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We all know why taxes are so high. Teachers union. Police union. Etc. etc. Plus, yes, our schools are great - but do we really need an occupational therapist on staff to work with the kindergarteners on their fine motor skills? Well, my district thinks so. Do we need to pay a literacy coach to visit the kindergarten classes and show the teachers how to teach literacy? Forgive me, but someone with a much vaunted Master's Degree ought to be able to handle that. But my district sees it as necessary.
Also, there are things that we need here that they don't need down south or out west (using Rachael's LV example) - for instance we need snowplows, people to drive them, salt and sand and trucks to carry them. If it doesn't snow, you're cutting that out of the budget, and you aren't paying $50 an hour to someone to drive them.
Frank Tassone just got out of jail for stealing from the Roslyn schools. HE still made something like $14K a month pension while he was in there. Nice work if you can get it.
If my DH and I move, we'll be making the same money we make here and have no mortgage, and save $9000 a year in property taxes. If we bank that $9000 a year over the next 15 years till DH is retirement age, that's $135K in our pockets, not some unions.
Newsday just posted a story about $600,000 being stolen from Lindenhurst schools. Here's a snippet:
Quote:
Weak controls over electronic banking allowed thieves to transfer $600,000 from the Lindenhurst school district, according to state auditors who say the thefts underline the need for districts to guard against cyber theft.
Lindenhurst school officials say, however, that all the money was recovered by their district - either through electronic blockage of the money transfers or through insurance repayment of transfers that couldn't be stopped. Those officials add that the district's electronic controls have been tightened since the thefts occurred in 2007.
They got it back, but some of it had to be recovered from insurance, so I am sure the taxpayers will have to pay more because the school district's insurance policies will cost more. They also could not find out who did this, but considering Tassone's "punishment," a short time in jail, yet still receiving a pension that is almost $200K a year, there's not much of a penalty, so I can see how the insider thieves would give it a try. HOW COME TASSONE GOT TO KEEP HIS PENSION? There should be a law on the books that if public employees commit crimes against their employer, their pensions are forfeited. Seems like the laws favor the crooks sometimes.
As for your last statement, all I can say is more power to you! Better in your pocket than in some union's.
The devil I know is one of the reasons I'm still here.
I'm established and I have enough "connections" to keep the boat afloat when times are tough, like now, heh heh.
If I move out of state and can't find a job or lose my job, I know I'd probabally have a more difficult time trying come up with something.
At least here I can always scrounge up something to keep money coming in during the lean times, and make up the difference at all other times.
And this is why I'm actually in better financial shape than some of my "wealthier" friends. I know people and I can hustle. Some of my friends lost part or all of their income and just dropped to floor in the fetal position sucking their thumbs because they didn't know what to do next. So yeah, from that aspect, I have a fear of the unknown. For the time being, the devil is my friend.
If you were to move somewhere the weather is always warm, since you are in the pool business, you would have work year round, so I can see it making sense for you. A lot of times employers in other states LIKE to hire former NY'ers because they know we will hustle. I have heard this alot from relatives in other parts of the country who own businesses. If you want to open your own pool business out of state, I would say customers tend to go with the natives first, so you might have to work for someone else first to get established, so that's why I am assuming you would be an employee first.
However, right now is not a good time to move with the high unemployment rate, because then people tend to "circle the wagons" and prefer to (or are pressured to) give work to their own instead of a transplant or outsider.
Soldier on, karl! And yeah, I have friends who have "dropped to the fetal position" too after losing their long-time job. However they have it easier than you because they just flat out refuse to look for a comparable job and refuse to accept a lesser job and make their husbands shoulder the burden. They know they are secure unless their husbands kick them out of the house so they take full advantage of the situation and for some I think they are actually glad they don't have to go to a job anymore.
I would never, ever, have my own business again. Been there, done it.
Money was good. Headache and stress was not.
I will always be an employee. Let someone else deal with the drama.
It's Friday, pay me!
I've already gotten job offers in the promised land with the greener grass, in fact one company basically said take your time getting here, you got a job whenever you're ready, even if it's a few years down the road. I thought that was pretty cool.
I do know the risk though. When I lived on the east end a long long time ago, I had difficulty getting decent work because they hired from "within" first, meaning locals over the "upislander" even though I had been living there for a while.
I called it geographical profiling. Hiring based on location over skill/qualifications. Ha!
I'm becoming agoraphobic. I'm already just about a total recluse, only leaving the confines of my property when absolutely necessary. Hell, I wont even answer the phone anymore. Haven't answered the door in years unless it's someone I'm expecting.
It usually takes a few weeks to adjust when I go back to work every spring. I'm in the worst business ever for a person with my mental problems. I drive around all day from one end of the Island to the other and deal with all kinds of people. Maybe this is why I'm going mad
Maybe I just need to be held and told that everything is going to be OK...
bwahahahahahahah!
I hear ya. I'm the next best thing to a hermit, too. It's more a matter of misanthropy than agoraphobia, though. Writers can be curmudgeons like that.
The strange thing is, one can write pretty much anywhere nowadays. All you need is a computer, a phone, and an internet connection.
? There should be a law on the books that if public employees commit crimes against their employer, their pensions are forfeited. Seems like the laws favor the crooks sometimes.
.
Right - there is a law that a criminal cannot benefit from his crime, even if s/he writes a book about it, etc. SHould be the same for thieves.
I hear ya. I'm the next best thing to a hermit, too. It's more a matter of misanthropy than agoraphobia, though. Writers can be curmudgeons like that.
The strange thing is, one can write pretty much anywhere nowadays. All you need is a computer, a phone, and an internet connection.
Wait, why am I here again?
Writer's block and can't think of any poetry?
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