Quote:
Originally Posted by LINative
Sean, Venetian Shores residents do not pay taxes to the hamlet of West Babylon now do they? But they do pay taxes to the Lindenhurst school district.
Listen to reason? Maybe people should listen to people whose family actually lives in the area? Several posters have said they believe Venetian Shores is part of Lindenhurst.
A simple google search will tell you where Harding Avenue or Venetian Shores park is.
I also do not understand why some people think that all of the Lindenhurst PO has to be part of the incorporated village.
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No one pays taxes to West Babylon or any other hamlet. A hamlet by definition is just a geographic area within a town that mainly exists for statistical purposes. It's not a government entity like a village, city, town or county. People in West Babylon pay property taxes to the Town of Babylon and whichever school district they're zoned for.
Yes, the Venetian Shores area has a Lindenhurst ZIP code. No argument there. Yes, it is in Lindenhurst SD, no argument there either. You're misunderstanding the whole thing about municipal boundaries vs. ZIP codes and other districts, though.....and it is actually a very confusing subject that most people don't know about. I only found out how things work about 2 years ago when I started adding geographic boundaries for LI on
WikiMapia and realized there were huge descrepencies between what I thought hamlet/village borders were in my area and what the official Census Bureau and Nassau County maps were telling me (BTW, the Lindenhurst/West Babylon border on WM is wrong....some bozo changed it).
The whole subject is really over complicated and ridiculous, so bear with me while I fumble around trying to explain. It took me a long time to finally "get" it, because it's contrary to what I had learned my entire life up until that point. There is also an excellent article on Wikipedia about all of the governmental districts and types of municipalities in New York State, but it's really long:
Wikipedia - Administrative Divisions of New York State
And here's an article on
Non-conforming postal zones, which exist in every state.
In a nutshell, however, think of government in New York like a book of tracing paper. On a solid piece of paper, there is a picture of a layer cake, and it looks like this:
This is a HORRIBLE DRAWING of every type of GEOGRAPHIC division in NY State. Everything in RED has some form of government attached to it, everything in BLUE is just a smaller part of the larger body it lies within. There are actually a few other kinds, but for our purposes here on LI - this is all we encounter.
There are also some geographic rules these divisions have to follow:
County - The major geographic division of NY. There are 62 of them. Everyone who lives in NY lives in a county, except residents of Indian Reservations or foriegn consulates, which are also technically not a part of NY.
Towns & Cities - All areas within a county are broken down into either towns or cities. Cities have a higher level of autonomy and as such typically provide more services for their residents than those who live in towns. One of the biggest differences is that cities can provide & oversee school districts, which towns cannot (outside of cities, school districts are an independant government entity). New York City is broken down into Boroughs, all other cities are broken down only into neighborhoods. Towns are broken down into villages and hamlets. Towns cannot cross county borders, cities technically can, but only do in two instances (NYC & Geneva).
Villages - A village is an incorporated section of a town. Some provide functions such as police, electric, trash pickup, etc....but many also exist for no reason other than zoning ordinances/building codes - like a HOA. They operate according to a statewide Village Law. Villages can cross town & county borders, and oftentimes do. They are broken down only into neighborhoods.
Hamlets - As mentioned earlier, hamlets are unincorporated areas of a town. In other words, an area which has no government of it's own. Everyone on Long Island who doesn't live in a city or a village lives in a hamlet (within a town). A "CDP" is the Census Bureau's term for any unincorporated community. They call it that as opposed to "hamlet" because each state has a different term for this type of area. Some places in upstate NY, hamlets are not CDPs, but in the case of Nassau & Suffolk, they are the same exact thing. Hamlets/CDPs can also cross town & county borders.
Neighborhoods - Neighborhoods exist in cities, villages and hamlets (but never towns)...and there are even sub-neighborhoods within other neighborhoods (eg: Forest Hills Gardens, in Forest Hills, Queens, NYC). The only difference between neighborhoods and hamlets is that neighborhoods are purely informal geographic areas, with loose boundaries defined colloquially and not according to any governing body. Likewise, neighborhoods do not have statistical data compiled on them by the US Census Bureau. As a rule of thumb, neighborhoods CANNOT cross the borders of the hamlet, village or city they are located within. In cases where this happens, it is technically more correct to label them as two separate neighborhoods with the same name, though located in different jurisdictions (eg: Meadowmere Park in Woodmere, Town of Hempstead, Nassau County and Meadowmere Park in Queens, NYC)
Whew, that was boring, right? Well remember the "book of tracing paper" analogy? I'll get to the explanation of why we're dealing with tracing paper in a minute.....but first, let's take that layer cake, cut it up and serve it to the people who live in Venetian Shores. I forgot to mention that when you eat this cake, you have to start from the bottom and go all the way up to the top...
So we start at the bottom. All the people who live in Venetian Shores can eat their
Venetian Shores slice obviously, but they can also eat the pieces above it - now remember, a neighborhood doesn't cross city, village or hamlet boundaries, and since VS residents are not governed by the Village of Lindenhurst, they are only gonna be able to take the West Babylon hamlet/CDP slice...as well as the Town of Babylon, Suffolk County and NY State slices.
So why do those people only get to eat those slices if their mailing address says "Lindenhurst, NY 11757" and their children attend the Lindenhurst Union Free School District???
This is where the tracing paper analogy comes in, and also why many people aren't aware of what community they actually live in. It's also the most confusing aspect to local geography, so I apologize if this sounds really stupid....
Outside of local government services, there are literally thousands of other state and federal districts within NY that generally have no geographic ties to the local areas they bear the name of. School districts are a STATE district, the USPS is a FEDERAL district. So while children in Venetian Shores do attend "Lindenhurst" schools, and VS residents get mail from the "Lindenhurst" post office, these organizations are only tied to Lindenhurst the village in name alone.
To represent this, we'll put two of those cake pictures underneath a sheet of tracing paper and draw the ZIP code representation on top of it....and hopefully this will make some sense:
So as you can see, the "Lindenhurst, NY 11757" ZIP code covers parts of BOTH cakes. The entirety of the Village of Lindenhurst, the entirety of Venetian Shores, and the part of West Babylon that Venetian Shores is located within. The school district boundaries would look pretty much the same (technically, I should have added one for the hamlet/CDP North Lindenhurst as well....but this is already getting ridiculously long!). The school district, the ZIP code, the police precinct, the legislative district, the water district, etc. etc. etc.....all those things are NOT part of the layer cakes, they are drawings on tracing paper that cover them. It's just a ridiculously complicated system that not many people are aware of, and it leads to "invented" geographic divisions..... like "Venetian Shores is in Lindenhurst, but not a part of the incorporated village". Anything that is "in" Lindenhurst, but not a part of the village ISN'T in Lindenhurst!
In other words, if you wanted to send a letter to Venetian Shores, you would mail it to "Lindenhurst, NY 11757" but if you wanted to GO to Venetian Shores, you would go to West Babylon, NY.
Does it make any better sense now? I know those drawings are extremely retarded looking hahah
If all that still doesn't sell you on it, here are the official maps straight from the Suffolk County Planning Department:
Town of Babylon: Villages & Hamlet/CDPs
Suffolk County School Districts
Suffolk County ZIP Codes
All of those maps are in .PDF format and are pretty large!!!
BTW This situation is not unique to Lindy/West Babylon at all. It repeats itself in basically every community on LI and everywhere else in the US. For instance, I live in a place that has a "Wantagh, NY 11793" ZIP code, yet I live in the hamlet/CDP North Wantagh and am zoned for the Levittown School District.
What do you think Walter, did I do a good enough job?
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