School district decides to petition andrew cuomo to open nassau otb on frank stonach day sunday
Claude Solnik
Long Island Business News
2150 Smithtown Ave.
Ronkonkoma, NY 11779-7348
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Stop scratching on holidays
Published: June 1, 2012
Off Track Betting in New York State has been racing into a crisis called shrinking revenue. Some people have spitballed a solution: Don’t close on holidays.
New York State Racing Law bars racing on Christmas, Easter and Palm Sunday, and the state has ruled OTBs can’t handle action on those days, even though they could easily broadcast races from out of state.
“You should be able to bet whenever you want,” said Jackson Leeds, a Nassau OTB employee who makes an occasional bet. He added some irrefutable logic: “How is the business going to make money if you’re not open to take people’s bets?”
Elias Tsekerides, president of the Federation of Hellenic Societies of Greater New York, said OTB is open on Greek Orthodox Easter and Palm Sunday.
“I don’t want discrimination,” Tsekerides said. “They close for the Catholics, but open for the Greek Orthodox? It’s either open for all or not open.”
OTB officials have said they lose millions by closing on Palm Sunday alone, with tracks such as Gulfstream, Santa Anita, Turf Paradise and Hawthorne running.
One option: OTBs could just stay open and face the consequences. New York City OTB did just that back in 2003. The handle was about $1.5 million – and OTB was fined $5,000.
Easy money.
april 1 2018not to add Muslim holy days to calendar
Officials in the Hewlett-Woodmere system join in condemnation voiced by CAIR-NY of derogatory remarks directed at Muslim students and residents.
Shahnaz Mallik, of Woodmere, a grandmother who petitioned the Hewlett-Woodmere school district to add holidays for Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha, in her home in Woodmere on Jan. 22, 2018. Photo Credit: Jessica Rotkiewicz
The Hewlett-Woodmere school district, which decided last week not to add two holy Muslim days to its annual calendar, on Monday condemned derogatory comments about Islam made at a recent meeting that had drawn sharp rebukes from Muslims in the Five Towns and New York region.
Earlier, district administrators had requested closure on the Muslim holidays of Eid al-Fitr — the end of the holy month of Ramadan — and Eid al-Adha, the Feast of Sacrifice, during the 2018-19 school year.
But the board decided not to add the days off for those observances in the 2018-19 calendar that it approved 7-0 at its meeting last Wednesday.
The district, in a statement Monday in response to questions from Newsday, said the board “exercised its discretion and determined that insufficient secular purpose would be achieved by closure on these days.”
District officials would not elaborate on that statement.
Albert Fox Cahn, legal director for the New York chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said he was disheartened by the rhetoric at school board meetings this month.
A news release from CAIR-NY “condemned the alleged harassment of Muslim community members and students” attending the meetings. The group shared images of a religiously biased text message it said had circulated within the community.
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