What Developments with the Roslyn County Club Means for Taxpayers

If you haven’t heard of the Roslyn Country Club (RCC), let me take a minute and fill you in. It is a part of Roslyn with 668 houses that were built as part of a community by Mr. Levitt. The idea that Levitt had was to build “communities” where the people could be together and grow together. Hence RCC was this type of community. 

One of the perks of being part of this community was that it had a club house and a pool facility for the 668 households. If you lived in this community of RCC, you
could pay a small yearly fee to pay for these facilities. As the years went by, the yearly fee stayed the same or increased slightly. The costs of maintaining the facility out grew what was collected by the residents. 

The club house, pool and tennis courts (about 10 acres) were purchased by a private company and opened to the 668 households for a fee of about $150 a year. Not many participated. The new owner raised the fee so that he can afford to operate it. Due to this increase, less people joined. The fee at its highest was about $500 a year with less than 100 households participating. The private owner then closed the pool facility because the funds generated via membership did not meet operating costs. It is still closed to this day.

For years the Kaiman administration, (supervisor of the Town of North Hempstead) has explored different ways to reopen this pool facility. Under intense pressure from the RCC civics association, Supervisor Kaiman, and have talked about eminent domain to forcefully take private property for municipal use, buying the property from the owner or some other deal to mutually benefit the property owner, the 668 RCC residents and the administration.

For years there were meetings at with both sides arguing their cases. This issue came to a head this summer and fall, where the administration made it a campaign issue to finally try and finalize this project to make the RCC resident happy.   

The core of the issue here is that the town government wants to use tax payer money to for the use of the RCC residents. The administration says that it will be a public facility that will be open to all residents of the TONH. The catch is that it will cost upwards of .

Most people who live in the TONH cannot really afford to be a member of this pool and tennis facility. The administration and proponents of this project claim that the facility will be self-sufficient. That once it is purchased and built it will not be a cost burden to the rest of the tax payers who choose not to join or cannot afford too.

There is no plan as to what happens when there aren’t enough members to
of buying, building and maintaining this facility. When this happens, the rest of the town’s taxpayers will be forced to pay the difference via higher property taxes. 

With the state of the economy the way it is, with the hundreds of millions the TONH currently owes, is it irresponsible to add tens of millions more for this project. If RCC wants a community pool (like New Hyde Park, etc.), then they should form a special district as a community and pay for this project themselves. Then again, less than 100 families joined the pool at $150/year, will more join now for a fee of over $1,000? The only way RCC can afford a community pool is to have the entire town pay for it. This is not fair, irresponsible and downright wrong of them and the administration. How about a town vote Mr. Supervisor?