It wasn’t Marvin Natiss’s idea to run for mayor of the Village of North Hills.
He was already busy with a successful law practice he helped build over the previous 35 years and his service as village justice for nearly a decade.
‘“Several people suggested to me I should run for mayor,” he recalled recently.
With his background in law and experience in accounting, Natiss said he knew he had the qualifications.
So he took the advice of residents and ran in 2003.
Now after nine years and three years left on his current term, Natiss is pleased with the decision he made.
“I love it, I love the creativity of it. It’s a way to give back,” he said.
Natiss, 76, is widely respected among his peers in other municipalities and has served four years as president of the Nassau County Village Officials Association.
But his proudest accomplishment in public life is the low tax rate he has worked to maintain in their village of 5,500 residents.
“I still have the lowest tax rate of the 64 villages in the county,” he said.
He said that a resident paying $20,000 in property taxes annually is only paying approximately $3 in village taxes.
Part of that is due to the unique nature of the Village of North Hills. With the exception of 100 private residences in the village, its boundaries include a roster of gated communities that maintain their own sanitation services and roads.
That’s enabled Natiss to come up with novel municipal service concepts, such as parking garage he proposed for the use of village residents near the Manhasset train station – a project that would cost $6 million or $7 million. The idea hasn’t gained any traction with the Town of North Hempstead.
So Natiss conceived another amenity for commuters in his village: a shuttle service.
The shuttle service, which departs each morning from the North Hills Village Hall and returns residents there at the end of the day, hasn’t been a big hit in its first month of operation.
“I’m disappointed. People are pleased with it, but it’s not getting the usage,” Natiss said.
But Natiss said he still hasn’t given up the idea, adding, “Maybe the summer is not the right time. We’ll see in September and October.”
Natiss is still active with the Nassau County Village Officials Association, serving on its executive board. And he remains an outspoken advocate for the cause of small municipalities coping with the crunch of state mandates.
“The state mandates are the big problem,” he said. “Most of the legislators don’t understand the issue.”
He praises state Sen. Jack Martins (R-Mineola) and state Assemblywoman Michelle Schimel as two state legislators who, because of their respective backgrounds in local municipal office, understand the problems communities on Long Island are currently confronting with the state-mandated tax cap on municipal tax increases.
While he’s pleased with the collaborative Martins-Schimel bill to enable municipalities to continue using lever-voting machines for the next two years, he said that solution still isn’t enough.
“The reason the villages
