{"id":464843,"date":"2026-09-15T21:18:15","date_gmt":"2026-09-15T21:18:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/464843\/"},"modified":"2026-09-15T21:18:15","modified_gmt":"2026-09-15T21:18:15","slug":"long-island-community-plans-to-be-first-in-ny-to-make-9-11-a-holiday-but-theres-a-catch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/464843\/","title":{"rendered":"Long Island community plans to be first in NY to make 9\/11 a holiday &#8212; but there&#8217;s a catch"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A Long Island city is looking to become <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2025\/12\/11\/us-news\/long-island-city-bans-smoking-pot-in-public-as-stink-weary-residents-say-there-is-a-time-and-a-place\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">the first in New York state<\/a> to formally recognize 9\/11 a as a holiday, but there\u2019s a catch \u2014 schools would still be in session.<\/p>\n<p>Long Beach officials said they\u2019re planning to mark the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks by offering paid day off to city workers, but the change wouldn\u2019t affect local schools, according to the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.liherald.com\/stories\/long-beach-city-council-september-11-holiday-2026,225182\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Long Beach Herald<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>City Council Vice President Chris Fiumara \u2014 who was working inside one of the Twin Towers on 9\/11 and made it out alive before the towers fell \u2014 announced the plans Friday at the city\u2019s annual memorial ceremony, the Herald said.<\/p>\n<p><img style=\"aspect-ratio:1.33333333;display:block\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\"   data-modal-image=\"40827392\" width=\"787\" height=\"590\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/friday-evening-long-beach-fire-141233429.jpg\" alt=\"Firefighters at a 9\/11 remembrance ceremony, with a large American flag suspended between two fire truck ladders.\" class=\"wp-image-40827392\"\/>\u201cI\u2019m honored to announce in front of all of you in Long Beach today that we are going to be the first municipality in the state of New York to make 9\/11 a holiday,\u201d City Council Vice President Chris Fiumara said.  City of Long Beach, New York<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m honored to announce in front of all of you in Long Beach today that we are going to be the first municipality in the state of New York to make 9\/11 a holiday,\u201d he told the crowd gathered at the Virginia Avenue Garden of Remembrance.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2026\/09\/10\/us-news\/li-doctors-sound-alarm-on-massive-9-11-cancer-surge-as-new-docs-show-officials-may-have-misled-public-on-ground-zero-air-quality\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Sept. 11,<\/a> currently recognized nationally as \u201cPatriot Day,\u201d is a National Day of Remembrance, but it is not an official holiday at either the state or federal level.<\/p>\n<p>A handful of other municipalities nationwide have also made 9\/11 an official paid holiday for public workers, including <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2026\/08\/13\/real-estate\/26-million-rumson-new-jersey-listing-rivals-hamptons-prices\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Monmouth County<\/a> in New Jersey, which has marked it as a public holiday since 2023.<\/p>\n<p>Though Long Beach would be the first \u201ccity\u201d in the state to recognize the day as a holiday, Amityville, a village also on Long Island, first recognized 9\/11 as a holiday and gave public employees the day off in 2017.<\/p>\n<p>However, Amityville later reversed course that same year because of a limit on paid holidays, which forced workers to choose between having 9\/11 off or Veterans Day \u2014 with the latter winning out, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/newyork\/news\/amityville-holidays\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">according to CBS News.<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Long Beach may find some of the same issues arise as they go through the process of recognizing the day as the holidays have to be worked out with unionized workers, City Manager Daniel Creighton said.<\/p>\n<p><img style=\"aspect-ratio:0.66699219;display:block\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\"   data-modal-image=\"40827401\" width=\"394\" height=\"590\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/people-take-moment-silence-marking-140644324.jpg\" alt=\"Man holding a framed illustration of the Statue of Liberty and the Twin Towers.\" class=\"wp-image-40827401\"\/>9\/11 is currently recognized nationally as \u201cPatriot Day,\u201d is a National Day of Remembrance, but it is not an official holiday at either the state or federal levels.\u00a0 REUTERS<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe Council is very adamant that they want this done \u2014 now it\u2019s [about] the nuances of it, the union contracts,\u201d he said.\u00a0 \u201cWe have to have conversations with all of them to make it happen.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Local schools are governed by a Board of Education that operates entirely independent of the City Council. The local BOE would have to approve a holiday and arrange the particulars with unionized teachers.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s unclear when Long Beach would take the action to officially mark the holiday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Long Island city is looking to become the first in New York state to formally recognize 9\/11&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":464844,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[123228,181409,167732,2646,131,133,132,2890,4182],"class_list":["post-464843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-9-11","tag-9-11-25th-anniversary","tag-9-11-memorial","tag-holidays","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news","tag-long-island","tag-metro"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464843","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=464843"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464843\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/464844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=464843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=464843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=464843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}