Since taking office nearly three years ago, state Sen. Jack Martins (R-Mineola) has sought to restore state grants to municipalities, school districts and fire departments left in limbo after he defeated Craig Johnson for the seat in the 7th state Senate district.
In the process, Martins has found that what he thought in 2011 was approximately $10 million in grants withdrawn or otherwise left unfulfilled by the Democratic state Senate leadership after Johnson lose his seat in the 2010 election has proven to be $15,240,000 in grants, according to Martins’ spokesman Joseph Rizza.
To date, Rizza said more than $7 million in grants has been processed and disbursed with another $2.4 million scheduled to be paid out.
“From my perspective, it’s a home run in helping out municipalities, school districts and fire districts,” Martins said. “At a time when the economy is so tough, the ability to make a capital project affordable, it’s been great to see.”
Martins said most of the grants were restored through a resolution adopted near the end of the 2011 state legislative session in which Republicans held the majority in the Senate.
The rest, he said, are in some stage of being restored.
“My hope is that they will all not only be processed but funded,” Martins said. “It’s timely.”
When he started working on the project, Martins said his efforts to restore the money were hampered by the lack of a “paper trail” in Johnson’s office.
Johnson, he said, had cleared out his office and apparently discarded the paperwork on the grants when he left. Attempts to reach Craig Johnson for comment were unavailing.
The process of restoring the grants has involved meeting with officials from school districts, municipalities and fire departments to reconstruct the information, Martins said. He said that while he didn’t make the original commitment for the grants, he felt responsible to get them restored.
“The commitment is made by the office. Whether the commitment was made by my predecessor or myself, we have a responsibility to honor these commitments,” Martins said. “It was a community counting on these resources to meet a need and politics has no place there.”
He said in some cases, projects were undertaken based on the state’s approval of grants that were later rescinded.
The largest single grant restored was one close to home for Martins.
While he was still mayor of the Village of Mineola in 2009, the Town of North Hempstead had applied for a $2.4 million grant for a flood relief project on the border of Mineola and Carle Place.
Martins said he was able to move the “languishing” project ahead by revising the grant to provide the town, Nassau County and the Village of Mineola with $800,000 each in what became a collaborative project between the three government bodies.
“By providing the funds and bringing the county, the town and the village together, they solved a problem that’s lasted for decades,” Martins said.
“For the Village of Mineola, it was huge. Without that grant restored, we wouldn’t have been able to do the project,” said Village of Mineola Mayor Scott Strauss. “In these economic times, I don’t think any of the three municipalities would have been able to do that project.”
Strauss said residents have told him their children had trouble sleeping at night whenever it rained because of the recurrent flooding.
“These kids can actually sleep well again. It’s tough to put a price on peace on mind,” Strauss said.
Among the other grants restored are two for the Sewanhaka Central High School District. A $250,000 grant funded renovation of the Sewanhaka High School gym, the installation of new doors and a GPS clock system. A $100,000 grant provided for upgrades in the security system at district high schools.
“At this point, based on the stricture of the tax cap, any monies that can be utilized for education or capital projects is appreciated,” said David Fowler, president of the Sewanhakaka school board.
