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LI was “cheap” back in the day because Suffolk was farms and wooded land. Now that it’s all built up there is no more cheap land or housing. This has nothing to do about jobs. People are obviously affording it some way because they just keep building homes, condos and apartments!
Well Twings, I think everything you wrote speaks directly to the 2nd half of my post re: infrastructure apathy and fear mongering have led to this mess. Will take much hardline effort to change, from a tax riot to a Con-Con to break the ponzi contracts, to free community college w/ ladder to 4 year (exactly like Austin and not even as good as NC if I'm not mistaken). The Triangle has been stealing LI talent for 30 years. Now LI has no talent! lol. Just gangbanger stares and Trump flotillas. We be broken. Not an easy fix, but first have to admit the problem and move in the right direction, despite an army of nimbys and entrenched political hacks fighting change tooth and nail.
It's the same song everywhere though. No one wants to be bothered voting. Everyone here is pi$$ed off about school policies relating to COVID and ALL you hear is WHAT CAN WE DO ABOUT THE SCHOOL BOARD?! Well, it just so happens that ALL of them were up for re-election in November ALL of them, save one, were re-elected. So you couldn't be bothered when you THOUGHT things were ok (they weren't) and now you want to change? You get another chance in November 2022 if they haven't completely effed things up by then we might have a chance.
Everyone on LI complains but no one votes or has the will to figure out a different way.
IDK, Pec. Not really true. 1. LI was ALL THAT and the engine of many industries (particularly aerospace and defense). Those industries didn't leave due to supply logistics. They left because it was too expensive to live so too little pool of young talent. 2. Those other places were sprawling residential nothings too with no focal points either. Austin has multiple points unrelated to each other (Univ Texas, Capitol, downtown, Mopac, and much sprawl since 2000) , just like LI could. We did EXACTLY what they did in the 50's and 60's. Built affordable housing and GI billed returning GI's into educated, employed, upwardly mobile citizens. We CREATED the template. Then we systematically nimbied the crap out of it under local "fear of Queensification" and "don't hurt our unique suburban character" closeted racist horse hockey. All scare tactics to keep the local Red and Blue ninnies in power and siphon campaign money out of the scared upper middle (who are now just the middle). Now we get to pay for 25 years of failed, shortsighted, cut our nose to spite our face development. And every infrastructure penny siphoned off to feed the public ponzi machine. Lose-Lose. It starts with a can-do attitude and can-do policies. We CAN easily outperform NYC if we wanted to and we could outperform many of those cheap areas who only have talent because they have cheap university systems for locals (Austin Comm College is free, get above a C and auto transfer to UT Austin, not too shabby a deal) and offer some reasonable housing options. Any wonder they're getting the talent, and the industry. Houses aren't cheap and taxes are rising (which is why growth is slowing, again NOT logistics). They are just getting more competition from cheaper locales, the same way we did. But they aren't abandoning development over it for fear of becoming Houston. They stick with the plan and siphon off Cali and NY expats to their thriving industries, which then expands the sector...rinse and repeat. When they come, more come. When they leave, more leave.
The problems run deep but LI is anti-compete. If you're anti-compete in 2021, you lose. We are not a bedroom community of NYC when less than 10% commute to work there. We are a rudderless suburban metro with dueling factions looting the resources and scaring the townsfolk out of their own potential growth.
Actually that was one of the reasons they left. Truckers hate Long Island as they spend so much time sitting in traffic rather than turning over loads, which hits them in their wallets. That cost gets passed along which hits manufactures in their wallets, and so on. There is also very limited commercial rail to use. The cost of bringing in materials and shipping them off ate into profits.
The other reason was cost of living. I’ve told this story before but I was driving around the top brass of UTC and they’re looking for ways to attract engineering talent to Norden. One fellow says that Long Island has great beaches to which the head honcho says, “you can’t eat beach”. That’s when I knew my fortune would eventually be elsewhere. And that was in the mid-eighties.
Which brings up another thing, Long Island keeps touting the same things which don’t really seem to matter as much as they think; beaches, bagels and education. The only ones who care about how many Siemens or Intel science contest winners Long Island has are those kids and the real estate agents selling that school district. It doesn’t matter how good a school district is if it’s a big hit in the family budget, especially when I can find pretty good schools elsewhere, maybe not as good as the ones producing science contest winners but good enough to get into excellent universities. If all the great things about the Island aren’t keeping or drawing the talent then the value of those things isn’t much.
Long Island has a lot of great things going for it, but it is in competition with more and more places that also have great things going for them. When I first got to Richmond it sucked and couldn’t hold a candle to Long Island, now it’s a competitor as is Tampa, NOVA, Austin, and numerous other places.
It's the same song everywhere though. No one wants to be bothered voting. Everyone here is pi$$ed off about school policies relating to COVID and ALL you hear is WHAT CAN WE DO ABOUT THE SCHOOL BOARD?! Well, it just so happens that ALL of them were up for re-election in November ALL of them, save one, were re-elected. So you couldn't be bothered when you THOUGHT things were ok (they weren't) and now you want to change? You get another chance in November 2022 if they haven't completely effed things up by then we might have a chance.
Everyone on LI complains but no one votes or has the will to figure out a different way.
Smithtown!!!!! What they did was amazing voted out the entire Fn board.
Actually that was one of the reasons they left. Truckers hate Long Island as they spend so much time sitting in traffic rather than turning over loads, which hits them in their wallets. That cost gets passed along which hits manufactures in their wallets, and so on. There is also very limited commercial rail to use. The cost of bringing in materials and shipping them off ate into profits.
