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Well, on the one hand, everyone here jealously guards their turf. No one will consider consolidating anything.
OTOH, to defend taxes a little bit, we do have a very, very high cost of living. I've worked in education (not for a school district), so I have some idea of what everything costs--and it does not come cheap. Unless you want to hire 22 year olds who don't know their a** from their elbow, you need to pay a decent salary. One of the reasons LI has such a high average salary is that teachers are experienced and cost more money. (Even in some hypothetical world where we got rid of tenure and the stepped salary scales, and replaced it with a new system for promoting teachers, successful, experienced teachers would get paid more.) I don't think that $75K for a master's degree and 10+ years of experience is really that excessive. For all the carping about administration, it's not a huge portion of the budget. Salaries are #1, and benefits and pensions are #2.
The Northeast in general has high property taxes; NJ is even worse than Long Island.
Even if we reduced police pay, the effect on taxes would be small. The big hit is school taxes, and the only way to reduce those is an alternate revenue stream (i.e. a different tax).
Well, on the one hand, everyone here jealously guards their turf. No one will consider consolidating anything.
OTOH, to defend taxes a little bit, we do have a very, very high cost of living. I've worked in education (not for a school district), so I have some idea of what everything costs--and it does not come cheap. Unless you want to hire 22 year olds who don't know their a** from their elbow, you need to pay a decent salary. One of the reasons LI has such a high average salary is that teachers are experienced and cost more money. (Even in some hypothetical world where we got rid of tenure and the stepped salary scales, and replaced it with a new system for promoting teachers, successful, experienced teachers would get paid more.) I don't think that $75K for a master's degree and 10+ years of experience is really that excessive. For all the carping about administration, it's not a huge portion of the budget. Salaries are #1, and benefits and pensions are #2.
The Northeast in general has high property taxes; NJ is even worse than Long Island.
Even if we reduced police pay, the effect on taxes would be small. The big hit is school taxes, and the only way to reduce those is an alternate revenue stream (i.e. a different tax).
The police are about 11% of the budget.
The schools are about 65-68. I'm all for cutting them both 15%, and the Fire district too. Everybody just has to make due with less.
If kids who play sports have to have their parents pitch in an extra $50-100...or do funding drives...they do that when they play intramurals anyway...all the programs that require 2 teachers in a class should probably go....any teacher making over 100K should be given an incentive for early retirement, and pay scales going up because a classroom teacher has a doctorate...that should stop to. In service credits...that should stop too. There are all kinds of areas here. Then there's also getting the illegals who don't pay taxes, but that's a more complex problem.
However, anyone who thinks we should do all that with the schools, and keep making SCPD rich..is probably a cop.
Pay rates have been cut Island wide. **** trickles downhill, so to speak.
Companies are making less money=Lower wages.
A job that paid let's say $15 an hour last year now pays $12.
I'm in the job market currently. I can't find anything that pays enough for me to get by. It becomes a wash. I live in Nassau, I can't find a damn thing here, not only are there less decent paying jobs now, but the market is over-saturated, so I now have to get in line with everybody else looking for a job, and chances are there is always going to be somebody with more experience, more qualified, or with an excellent line of **** to land the job over me. I'm finding a decent amount of leads in Suffolk, however when you base the wages against traveling expenses etc, it just becomes a washout.
Gas
+Lunch money
-Taxes
=Not worth the effort
Ha, lunch money could be optional though. Gas can't. And chances are gas will skyrocket back up to the 3 or 4 dollar a gallon area before summer.
I'm willing to take a little less money than I feel I'm worth in this economy, what else am I going to do? sit home and watch Jerry Springer all day until LIPA comes and cuts my power? I have to do whatever it takes to afford my house and feed my family, but not to the point where I'm working to pay to go to work. I live in western Nassau and I actually entertained a few decent offers I got in Western/Mid Suffolk, and it just isn't worth it financially. I'm only getting by now by hustling side work, which is ok, but very stressful because I never know from week to week where my next buck is coming from. Eventually the side work well runs dry. Fortunately my wife has a full time job, but it's in the "retail" business, so unfortunately she does not make enough to keep things afloat. Every penny does help though. I am the bread winner, and I aint bringing home too much bread these days...
There is definitely something to be said about having a paycheck every Friday, even if it is not exactly what you think it should be.
