Last week the Nassau County Legislature approved a smart, fair and cost-efficient new budget for Nassau Community College. Unfortunately, it was a much different budget then the one presented to us by the county executive earlier in the month.

In a unanimous vote the Legislature decided to wipe out the extra $50 tuition hike the county executive proposed adding on top of the $45 hike that the college proposed. Both the Republicans and the Democrats believed that raising tuition by $95 was simply too much for many students to bear. In addition, the college's board of trustees is the only panel who legally has the power to raise tuition. So, not only was his budget fiscally irresponsible and shortsighted, but it was quite possibly illegal. The college should always remain an affordable center of higher learning and we intend to keep it that way.

Another item that was changed was the property tax adjustment. NCC proposed a raise of $7 per homeowner per year. The county executive wiped out the tax entirely and made up for it by slashing crucial funding school resources in technology and educational equipment, not to mention teacher salaries. The members of the Legislature were able to compromise in this regard on a very reasonable hike of $3.85 per household, which I believe is worth the cost to keep our college in the black. In fact, Mr. Gulotta's own financial advisors said in a memo earlier this summer that the college's proposed tax hike "does not appear to be onerous."

What it all comes down to is this...we are making a lemon budget into lemonade. It will allow the college to meet the needs of its nearly 16,000 students for all of next year, not just 10 or 11 months of the year.

One of the biggest reasons why Nassau is experiencing such serious financial problems is because of poor budget forecasting and a reliance on unreasonable revenues. We, as legislators can not let the same thing happen to NCC. One simply needs to look at the county to see how difficult it is to get back to fiscal stability.