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39 at Riverside celebration
oyster Fest makes a return
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Vol. 31 No. 40
THE LEADER IN PROP ERTY TAX REDUCT ION
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Residents: Don’t fence us from the beach 1,200, and over the course of the weekend, 17 people had to be rescued from the ocean. To gate or not to gate? On July 23, the city decided That is the question the Long that the beach would close at 8 Beach City Council is now wres- p.m., and the boardwalk an hour tling with as fall inches quietly later. A team of special summer toward winter, and the gates and patrols reminded people of the other barriers installed at rules, and gates and wooden sawentrances to the horses were put in boardwalk this sumplace at boardwalk mer to limit crowds entrances. are still standing — In the aftermath and residents are of the boisterous voicing their disg atherings, resipleasure. dents accepted the The gates, they bar riers. But as say, are an eyesore, summer wound Roy lEsTER and not the best of d ow n , t h e c o m messages to send out Resident plaints began, and about Long Beach. t h e y h ave m a d e The boardwalk their way to the City was closed altogether from Council. March to May, as the coronavi“Could you commit to keeprus pandemic raged, amid con- ing the boardwalk entrances cerns about the rising number open during the winter?” one of Covid-19 cases in the city and woman asked at a council meetthe boardwalk’s potential to ing last week, “When I need spread the virus as walkers, run- fresh air, I find the boardwalk ners and bicyclists interacted. closed. When I saw that, I cried.” After it reopened, city officials Roy Lester, a former president were forced to restrict its use of the Long Beach Board of Eduafter two unsettling incidents. cation and a frequent critic of One weekend in June, some 800 some city policies, added, young people celebrating a grad- “Nobody wants thousands of uation gathered on the board- kids on the boardwalk. But that walk. The following weekend, can happen anywhere.” The another crowd was estimated at Continued on page 3
By JamEs BERNsTEiN jbernstein@liherald.com
Courtesy Long Beach Public Schools
Honored for the arts Long Beach High School senior Robin Xiao has been honored as a Merit Award recipient in the Long Island Arts Alliance’s Scholar Artist Awards Program. He is among only 20 students throughout Nassau and Suffolk counties to receive this distinction, and is one of six who were recognized in the Visual Arts category.
D.A. issues scathing report on Long Beach payout scandal By sCoTT BRiNToN and Jim BERNsTEiN jbernstein@liherald.com, sbrinton@liherald.com
When he was Long Beach’s city manager from 2012 to 2018, Jack Schnirman, now the Nassau County comptroller, allowed millions of dollars in “improper payments” for accrued sick and vacation days to city employees when they left their jobs, either to retire or move on, according to a two-year investigation by
District Attorney Madeline Singas. Additionally, the D.A. said in a summary of findings Wednesday, Schnirman, a Democrat, personally accepted “a payment much more generous than provided for by the plain language of [his] contract with the city” and waited a year to return the overpayment, which amounted to nearly $53,000. “The taxpayers of Long Beach deserved better,” Singas
said. Brett Speilberg, a spokesman for Schnirman, said, “The closure of the investigation confirms what the comptroller has said all along — he deferred to the city’s legal counsel on all personnel questions, including termination pay, and is the only person to voluntarily return the portion of the payment that was called into question by the audit Continued on page 3
T
he gates should come down.