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HERALD Democrats sue over district map
thomas wants to go to Congress
Remembering BoCEs head
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Vol. 34 No. 32
august 3 - 9, 2023
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Solages urges school districts to join new meal program By CaRolINE KEllY Intern
Courtesy Office of Assemblywoman Michaelle Solages
Assemblywoman Michaelle Solages spoke at the Forest Road School in Valley Stream to urge qualifying school districts to apply for the CEP universal meal program amid new state funding to pay for the cost of school meals not covered by the federal government.
Assemblywoman Michaelle Solages and her colleague from Queens, Jessica GonzalezRojas, gathered hunger advocates, teachers and community members at the Valley Stream Forest Road Elementary School on July 26 to urge qualifying school districts to opt into the state’s federally backed Community Eligibility Program, which provides free meals to students in low-income areas. Beginning in 2020, breakfasts and hot lunches at school were guaranteed to millions of public-school students across the country at no cost to families, thanks to the federal government’s pandemic-inspired uniContinuEd on PAgE 19
LIRR set to ratchet up the price of rides next month By JuaN lasso jlasso@liherald.com
Starting on or around Aug. 20, Long Island Rail Road riders can expect a modest uptick — roughly 4.3 percent — in the price of their weekly and monthly tickets. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, LIRR’s parent company, voted unanimously last month to raise the base fares for LIRR train trips for the first time in four years. The price increase translates to a few extra cents for each ticket. A one-way ticket from Long Beach to Manhattan, for example, will cost an extra
50 cents, increasing from $14 to $14.50 during peak hours, and will rise from $10.25 to $10.75 off-peak. While the agency customarily raises fares every two years, MTA officials held off on an anticipated round of increases in 2021 for fear that it would drive commuters away from mass transit at a time when winning them back was key. It also still had billions of dollars in federal relief from the coronavirus pandemic it could tap into. The situation came to a head earlier this year, when the agency said it faced a projected budget gap of $2.5 billion by
2025. It has since managed to stave off financial ruin and avoid making drastic service cuts after Gov. Kathy Hochul and lawmakers promised to add millions of dollars in funding. “We have to face the harsh reality of MTA’s fiscal cliff,” Hochul noted in her 2024 executive budget address. “A problem that was created by almost the complete cessation of ridership during the pandemic — except for emergency workers, first responders, and health care workers.” Critics and observers, however, argue that the MTA’s financial problems reach back decades, and are attributable to
questionable budgetary practices that have left expenses outpacing revenue. The current fare bump — and those still on the way — are part of a roughly $1.3 billion bailout deal struck between the transit giant and Albany, MTA chair and chief executive Janno Lieber said. On balance, with the LIRR
dropping some fare prices by 10 percent last year, “the fares are still (comparatively) lower than they used to be, even though everything else in life has gone up,” Lieber said. For riders like Sebastian Munoz of Queens, who waited at the Valley Stream station last Saturday, the uptick in ContinuEd on PAgE 4