Overwhelming rejection to sale of district buildings voiced at BOE meeting

A steady stream of opposition to the potential sale of school district property was voiced at the October 5 board of education meeting, during which thirteen offers for the three available properties were formally presented to the public by Newmark Realty. 

Twelve offers were for the purchase of the properties (three for Dickinson Avenue, four for Bellerose Avenue, and five for the Brosnan building). One additional offer was for a lease at Dickinson.

The offers included developing the properties into single-family homes, townhouses, luxury apartment units, and 55-and-over units. Of the twelve proposals, none were for affordable or workforce housing or Section 8 developments, said officials from Newmark Realty during the meeting. The fifth offer for Brosnan was officially received just an hour prior to the meeting’s start, a $2.5 million offer to buy from Northport Village. 

While the representatives, Scott Berfas and Daniel Oliver from Newmark, said the buildings were marketed for both lease and sale, there was only one lease proposal submitted.

“Leasing commercial space across the country, post-Covid, has changed,” said Oliver. “There are not large users looking for large blocks of space. We’ve been looking and we’ll continue to look, [but] we haven’t seen it.” 

Though specifics of the lease or sale offers were not disclosed by the board or realtors at the meeting, Dr. Ellen Richer, Northport resident and founder of Whole Child Academy, a not-for-profit private day school for “twice exceptional (2e)” students currently based in Melville, said later on in the evening that she submitted the lease offer for Dickinson, but had not yet received any updates from the district. 

Following a presentation of the offers by Newmark, and a deliberation period during which no board members asked questions, public participation began.  

Prior to the first speaker, BOE President Larry Licopoli reiterated the board’s intentions. “Without your input it’s not possible for us to make a responsible decision. Even though we are far away from making any consideration relative to any kind of scenario, it feels like we had a little bit of the cart ahead of the horse… we hope we can correct that,” Licopoli said. “We will be taking the information that we receive tonight and putting it into an overall picture with respect to potential next steps,” he added, stating again that no property would be sold without the approval of district voters in a public referendum. 

Northport resident Teresa Ford was the first to the podium and expressed a common refrain from the evening: “The community would like to let the board know that the community is against the sale of the school buildings. The plan that the community wants going forward will be to lease only,” Ford said. She noted that young families have been moving into Northport-East Northport as elderly residents move out, referencing the “Covid baby boom” and birth of five children on her block alone. She also said that Matinecock Court, the affordable housing development being built on the corner of Elwood and Pulaski Road, will bring “lots of new children into the schools.” 

In addition to questioning and voicing a concern about the issue of enrollment, other topics brought forth by residents throughout the evening included a lack of communication between the district and all of its Northport-East Northport residents, specifically younger couples with no school-aged children, and the elderly who don’t often get information via email or social media. 

Some residents thought a district-wide mailer alerting the community of the presentation should have been distributed prior to both the original September 21 BOE meeting and the rescheduled presentation on October 5. 

Others brought forth issues related to increased development and traffic in the community, and the impact additional housing would have on the environment and quality of life in Northport-East Northport. A handful of residents voiced their disapproval of previous decisions made by the BOE and their distrust of the process related to marketing the vacant buildings. Issues related to the district’s reorganization, safety of Northport Middle School, and decision on the LIPA settlement were all mentioned. A few speakers noted that a one-time payment from a building sale would not contribute enough to the district budget or capital improvement fund to warrant losing valuable property and green space. 

Rob Berger, an East Northport resident with three children in the district, said that although the taxpayers will be making the final decision about the future of these three buildings, he understands the burden this issue has had on the board. “I do not agree with every decision you have made, or have thought about making, or every step in the process, but I don’t think there’s a board of education that would be perfect in this process.”

When he speaks to family members who don’t live on Long Island about the NEN school district, he said, “people are in awe.” “The opportunities, the athletics, music, arts…that is due to the great educators, the great staff, and the great families, but none of that would be possible without the great work of our board of education,” he said. 

Berger went on to say that the board should not consider a lease that includes only 20% of the property, when the district will have to cover maintenance costs. 

The offer from Richer and Whole Child Academy, as indicated on the initial offers document available on the school website, requests exclusive use of the main building, beginning in year one, with the tenant using an estimated total of 10,500 square feet of the building (Dickinson is approximately 55,000 square feet). The offer also indicates an option to purchase the property after “the first few years” of the lease, and asks for the district to incur the cost of all maintenance, landscaping, and snow plowing.

“I can not imagine that would be cost effective and a lease that low would cover all of the maintenance,” Berger said. 

He also mentioned the district’s “inflection point,” which will be in 2027-28, when the LIPA glidepath is complete and the district is down $2 million in tax contributions annually. “When we hit that inflection point, your tax bill isn’t going to be pretty,” he said. “A decision needs to be made soon.” Berger was the only speaker to voice support of a sale during the meeting.

Despite the crowd making it abundantly clear that they were not in favor of a sale, district attorney Mary Anne Sadowski of Ingerman Smith did clear up what the process would look like should district residents vote to move forward with one. 

“If the community were in favor of proceeding, the next step in that process is to negotiate a contract of sales with an entity that’s interested in purchasing the property. When that happens, that contract of sale would dictate certain things.” 

Many of the sales contracts she’s negotiated include at least a dozen prohibitive measures that disallow the buyer from doing certain things, “and that goes into the deed,” she said. If there was a term that the board asked her to negotiate with the developer, Sadowski explained, it would be placed in the contract and the initial intention for the property could not be changed if indicated on the deed. 

“The board is at a very early stage and that’s why we’re here tonight, to hear from all of you…Once the board has had the opportunity to hear all of you, they will then make a decision as to whether or not they are going to proceed with any of the offers, and whether or not they are going to enter into a contract of sales,” Sadowski said. 

“If that were to happen – if – that would require the board to then proceed with hearings again, similar to this one, and would require all of the board to put up a proposition for the sale of the property… and if the voters said ‘Yep, we don’t you want you do this,’ they would not be able to do that,” she said. “The contract of sale would be contingent on that voter approval.” 

Regarding a change of zoning and the preparation of an environmental impact statement for the properties, Sadowski explained that a contract of sales must first be negotiated, signed, and approved by voters before developers are able to apply for a change of zoning through the town or Northport Village. 

When asked after the meeting what will happen next, Licopoli told the Journal that the board’s focus at this time continues to be listening and gathering feedback from the community. “The board plans to have additional opportunities to hear from our community regarding these properties and will be sharing more details about those opportunities as soon as next steps have been decided,” he said. 

Should Newmark receive any additional offers, they will submit them to the district for review, officials confirmed with the Journal. 

A link to the presentation as presented by Newmark can be found here. October 5’s BOE meeting can be viewed here.

New superintendent to be appointed this evening 
In other important news, a special board of education meeting to appoint a new superintendent of schools has been scheduled for tonight, October 11, at 8pm at the Brosnan building. The meeting will also be available via Zoom, and can be viewed here.