The other reason was cost of living. I’ve told this story before but I was driving around the top brass of UTC and they’re looking for ways to attract engineering talent to Norden. One fellow says that Long Island has great beaches to which the head honcho says, “you can’t eat beach”. That’s when I knew my fortune would eventually be elsewhere. And that was in the mid-eighties.
Which brings up another thing, Long Island keeps touting the same things which don’t really seem to matter as much as they think; beaches, bagels and education. The only ones who care about how many Siemens or Intel science contest winners Long Island has are those kids and the real estate agents selling that school district. It doesn’t matter how good a school district is if it’s a big hit in the family budget, especially when I can find pretty good schools elsewhere, maybe not as good as the ones producing science contest winners but good enough to get into excellent universities. If all the great things about the Island aren’t keeping or drawing the talent then the value of those things isn’t much.
Long Island has a lot of great things going for it, but it is in competition with more and more places that also have great things going for them. When I first got to Richmond it sucked and couldn’t hold a candle to Long Island, now it’s a competitor as is Tampa, NOVA, Austin, and numerous other places.
Respectfully, truckers are not the reason high tech companies like CA and Symbol left, it was cost, lack of talent and fraud.
Everything else above I totally agree with, especially the bolded part which is spot on and was the main point of my post re: competing. We need a reboot and new perspective.
Smithtown!!!!! What they did was amazing voted out the entire Fn board.
For the right reasons?! Is it financially prudent to knee jerk swap out your board over race and mask issues?! Nice civic action, likely a losing proposition come the next fiscal crisis. Classic LI faux-progress. But also a classic example why we'll never see consolidation. This is EXACTLY the type of local control no district wants to give up.
Listen all, I can't believe I still care about trying to change this dump for the better! It's beyond exhausting, it's impossible. Still gotta try sometimes. Wife won't let me leave!
IDK, Pec. Not really true. 1. LI was ALL THAT and the engine of many industries (particularly aerospace and defense). Those industries didn't leave due to supply logistics. They left because it was too expensive to live so too little pool of young talent. 2. Those other places were sprawling residential nothings too with no focal points either. Austin has multiple points unrelated to each other (Univ Texas, Capitol, downtown, Mopac, and much sprawl since 2000) , just like LI could. We did EXACTLY what they did in the 50's and 60's. Built affordable housing and GI billed returning GI's into educated, employed, upwardly mobile citizens. We CREATED the template. Then we systematically nimbied the crap out of it under local "fear of Queensification" and "don't hurt our unique suburban character" closeted racist horse hockey. All scare tactics to keep the local Red and Blue ninnies in power and siphon campaign money out of the scared upper middle (who are now just the middle). Now we get to pay for 25 years of failed, shortsighted, cut our nose to spite our face development. And every infrastructure penny siphoned off to feed the public ponzi machine. Lose-Lose. It starts with a can-do attitude and can-do policies. We CAN easily outperform NYC if we wanted to and we could outperform many of those cheap areas who only have talent because they have cheap university systems for locals (Austin Comm College is free, get above a C and auto transfer to UT Austin, not too shabby a deal) and offer some reasonable housing options. Any wonder they're getting the talent, and the industry. Houses aren't cheap and taxes are rising (which is why growth is slowing, again NOT logistics). They are just getting more competition from cheaper locales, the same way we did. But they aren't abandoning development over it for fear of becoming Houston. They stick with the plan and siphon off Cali and NY expats to their thriving industries, which then expands the sector...rinse and repeat. When they come, more come. When they leave, more leave.
The problems run deep but LI is anti-compete. If you're anti-compete in 2021, you lose. We are not a bedroom community of NYC when less than 10% commute to work there. We are a rudderless suburban metro with dueling factions looting the resources and scaring the townsfolk out of their own potential growth.
The defense industry didn’t leave for any of those reasons. They left because of mass defense consolidation after the Cold War. Fairchild Republic went bankrupt (they didn’t leave) because after losing the JPATS trainer contract they literally had nothing else (the A-10 was long done). Same with Grumman, after the F-14 contract ended in the early 90’s and losing several bids for other contracts they were headed for bankruptcy as well and were bought by Northrop an LA based company at the time, which quickly shuttered Calverton and most of bethpage eliminating the lions share of LI’s defense industry. It had nothing to do with not being able to ride “young talent” or living expenses (Grumman was actually on land cheaply leased from the navy or as you like to say corporate welfare lol)
Besides that though other companies certainly have left for those reasons and you certainly make some great points.
Listen all, I can't believe I still care about trying to change this dump for the better! It's beyond exhausting, it's impossible. Still gotta try sometimes. Wife won't let me leave!
Don't kid yourself, you're not changing anything by posting on city data dot com.
There are similar complaints in dozens of forums on this very site. American in general is on the decline, it's not just Long Island. Our golden age is behind us. This country can't even maintain what it has, none the less improve. As Bill Maher put it recently, we are a silly people.
For the right reasons?! Is it financially prudent to knee jerk swap out your board over race and mask issues?! Nice civic action, likely a losing proposition come the next fiscal crisis. Classic LI faux-progress. But also a classic example why we'll never see consolidation. This is EXACTLY the type of local control no district wants to give up.
They voted em out because of they didn't want critical race theory.
I would be against consolidation, every surrounding district to me has a substantially higher tax rates. If we had consolidation unless you kept the tax rates the same for each current district, I would see a hike as others would see a decrease. If we kept the current tax rates or decreased the tax rate for everyone then maybe.
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