wealthier than Westchester. Suffolk is struggling. So what you really have here is parts of LI doing better than others. The pain is not equally felt.
So what is it about Nassau and Suffolk that they can't attract jobs in your opinion?
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"The man who sleeps on the floor, can never fall out of bed." -Martin Lawrence
And we're all so happy for you. Now that you went away, why don't you GO AWAY!
All these expatriate LIers need to get on with their newfound lives and leave us Long Islanders alone to commiserate. Geesh!
You become a lot less bitter and grumpy when you leave The Island too. Typical elitist attitude. I'm so sorry i clicked on the LI section of the interwebz.
So what is it about Nassau and Suffolk that they can't attract jobs in your opinion?
This topic has been beaten to death in so many threads. The answer is a combination of bad geography, poor business infrastructure, logistics and other high costs of doing business. Add to that LI's past heavy dependence on manufacturing, real estate and nothing else (except for health services in the north shore) which led to complacency.
Now it's too late. There are fewer big companies to attract and NYC is pulling out the red carpet to lure whatever little is left.
Westchester's job market is not running on all cylinders either. But it was not as dependent on manufacturing as LI was. It also had the benefit of history - IBM and GE just happened to be there. But now its job market is shrinking and/or becoming increasingly dependent on NYC. The decline just has not happened at the same pace and the same magnitude as LI.
While I agree with everyone that posted, I'd like to see a thread or poll that lists how much each persons property tax has gone up over their entire home ownership. Maybe we can all list it under our screen names? Mine have exactly doubled in 17 years (6K to 12K). I successfully grieved them once and it went down about $800.
Matt
No longer living on LI, but we bought our house in 1997 and the taxes were $4900 and they are now $15K on that house. It went even worse than we thought it would when we decided we needed to get out while the gettin' was good. we figured they'd be about $17,500 by the time our youngest graduated HS and she just turned 10.
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