Great Neck Plaza trustees Gerry Schneiderman and Lary Katz were both re-elected in Wednesday’s village elections, beating out challenger candidate Jonathan Stein.
Schneiderman was elected with 286 votes and Katz with 331. Stein received 229 votes. Village Justice Neil Finkston was also re-elected Wednesday with 370 votes.
A total of 355 people came to the polls, more than doubling average turnout, Village Clerk and Treasurer Patricia O’Byrne said. Typically 100 to 150 people will vote in Plaza elections, O’Byrne said, and the fact that the race was contested definitely drove more people to the polls.
O’Byrne said there are about 4,300 are registered to vote in the village.
A total of 364 absentee ballots were collected. Schneiderman received 114 votes from absentee ballots, Katz received 100, Stein 31 and Finkston received 119.
Stein, who has criticized the Great Neck Plaza leadership and engaged in a series of heated public exchanges with Schneiderman, said he should have stayed away from controversy while campaigning.
“I started out sticking to the issues, but eventually got thrown off,” Stein said. “I shouldn’t have gotten into any public disputes.”
Losing by only a small margin, Stein said he will definitely run again in the next village election. He said he will attend more trustee meetings and get more involved in the village.
Earlier this month, Schneiderman demanded that Stein retract what he called libelous statements Stein made in his campaign literature about a $2,500 payment made to consultant hired by the village to study parking congestion downtown. On his website, Stein characterized Schneiderman’s support for the contract with Level G Associates as “Trustee Schneiderman Caught Urging $2,500 Payoff by Plaza Board” in the headline of a release.
Schneiderman, who criticized Stein’s lack of previous involvement in the village, and Stein then challenged each other to a debate. The debate talks ended after Stein demanded that he and Schneiderman engage a one-on-one debate and Schneiderman demanded that Katz be included in a debate moderated by the League of Women Voters.
“We arranged for a debate but [Stein] wanted a slugfest,” Schneiderman said. “That’s not what local politics should be about.”
Schneiderman said residents came out to vote against Stein because of the statements he made about Schneiderman, and what he described as Stein’s “nastiness.”
“People don’t like that in small village elections,” Schneiderman said. “If you want to be a candidate you have to take part in village government, serve on smaller committees and work within the community.”
Stein said he wanted to take back any negative comments he made about Katz, who he had criticized as being a “rubber stamp” and an absentee trustee, and that he would like to work with Katz in the future. On working with Schneiderman in the future, Stein would not give comment.
On Stein running for trustee again, Katz he would look forward to him or anyone else running, but that he should come to more trustee meetings to get an idea of how village government works. When asked about Stein running for trustee, Schneiderman said “It’s a free country.”
Katz responded to the absentee trustee charge, saying he has been to nearly every meeting since he was elected. Katz also said his support of important issues such as approving the budget, 50 conditional use permits and authorizing the mayor to implement more than $4.5 million in grants for traffic safety and beautification made him an effective trustee, not a rubber stump.
Schneiderman has been a trustee since 2000, and served as chairman of the Board of Zoning Appeals from 1982 until 2000. Katz has been a trustee since 2012, and served as a member of the Board of Zoning Appeals from 2010 until 2012.
Great Neck Plaza trustees each receive $10,000 a year in salary. The mayoral and trustee positions in the other villages that had elections do not receive a salary.
In Russell Gardens, Mayor Steven Kirschner and trustees Martin Adickman and Jane Krakauer were all re-elected.
Kirschner, who received 48 votes, will serve his second term consecutive term as mayor. He also served as mayor from 2003 to 2009, and has been a trustee since 1989 when not serving as mayor.
Adickman, who received 47 votes, has served on the board since 2003. Krakauer has served since 2009, and was re-elected with 46 votes.
The Village of Russell Gardens has 777 registered voters, village Clerk and Treasurer Christine Blumberg said. She said 44 people came to the polls to vote, and that the remainder of the votes for each candidate came from absentee ballots.
Kirschner did run for re-election in 2009, but returned as mayor when his successor, Michael Bloomfield, decided not to seek re-election in 2013. Kirschner said he decided to run again for mayor in an attempt to stabilize the village, which he described as being in “disarray” at the time. Kirschner said at the time Bloomfield decided not to run the village’s purchase of tennis courts from the Russell Gardens Association was at the center of controversy.
He said Russell Gardens made the right decision in making the purchase and not borrowing to finance it.
Before the purchase, the tennis courts were only open to one family homeowners in the village. Kirschner said when the courts are refurbished sometime in the fall they will be open to all village residents.
In Thomaston Mayor Steven Weinberg was re-elected with 26 votes and trustees Gary Noren and Jill Monoson were re-elected with 25 votes and 22 votes, respectively.
Weinberg, an attorney with the firm Gottesman, Wolgel, Flynn, Weinberg & Lee P.C., was named acting mayor in September 2014 after former Mayor Bob Stern resigned, and officially became the mayor about a month later.
He had served as deputy mayor from 2003 through 2014, trustee from 2001 to 2003 and village justice from 1997 to 2001.
Weinberg has said he is currently focused on the replacement of the Colonial Road Bridge, a $24.9 million project planned by the LIRR, which is part of a larger project in the Village of Thomaston that includes improved drainage at track level, landscaping and the extension of an existing pocket track used to turn trains around. The total project will cost $45.1 million and allow the LIRR to improve train service reliability, according to MTA officials.
Long Island Rail Road is tentatively scheduled to close the Colonial Road Bridge on March 30. The LIRR expects the bridge to reopen in April 2016.
Noren, vice president of sales for Outerstuff LCC, a sports apparel company, has said the Colonial Road Bridge project will most likely be the last thing he oversees as he does not plan on running for another term after this one. He was elected to the board 14 years ago.
Monoson, an attorney with the Great Neck firm Kestenbaum & Mark, took office in just January when Weinberg became mayor. She was approached to serve as a trustee because of her record of pubic service as a village justice from 1999 through 2009.
In Great Neck Estates, Mayor David Fox, trustees William Warner and Sidney Krugman and village justice Harry Burstein were all re-elected. Fox received 54 votes, Krugman received 49, Warner got 52 and Burstein received 48 votes.
The idea to run for trustee about 20 years ago came to Krugman from Arthur Winston, who was with the village civic association at the time, who told Krugman in a small village like Great Neck Estates he could make a difference.
Warner, who has been on the Great Neck Estates Board of Trustees since 2001 has said he started becoming involved in the village years earlier. In 1996, Warner said he founded the village’s Day Camp in the Park, a summer camp that offers activities such as swimming, tennis lessons and soccer to residents of the Estates.
Village of Kensington trustees Alina Hendler and Darren Kaplan were both re-elected with 17 votes each.
The election results for the Village of Saddle Rock were not available as of Thursday morning. Mayor Dan Levy, Trustee Mark Collins and Trustee David Schwartz were all up for re-election.
