Having just watched season one of the cable television series “The Americans,” in which Russian spies kill our own FBI agents in Washington D.C., I question the wisdom and the “fairness” of the Oyster Bay Town Board’s waiving of parking and beach permit fees for Russian diplomats while charging American citizen Town of Oyster Bay residents, who live in Plainview, Old Bethpage, Oyster Bay, East Norwich, Hicksville, Syosset, Jericho, Massapequa, Glen Cove, Farmingdale, Woodbury, Locust Valley, Sea Cliff, Bayville, Brookville, Muttontown, Mill Neck, Bethpage, Lattingtown, and other fine, upstanding communities, $60 for annual automobile beach stickers.
I’d like to tell U.N. Russian Mission spokesman Alexey Zaytsev that his fellow Russians are not the only Long Islanders who “love Oyster Bay’s beaches and the open water waters and high-wave beach at Tobay,” and I’d also like to tell Town of Oyster Bay spokeswoman Marta Kane that if “it’s one of those things we’ve done for decades as a sign of goodwill” to Russians, our Town should show the same goodwill to its own hard-working, tax-paying employees and residents. Town Supervisor John Venditto should either “Make Putin Pay” or else have to deal with seeing all of us defect to Russia where I’m sure the local Moscow government will be happy to let us swim for free inside its Luzhniki Stadium complex, which hosted the U.S.-boycotted 1980 Olympics.
Richard Siegelman
