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IF STATEN ISLAND SECEDES, WE COULD AT LEAST TEAR DOWN ALL THOSE NYC SPEED
CAMERAS, RIGHT? (OPINION)
* Published: Sep. 03, 2023, 10:00 a.m.
Nov. 3, 1993: Eleanor P. Lansworthy, Dan Singletary, state Senator John Marchi,
Assemblyman Robert Straniere and Mark Muscaro, Chamber of Commerce members,
celebrate the victory of the secession vote. (Rob Sollett/Staten Island Advance)
By
* Tom Wrobleski | wrobleski@siadvance.com
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. – Let’s think this through, people.
It’s become an almost knee-jerk reaction on Staten Island: When things aren’t
going our way, we talk about seceding from the other four boroughs and forming
our own city.
We heard the evergreen clarion call the other day from GOP Rep. Nicole
Malliotakis amid the protests against migrants being placed at the former St.
John Villa Academy.
State Sen. Andrew Lanza and City Councilman Joe Borelli, both Republicans, have
at different times been voices calling for secession as well.
Staten Islanders in 1993 voted overwhelmingly to begin the process of seceding
from the city. The movement eventually fizzled.
And I haven’t been immune from contemplating it myself, including during the
early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, when Mayor Bill de Blasio, gave Staten
Island the back of his hand when it came to pandemic resources.
Remember how de Blasio initially failed to deploy federal military medical
personnel to the Island because those resources were supposedly earmarked for
public hospitals? As if it was our fault that we were the only borough without a
public hospital.
This was life and death stuff at the time. Add to that all the other
disagreements we had with de Blasio - from Vision Zero to eating pizza with a
fork and killing our ground hog - and it was easy to wonder if Staten Island
wouldn’t be better off on its own. In any event, how could it be worse?
I admit that secession is an enticing prospect.
Staten Islanders have always chafed under the thumb of the other, more populous,
heavily Democratic-voting boroughs.
And the Democratic powers that be in City Hall and Albany don’t have to listen
to us because they frankly don’t need our votes in order to get elected. We’ve
longed for more local control but it’s been like screaming into a void.
I mean, what would be better than seeing workers from a City of Staten Island
going around and tearing down all those speed cameras and red-light cameras? It
would be like the toppling of the statues we saw during the collapse of the old
Soviet Union back in the 1990s.
But the path to secession is so convoluted that secession isn’t a concept that
can just be lightly thrown around in the heat of the moment.
The primary question is how would we pay for city services here? As our own
city, we’d need to fund, at a minimum, cops, firefighters, teachers, sanitation
workers and emergency medical technicians.
That money has to come from somewhere, and Staten Island’s business tax base
isn’t all that big, even though we have Amazon and other corporate entities here
that were lacking during the 1990s secession movement.
Then again, how many of those businesses would choose to come to Staten Island
or stay here once we started ravenously looking at them as cash cows?
Ordinary taxpayers would also have to help foot the bills, primarily through
property taxes, similar to what’s seen in New Jersey and Long Island.
Our property taxes are actually low compared to those places, because New York
City’s enormous tax base, thanks in large part to Wall Street, softens the blow.
Never mind questions over the disposition of city property here, all the
firehouses, police precincts and schools. Oh, and what happens to the Staten
Island Ferry, our only direct connection to Manhattan?
And it bears remembering that Staten Island did just fine under Republican
leaders like Mayors Rudolph Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg and Gov. George
Pataki.
Those Republicans got elected beginning in the 1990s because New Yorkers finally
get fed up with Democratic policies on crime and quality-of-life issues.
It wasn’t all that long ago. And given the heat around the migrant crisis and
other issues, it could happen again.
MORE STATEN ISLAND STORIES FROM TOM WROBLESKI
Is this the biggest villain in Staten Island political history?
Crooks take hostages at deli, rob Wells Fargo armored truck of $2.25M in biggest
heist in Staten Island history in 1978
Walk on Staten Island’s North Shore reveals creepy staircase in this very
familiar spot
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