By Norman Gersman
About one hundred years ago it became obvious that New York City was expanding. That the farms and villages that made up the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens would vanish into an urban environment. A great deal of planning had to be done. The reservoir system was already planned and being built, it would supply the necessary water to the City. The large reservoir that stood at 42nd and Fifth Avenue for so many years sending water to lower Manhattan was now being made into the library and Bryant Park. The City was now planning the subway lines, the sewer lines, and placing electrical lines underground. Detailed planning and more planning led to a successful urbanization of the outer boroughs and not a complete urban mess.
Today, Nassau County is facing similar urbanization pressures. Billionaire developers come up with plans for huge developments and politicians talk about downtown hubs. Some people feel that it's all a bunch of crap because it all seems to be a hodgepodge of building with no planning. Well, now that I mentioned that word "crap" why don't we start planning where all that substance will go to ? Considering that there are portions of this County still using cesspools in their backyards it might be a good starting place. Our greatest natural resources are our water and beaches. These resources will be lost if we do not plan to upgrade our sewage plants and lines prior to urban development. It's going to cost a lot of money. Which brings me to why I am angry.
A couple of weeks ago a bunch of congresspeople and their families attended the Copenhagen climate change shindig ON OUR TAXPAYER DIME. It took three or our military planes just to get them over there and I am sure that they had a great time...I mean..it was free..what can be better than that. But you know what they did ? They promised to give the rest of the world $100 Billion (that's B as in Billion) of our tax money (or money we borrowed from China...whatever) every year going into the future. For what? So that these other countries can fight climate change. I did not know one can fight climate change by purchasing billions of dollars worth of Chinese weapons. One wonders when you see on TV some poor snook in Somalia walking around with a couple thousand dollars worth of Chinese made rocket propelled grenades....just where did that money come from?
I don't want to give $100,000,000,000.00 a year, every year, of our taxes to the rest of the world. Just send of few our taxpayer dollars back here so we can plan for the future. And you congresspeople should teleconference next time.