I have a friend who could not (still can't)keep a job to save his life. He has a wife and kids, and HAD a house. He "refused to even get out of bed for less than x amount of dollars an hour". This mentality eventually caught up with him and he lost both new cars, the house, and all the equity wrapped up in the house. And this happened when things weren't as bad as they are now! Now he goes from apartment to apartment because he can't keep up with the rent. He works a few weeks, gets pissed off for some reason and quits, or he pisses someone off and gets fired.
He comes from a somewhat wealthy background, Dad used to bail him out all of the time, but finally Dad got sick of supporting his 35 year old son and family and cut him off. (Dad still took care of the grandkids though, he didn't cut them off)
And I think that safety net was always in the back of his mind, that Dad would always be there to bail him out financially. I know for a fact his Father gave him around 30K on handouts one year, 9K alone in back mortgage payments one time to keep the house out of foreclosure.
I've heard this story so many times. The people that refuse to work for less than a certain amount of money, because they are worth so much, it's just being lazy.
That's an excellent philosophy...Lay around all day until that 100K a year job comes along because God forbid you take a job for 75K right? That's so beneath you.
Anyway, the point of all this rambling? I forgot.
Oh yeah, I was trying to say that in this economy, people should be willing to sacrifce a little in order to turn things back around, especially people in government and public jobs. If all the administrators in the school districts took even a slight pay cut, it would help. It all adds up. Some of these people are making around 200K a year. Tell me why a school Principal deserves over 100K a year, please. Maybe I'm not understanding the job qualifications, maybe they are worth that much, but I don't think so. So if they took a cut down to like $175K is that going to break the bank?
I don't think so.
Greed. Nobody is willing to sacrifice.
If all the politicians and government/public employees took even the most minimal paycut it would make a difference. I am not looking to hurt anybody or devastate anybody's quality of life by no means, but if you're making 100's of thousands dollars a year, I don't think 25 grand or so is going to put you on the street.
Pay rates have been cut Island wide. **** trickles downhill, so to speak.
Companies are making less money=Lower wages.
A job that paid let's say $15 an hour last year now pays $12.
I'm in the job market currently. I can't find anything that pays enough for me to get by. It becomes a wash. I live in Nassau, I can't find a damn thing here, not only are there less decent paying jobs now, but the market is over-saturated, so I now have to get in line with everybody else looking for a job, and chances are there is always going to be somebody with more experience, more qualified, or with an excellent line of **** to land the job over me. I'm finding a decent amount of leads in Suffolk, however when you base the wages against traveling expenses etc, it just becomes a washout.
Gas
+Lunch money
-Taxes
=Not worth the effort
Ha, lunch money could be optional though. Gas can't. And chances are gas will skyrocket back up to the 3 or 4 dollar a gallon area before summer.
I'm willing to take a little less money than I feel I'm worth in this economy, what else am I going to do? sit home and watch Jerry Springer all day until LIPA comes and cuts my power? I have to do whatever it takes to afford my house and feed my family, but not to the point where I'm working to pay to go to work. I live in western Nassau and I actually entertained a few decent offers I got in Western/Mid Suffolk, and it just isn't worth it financially. I'm only getting by now by hustling side work, which is ok, but very stressful because I never know from week to week where my next buck is coming from. Eventually the side work well runs dry. Fortunately my wife has a full time job, but it's in the "retail" business, so unfortunately she does not make enough to keep things afloat. Every penny does help though. I am the bread winner, and I aint bringing home too much bread these days...
There is definitely something to be said about having a paycheck every Friday, even if it is not exactly what you think it should be.
I have a friend who could not (still can't)keep a job to save his life. He has a wife and kids, and HAD a house. He "refused to even get out of bed for less than x amount of dollars an hour". This mentality eventually caught up with him and he lost both new cars, the house, and all the equity wrapped up in the house. And this happened when things weren't as bad as they are now! Now he goes from apartment to apartment because he can't keep up with the rent. He works a few weeks, gets pissed off for some reason and quits, or he pisses someone off and gets fired.
He comes from a somewhat wealthy background, Dad used to bail him out all of the time, but finally Dad got sick of supporting his 35 year old son and family and cut him off. (Dad still took care of the grandkids though, he didn't cut them off)
And I think that safety net was always in the back of his mind, that Dad would always be there to bail him out financially. I know for a fact his Father gave him around 30K on handouts one year, 9K alone in back mortgage payments one time to keep the house out of foreclosure.
I've heard this story so many times. The people that refuse to work for less than a certain amount of money, because they are worth so much, it's just being lazy.
