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October 16, 2011

Mangano's Grade So Far Is Incomplete

As a teacher I have decided to grade Ed Mangano on his attempts to save the Islanders, and so far I have to give him an incomplete.  I will breakdown my grading of his two proposals for keeping the Islanders in Nassau.

The Referendum:
Mangano's handle of the referendum was a disaster from the start.  During the press conference he talked about how the plan wasn't going to cost taxpayers a dime, but then when he met with reporters he said he wasn't sure they hadn't worked out all the details.  Before Mangano ever presented this plan to the public all of the details should have been worked out so they couldn't be twisted.  The weeks of silence from him about the facts gave the Democrats the perfect opportunity to kill this proposal.  Another issue with this plan is the lack of organize support.  The opposition made cold calls and got the public scared about their taxes.  What did the supporters do to gain support from the public?  Magano's failure of knowing all the facts before going public is the down fall of this plan.

Grade: D

Accelerate Nassau Now:
I am sad to say that I see history repeating itself with this plan.  It seems like this plan was rushed and a lot of details are up in the air.  Here are a few questions I have for Mr Mangano:

1) Why can't you just pick a site for the arena?  Right now the plan has the Islanders staying at the Hub if there is enough room, but if there isn't they could go to Belmont as part on an entertainment center.  Ed just pick a site and run with it.  If you ask me pick Belmont if you want to make it the entertainment center of Nassau County.  You can have the casino, arena, racetrack, and the minor league baseball stadium all there.  This allows the Hub to be used for the Bio tech industry and connected to the local college.

2) Who is paying for the arena?  If the project is selected by the state all that money is going towards infrustucter.  Do you really think someone is going pay to build the county and Charles Wang a new arena or Wang is going take a plan that he knows isn't going be profitable with an arena in it.

3)  Is this just window dressing and you really have given up on keeping the Islanders?  Are you just throwing out ideas so that it seems like you care and can't be blame if Wang takes the team elsewhere?

Before I can give this plan a final grade I need to see the final result, but my comments on Mangano's proposal is you need to go back and add more facts and details.  Things are too open ended and you leave too many loose ends.

Grade: Incomplete

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