Increased Park Fees AKA Hidden Taxation

Monday, September 13th, the County Administration advanced their agenda of increasing most park fees by misstatements and misrepresentations and glaring omissions. Through a last minute addition to the agenda of the legislative DPW / Parks committee, they received a preliminary approval of the increases that now will go before the full legislature next Monday, September 20th at 10AM. Our thanks to those few citizens that managed to show up at the 1:30 PM meeting and waited over 3 hours to be heard.

Next Monday, PARCnassau expects to be there to testify against taxing our already overtaxed citizenry thru fees and pretending this is for our own good. The bogeyman this time around are the private ball leagues, most of whom have been around providing organized sports for Nassau taxpayers (and voters) for over twenty years.They not only provide the extra services ballplayers wanted and still want but allowed the top teams to compete regionally and nationally if they wished.

The County admits abandoning their own leagues in 2002 leaving only private leagues for ball players to join. Now if the county leagues belly up in the future there will be no leagues for our friends and neighbors. The county administration states they are "taking back" their ball fields. Its is apparent the Parks Department never shared the fact that they never lost them. Private leagues never controlled the county fields. They were always offered for game registration by the county who permitted the teams, scheduled the games and resolved any conflicts and collected a fee based on the cost of that service. For years that was one employee without a computer.

When the County stated they were starting county leagues, we were delighted, believing they would address under-served markets such as women's sports, disabled sports and senior sports. Unfortunately this was not the case. Instead they are pushing out private leagues or worse buying out certain private leagues and hiring their owners high paying county jobs to run them on behalf of the county. Hello?? Is anyone paying attention?

The method is to increase the fees for private leagues forcing them to pass on that cost to their players while reducing player fees for "new"county leagues to lure the players to switch. That is stacking the deck! What they should be doing is offering the same costs and benefits to the ball players and allow market forces to prevail. This has not been the history of County Government. They are bullying us and only we the people stop them.

Next Monday, it is time for every private league owner, manager, player to make it to the hearing at before the full legislature. Bring your families and friends. Invite everyone who cares about fairness in government.
Is the time and date inconvenient for most of us? Yes! Will you have to wait for no apparent reason? Yes!
Is good, representative government worth it? Yes! Yes!

Increasing park fees is camouflage taxation.

Bruce Piel
Chairman
Park Advocacy & Recreation Council of Nassau
246 Twin Lane East
Wantagh, NY 11793
(516) 783-8378

http://parcnassau.blogspot.com/