Kate 'Chicken' Murray

When the going gets tough, Kate Murray waves the white surrender flag.

My neighbors and I wrote Town Supervisor Kate Murray and several town board members (including Angie Cullin) about the plans of the Association for the Help of Retarded Children (AHRC) to open a group home in our neighborhood on Johnson Place, Wantagh. We expressed our concerns that such a group home, for 6 special needs individuals, requiring the use of 5-7 vehicles and 2 vans to service them, would not be a good fit on our street that is 23 feet wide and has no sidewalks. The street can barely handle one way traffic when cars are parked on both sides. We raised the issue of safety for the 11 children that live on the block, the ability of emergency vehicles to navigate the block, as well as the issue regarding the value of our homes. Which prospective buyer, with small children, will want to buy a house next to a busy group home?

The response we got from Kate Murray was “With respect to reasons you give to opposing placement of this home, in order to prevent establishment proof must be furnished that establishment of a home would provide such a concentration of similar facilities that the nature and character of the area would be substantially altered. While municipalities have some rights to raise this issue, they have a historical success rate of zero. For this reason, and because homes of this type have generally proven to be good neighbors, Hempstead Town abandoned its practice of opposing group home proposals many years ago”.

Doing research on the internet, and working the local phone books, I have found that group homes (especially those run by the AHRC) have flourished during Kate Murray’s administration. Over 70 group homes were identified in the Town of Hempstead. Because these group homes are run by so-called charities or not- for-profit organizations, each home is taken off the tax rolls. The organizations that own them pay no property or school taxes but are free to use the town’s fire, sanitation, and police services. Their house managers are allowed to send their children to local schools free of charge. If, by Kate Murray’s definition, that “homes of this type have generally proven to be good neighbors” then we should all have our homes removed from the town’s tax rolls. I’m sure that all of us want to be “good neighbors” and not pay any taxes for the town’s services including Kate Murray’s salary.  

Doing some math, the average home in Nassau County pays around $14,000 (without STAR) in school and property taxes. Multiplied by 73 identified group homes, this equals $1,022,000 in taxes that the town is not collecting each year from these “charities” that are really businesses.  The AHRC, for example, lists the following business services on their website: eWorks Program, Assembly and Packaging, Landscaping and Commercial Cleaning, Supported Employment, and Pre Vocational Services. For those families that have children requiring their special services, they can enroll them in one of their schools providing that they pay their tuition rates. Charity?

Organizations such as the AHRC do a fair amount of lobbying and support the re-election of those candidates that support their views. With savings of over $1 million dollars in annual school and property taxes, they can afford to support the election campaigns of those town officials that have chosen to look the other way and not to challenge the establishment of new group homes.

My neighbors and I urge you to vote this election, just not for Kate Murray. We need a Town Supervisor that has the guts to stand-up for the little guy. Kate Murray is not that person.