Serving New Hyde Park, North New Hyde Park, Herricks, Garden City Park, Manhasset Hills, North Hills, Floral Park
$1
Friday, April 14, 2017
Vol. 66, No. 15
N E W H Y D E PA R K
ARTS EXHIBIT AT GOLD COAST
STATE REPORT PANS LIRR
BLANK SLATE WINS 10 STATE AWARDS
PAGE 25
PAGE 24
PAGE 3
New face tries for ed board
BRINGING BOOK MAGIC
Zanetti runs for Turner’s open seat BY S A M U E L G L A S S E R Henry R. Zanetti, a Williston Park resident and active Herricks PTA member, is running to fill a soon-to-be-empty seat on the Herricks school board, he said last week. Zanetti is looking to fill the vacancy left by Trustee Christine Turner, a former school board president who has decided to step down after 27 years on the school board. “I’ve done enough PTA and now I want to see what it’s like from the other side of the table,” Zanetti said in an interview Friday. Incumbent Trustee James Gounaris, first elected in 2011, said he plans to run for a third three-year term on the board. He served as school board president from 2013 to 2015. Zanetti is a retired U.S. Customs inspector who was chief of the cargo inspection branch at John F. Kennedy International AirContinued on Page 59
PHOTO COURTESY OF HILLSIDE GRADE SCHOOL
Hillside Grade School faculty, students and families collected 46 cartons of books for donation to Book Fairies, a not-for-profit organization, for distribution to less fortunate children and adults. The committee was led by Hillside Grade School teachers Maureen Cullen, Yvonnne Arias, Nanette Stepanian and Dawn Weihs.
$55K raise for top cop in F.P. budget B Y N O A H M A N S K A R The higher salary is shown in the The Village of Floral Park will pay its police commissioner $55,000 more in the coming fiscal year, village records show. The village Board of Trustees voted Feb. 7 to raise Commissioner Stephen G. McAllister’s salary to $245,000 from $190,000, a 29 percent increase.
village’s proposed 2017-18 budget, on which the board was set to hold a public hearing Wednesday. The raise makes up for the fact that McAllister, a retired New York Police Department inspector, is no longer receiving his police pension on top of his salary, village Administrator Gerard Bambrick said in a written statement. That keeps him in the post and keeps the village’s pension costs down, Bambrick said.
“This new salary is no more, and perhaps may even be less than what it would cost the village to retain a different qualified police commissioner,” Bambrick said in the statement. McAllister received two-year waivers from the state Civil Service Commission allowing him to receive his pension in 2010, when he started as commissioner at a $175,000 salary, as well as 2012 and 2014. But he was denied a waiver in 2016. McAllister said the $55,000 raise is about half of what he received annually from his pen-
sion. McAllister was thinking about leaving his job if he did not get a raise, as he could not have supported his family in Floral Park without it, he said. He is married and has five children, three of whom live at home. “I’m still taking a major hit financially, but I do have the comfort of working in the village that I’m raising my family in,” McAllister said in an interview. Hiring a new commissioner who had not retired would have increased the amount the village Continued on Page 59
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