Friday, February 9, 2018
Vol. 94, No.21
FOUNDED 1923
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LOCALLY OWNED AND EDITED
Lenten series PAGE 6 n Skit Night PAGE 22
Longtime baseball coach’s age discrimination suit settled
3rd IN DIVISIONS
BY RIKKI N. MASSAND
Garden City High School's Boys Swimming and Diving Team competed in the Division 8 Championships on Saturday, February 3rd, finishing in 3rd place. See pages 58-59
Village residents overcharged for county sewer tax BY MEG MORGAN NORRIS
Residents of five Nassau County villages, including Garden City, will be receiving refunds and adjustments for an overcharge on their Nassau County property tax bills, according to Nassau County Executive Laura Curran. According to Curran, due to an error made by the county’s Office of Management and Budget during her predecessor’s term of office, all property owners in the county were supposed to have received a 0.8% tax increase in the county “Sewer Disposal
$1
Tax,” or about $10 to $15 per year. However, due to the error, the cost was only charged to residents of the five villages. Some village residents reported tax increases of up to 75%, amounting to hundreds of dollars. Curran said that adjusted tax bills for the second half of the year will be sent out, and that homeowners who have already paid their county property taxes will receive refunds for the overcharges. Some residents had prepaid their taxes for the entire year See page 45
Nearly a full year after a federal court filing, Rich Smith, the former 44-year head baseball coach of Garden City High School, and Garden City Public Schools settled the age-discrimination employment lawsuit the coach brought against the district, its former superintendent and current athletic director, for an undisclosed sum. The settlement agreement was approved by U.S. District Court Judge Sandra Feuerstein on January 31. Eleven months ago, Smith’s age discrimination lawsuit was filed by Sullivan in Brooklyn’s U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, naming the defendants the Garden City school district, Superintendent of Schools Dr. Robert Feirsen and Athletic Director Dawn Cerrone. Smith’s case against the school district made headlines in the New York Post, Newsday, USA Today’s high school sports and the New York Sportswriters Association, all between March 19 and March 22, 2017. At the April 2017 board of education work session, Dr. Feirsen announced he would retire from his position at the end of July, after 12 years as the leader of the district. Smith’s filing in federal court came six months after his Equal Employment Opportunity Council (EEOC) complaint of age discrimination with the decision not to rehire him, as the complaint was filed July 29, 2016, and an ensuing investigation. Earlier in the same month, dozens of people packed into the GCPS Administration Building on Cathedral Avenue to confront and question the superintendent and
board of education at the July 2016 reorganization meeting. Continuing today, numerous former baseball players who learned under Smith, especially members of Garden City High School’s lone New York State championship team of 2000, press the district for answers to not retain him as coach. Disdain for the district’s decision was enhanced by 13,000 signatures on a petition to the district, circulated online up until the 2017 baseball season, to bring Smith back for a 45th year. Many former players met have with Smith, had dinners with him and heard from their former mentor all throughout the last 20 months of his departure from Garden City athletics and settlement of the case now. Several GCHS alumni are connected to Smith even though he has now moved to Florida and is no longer seeking to add to his 50-year career in coaching baseball in Garden City. John Maloney, GCHS Class of 2000 graduate, told the News last March that his coach had decided to “get out of Dodge” despite earning accolades in his final (2016) baseball season; Smith won the county umpires’ association Sportsmanship Award and was voted into the Nassau County Hall of Fame. Maloney says his view of the situation was collusion against Coach Smith within the district, inside the athletics administration “regime” and AD Cerrone “taking the word of a bunch of whiny parents whose kids were probably not that good.” “Now they write a check to make this go away. The district still has this AD there, and I guess it is a freefall in the way she has gone about
Fencers place second in Nassau championships Traffic Comm solves East safety concern PAGE 3
See page 45
PAGES 52-53