Former Village of Mineola Mayor John Colbert announced Monday he’ll run for a trustee seat on the Village Board in the March election.
Colbert will run with the Save Our Suburb Party against incumbent Trustee Paul Cusato with the Hometown Party and Deputy Mayor Paul Pereira with the New Line Party.
Colbert said he wants to act as a check on a board he thinks has pushed large-scale residential development without considering the long-term impacts on services, infrastructure and traffic that have yet to make themselves apparent.
“I’m not looking to be an adversary, I’m not looking to be a complainer,” he said. “I’m looking to be a worker on the board, and I’m looking to work with the mayor, but sometimes you have to ask the tough questions.”
Colbert moved to Mineola from Poughkeepsie in 1984. He was a trustee from 1989 to 1994 and mayor from 1994 to 2003.
With a total of 1,048 new apartments built or on the way in Mineola, Colbert said, village officials have not studied thoroughly enough the impact residential development will have on the village.
While development is necessary to see the village into the future, he said, the projects the board has approved have been larger than he anticipated as mayor, and he thinks trustees have not considered residents’ worries carefully enough.
Colbert said several residents have approached him pledging their support for his candidacy.
“A village trustee should be up there and be a voice of the people, not to be up there to belittle anybody,” Colbert said. “… You’re part of a team, but to be the voice of the people.”
The village recently commissioned studies of its parking capacity and its water and sewer infrastructure, and developers have examined how their respective buildings would affect traffic.
But Colbert said he has doubts about whether those studies are sufficient.
While current Mayor Scott Strauss has said the village is going to ease up on residential development, Colbert said he thinks the board should declare a year-long moratorium on new projects.
Pereira, though, said the board has kept residents informed and listened to their concerns in the course of a measured development process over the past 12 years.
Cusato declined to comment on Colbert’s specific claims.
The professional studies the board has commissioned are thorough, reliable and publicly accessible, Pereira said.
“The planning for the future is there. We’ve done it,” he said. “We didn’t just approve a building, take the money and run.”
Pereira said he thinks Colbert is “grasping at straws,” and there’s some irony in his concern for the future, as he left Mineola $33 million in debt from heavy borrowing for capital and operating expenses when residents voted him from his office as mayor.
In many cases, Pereira said, Colbert’s borrowing left taxpayers footing the bill for things such as vehicles and snow removal services long after they were gone or finished and created a large financial burden the current board has had to work to assuage.
“If he’s thinking about planning for the future, I think this is back to the past for him,” he said, “because the residents of this village will remember clearly the position that he put this village in in the late ‘90s and early 2000s.”
Calling himself a “building mayor,” Colbert said he and his Village Board approved $25 million capital spending, including a new Village Hall, library, fire house, swimming pool and parks, as well as road and water infrastructure repairs.
The former facilities were in “total shambles,” he said, and the board decided on borrowing to pay for major projects over time rather than hit residents with sizeable tax increases right away for facilities that continue to benefit Mineola today.
“We didn’t just go out and spend money for the sake of spending money, which some people would like you to think,” Colbert said, later adding he doesn’t regret any of his actions as mayor.
Colbert was also the first clerk of the Nassau County Legislature and chief of staff for Nassau County Executive Tom Gulotta.
The top two vote-winners in the March 15 election will serve a four-year term on the Village Board.
Candidates must file a petition with signatures from Mineola residents between Feb. 2 and Feb. 9.