That's an excellent philosophy...Lay around all day until that 100K a year job comes along because God forbid you take a job for 75K right? That's so beneath you.
Anyway, the point of all this rambling? I forgot.
Oh yeah, I was trying to say that in this economy, people should be willing to sacrifce a little in order to turn things back around, especially people in government and public jobs. If all the administrators in the school districts took even a slight pay cut, it would help. It all adds up. Some of these people are making around 200K a year. Tell me why a school Principal deserves over 100K a year, please. Maybe I'm not understanding the job qualifications, maybe they are worth that much, but I don't think so. So if they took a cut down to like $175K is that going to break the bank?
I don't think so.
Greed. Nobody is willing to sacrifice.
If all the politicians and government/public employees took even the most minimal paycut it would make a difference. I am not looking to hurt anybody or devastate anybody's quality of life by no means, but if you're making 100's of thousands dollars a year, I don't think 25 grand or so is going to put you on the street.
Cutting school administrator salaries will probably save you a few dollars per year in taxes. The vast majority of the school budget is teachers salaries. I know what my wife makes..it's a good salary. If you cut it by 25K, we would leave Long Island as soon as possible, because she could make more than that in any number of places where we could buy a huge house for 250K, and the jobs are there. Finding a job for me might not be quite so easy, but I've never been out of work for more than a month since I was 16, so I think I'd get there since I work in a field that almost every company needs.
Many of her friends would do the same. There'd be no point in staying here.
I just get pissed off when I see the Principal pull up in her Mercedes SUV, fancy clothes and jewelry, and complain about being underpaid. Yes, it's true.
In my lifetime, or at least as long as I stay in NY, I will never be able to afford a ME/BE Suv, let alone the insurance, and keeping gas in the tank. Hell, I'd be happy to own a car that is less than 10 years old at this point. A little jealous? yeah, I wont lie, but don't cry about money and come to work in fancy clothes and a fancy car. Be smart and come to work in a '75 Plymouth Volare. Ha ha.
I work my ass off, 6, sometimes 7 days a week at an average of 10-12+ hours a day.
I barely make ends meet. I have a Cape in Nassau, super-high school taxes.
My house is nothing fancy, but it is definitely on par with my neighborhood.
Somehow, some way I'm keeping things going. Struggle? absolutely.
Fun? No.
I just get pissed off when I see the Principal pull up in her Mercedes SUV, fancy clothes and jewelry, and complain about being underpaid. Yes, it's true.
In my lifetime, or at least as long as I stay in NY, I will never be able to afford a ME/BE Suv, let alone the insurance, and keeping gas in the tank. Hell, I'd be happy to own a car that is less than 10 years old at this point. A little jealous? yeah, I wont lie, but don't cry about money and come to work in fancy clothes and a fancy car. Be smart and come to work in a '75 Plymouth Volare. Ha ha.
I work my ass off, 6, sometimes 7 days a week at an average of 10-12+ hours a day.
I barely make ends meet. I have a Cape in Nassau, super-high school taxes.
My house is nothing fancy, but it is definitely on par with my neighborhood.
Somehow, some way I'm keeping things going. Struggle? absolutely.
Fun? No.
How old is the school administrator? How many years did they go to school?
There are certain decisions we make in life. People who pursued professional careers and have the schooling necessary to achieve those positions, in general, make more money (exception being SCPD..hi officer pcdnret...)....many people wouldn't chose that career if it didn't pay...the effort might not be worth it. I have more of an issue with people with no qualifications on gravy trains due to political patronage or inheriting their parents money/business.
The gravy train in Nassau has many cars and a long run of track.
My friends brother makes over $40 an hour to hold up the "Slow" sign in construction zones. I want that job! Ha!
The salaries are ridiculous. When you think about it, the median annual household income in 2007 in the United States is $50,233.00. So, 100K IS a lot of money. When the average "starter home" is around 350K on Long Island and you are supposed to spend only 2.5-3 times of your gross income on a house...Not including oil bills and property taxes. All that for living in a basic home. Rent is ridiculously high as well. I don't think I'll ever be ready to buy on LI.
Not looking to buy a BMW and mcmansion here. Talking about a 1200 SF small ranch with a backyard. The house values are going down but not the taxes...
The gravy train in Nassau has many cars and a long run of track.
My friends brother makes over $40 an hour to hold up the "Slow" sign in construction zones. I want that job! Ha!
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