Ray Plakstis Jr. has been immersed in the Great Neck Parks District all of his life.
“My kids played in the parks district all their lives,” Plakstis said. “I’ve grown up in the parks district. I know the ins and outs of what’s going on.”
For the second time in the past decade, Plakstis will be running for the position on the Great Neck Parks District Board of Commissioners. He is one of four candidates vying to replace retiring commissioner Ivar Segalowitz in the district’s election on Dec. 13.
“Seven years ago I ran under the same auspice of trying to go in and wrangle in the overspending,” Plakstis said. “There’s so much overspending going on in the parks district it’s not even funny.”
And Plakstis believes he is the candidate with the necessary skills to rein in what he describes as the parks district’s “unbelievable” expenditures.
Plakstis is the third-generation owner of Doray Enterprises, a company his grandfather established 75 years ago. He also has been a carpenter’s apprentice for two years.
“My family also is in the contracting business,” Plakstis said. “I know my way around blueprints and what should be done and what shouldn’t be done when construction happens.”
For the past 27 years, Plakstis has also volunteered with the Alert Fire Department. His service has spanned all levels of the department.
Over the past two years, Plakstis served as First Assistant Fire Chief and he was sworn in on Thursday as Alert’s Fire Chief. He previously served as chief of the department for one year beginning in 2001.
“At a management level, I don’t control a multi-million dollar budget, but I know how to go and procure equipment properly,” Plakstis said. “You should be turning around and buying from vendors in your tax pool instead of sending everything outside our community.”
Plakstis also helped coordinate and lead teams of volunteers at Ground Zero following the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. From September 2001 until May 2002, Plakstis led teams of volunteers in search, logistics and communications.
“I’m a people-based person,” Plakstis said. “I can turn around and be responsible to the voters, to the people that live in this community. I just don’t follow the norm.”
The “norm,” in terms of the park district’s spending habits, have become a major problem over the past few years, Plakstis said.
“I can’t believe how much the expenditures are,” he said.
The biggest expense Plakstis said the district incurs comes from paying its staff. The district has a full-time staff of 48 workers, which he said has become too “management heavy.”
“I’ve been in Great Neck all my life and the park district was functioning fine 30 years ago where they had one finance person and a secretary helping him,” Plakstis said. “Now they have eight or nine finance people. Why? Why has the budget almost doubled in 10 years?”
Plakstis said because the parks district is a special taxing district, commissioners do not need to call for a vote on spending issues, which is why the parks district budget has risen 11 percent in the past year.
“We have a magnitude of upper management that is ridiculous,” Plakstis said. “You have supervisors controlling foremans, controlling assistant foremans. When you go and trickle it down there’s nobody to work. Go look at Nassau County when they’re at a job site. You have two people digging a hole and you have 15 people standing outside.”
Plakstis said he is also wary of other candidates’ ideas for increasing revenue, such as adding on to commuter parking lots.
“If you can turn around and increase revenue, that’s all well and good, but where is the revenue going?” he said. “What’s it offsetting? We have a parks district that spends a lot of money and that revenue doesn’t cover the areas of expenditures.”
“If you’re going to go and build a bigger commuter park, that may be well and good, but where are you going to get the funds to do it?” he added. “When you do get it done, where are those funds going to go.”
