Village of Great Neck trustee candidate calls for debate

Adam Lidgett

Sam Yellis, the Village School social studies teacher who is running for Village of Great Neck trustee, is calling for a debate between the five candidates running for the two open trustee seats in the June 16 election.

“There are so many issues that people don’t know about — what the government in the town is doing,” Yellis said. “As a social studies teacher, the first step to solving a problem is knowing you have a problem.”

Yellis said he asked the League of Women Voters of Nassau County to moderate a debate between himself, Voice of the Village Party trustee candidates Raymond Plakstis Jr. and Anne Mendelson and incumbent trustees Mitch Beckerman and Jeff Bass of the Better Government Party.

Efforts to reach Beckerman were unavailing, while Bass declined to comment.

Efforts to reach Plakstis were unavailing, but the party’s campaign manager Rebecca Gilliar said the candidates think a debate is an excellent idea. Mendelson said she would debate if all the candidates participated.

Village of Great Neck Mayor Ralph Kreitzman, who is is running on the Better Government Party ticket with trustees Bass and Beckerman, said any debate would have to be professionally organized and that all the trustee candidates should participate.

Carmen Lloyd, who organizes the debate moderators for the League of Women Voters, said the league would provide a moderator but Yellis would have to organize all the candidates and find a venue. She said all the candidates don’t have to agree to the proposed debate, but all must be invited.

Yellis said he wants to debate to get the issues out in the open, such as the rezoning of Middle Neck Road and Steamboat Road to condense the business district in an attempt to revitalize the downtown area.

Under the new zoning, mixed-use buildings, with commercial properties on the first floor and residential on the second floor, are allowed on Middle Neck Road.

He said he wants to reverse the zoning changes, build better communication with village residents and open up a farmers market on the Village Green.

Kreitzman,  who is also running against Voice of the Village party mayor candidate Pedram Bral, has said that many people in the village were in favor of the zoning and that there was no outcry the trustees were “wrong” in changing the zoning.

“I was at those meetings, it wasn’t generally accepted,” Yellis said of the public hearings held on the zoning changes. “Most of those people opposed it.”

Gilliar has said the Voice of the Village Party candidates believe that under Kreitzman, the business district has dwindled and that apartment buildings will dominate over private homes, eroding property values.

Mendelson said she opposes the zoning changes, which she said will burden aquifers and clog roads.

According to the release issued by Gilliar, Plakstis said the village did not send out postcards to all village residents to let them know they were drafting the re-zoning of parts of Middle Neck and Steamboat roads. He said, according to the release “it should never be that the public finds out after the fact and too late, as they have with the current board.”

Village of Great Neck Clerk and Treasurer Joe Gill said that two mailings were sent out property owners near the areas of Middle Neck and Steamboat roads that were proposed to be rezoned, but not to everyone in the village. He said about 10 public hearings and meetings were held on the rezoning, both during the day and at night.

On. Wednesday, U.S. Rep. Steve Israel (D-Huntington) endorsed Kreitzman for mayor, emphasizing Kreitzman’s leadership on projects to boost Great Neck’s economy.

“Ralph has been a strong, relentless advocate for the Village of Great Neck as Mayor,” Israel said in a statement. “He is an invaluable asset when it comes to representing the Village before Nassau County, the State of New York and the Federal Government.”

“We have partnered side-by-side on a range of issues supporting local businesses, highlighting community projects that set the Village apart like the sewer district expansion and finding new ways to boost the Village economy,” Israel went on to say in the statement.

Yellis said he has been going door to door during the past weeks to talk to residents about issues in the village. He said a debate would bring issues, such as the building of a new Village Hall and the fact that there isn’t a place on the village’s website to easily report potholes, into the open.

In January, Village of Great Neck trustees selected the Melville-based H2M architects + engineers to do the preliminary architectural and engineering work on a proposed new Village Hall and Department of Public Works facility to be located at 265 East Shore Road. Kreitzman said at the time that H2M has done sewer and civil engineering work for the village before. This is the first time the village has asked them to do architectural work.

Gilliar, a frequent critic of the village, recently said the opposition candidates believe trustees “have an architect on the village staff designing a new Village Hall in secret” and that they “show disregard for what the rest of the 10,000 village residents think.”

Kreitzman has defended the village trustee’s handling of real estate sales, the planning for the new Village Hall and economic development in the village.

He said the village is currently selling a parking lot on Steamboat Road because the businesses that somewhere to park were no longer there, making the lot unnecessary.

Yellis also said he wants to hear what experience the Voice of the Village party candidates have and what they want to do in the village.

Bral, Mendelson and Christine Campbell were part of an under-the-radar write-in campaign in the 2013 elections, which resulted in hundreds of residents lining around the block to vote for the challengers. Campbell was originally set to run for trustee on the Voice of the Village party ticket, but declined the nomination after her name was submitted on the petition.

Plakstis then accepted the nomination to replace her and run for trustee.

The opposition campaign led incumbents to rally for support at the last minute. Trustees stood for hours making phone calls outside the polling station to residents to shore up support against the surprise challengers, officials had said at the time.

In that election, Kreitzman defeated Bral 325 to 232. Beckerman took 316 votes and Bass won 320 votes, with opposition trustee candidates Campbell and Mendelson receiving 226 votes each.

Mendelson works now as a technical software product manager for Thomson Reuters. She worked in defense and software development for years before she got her teaching certificate in 2003, after which she began teaching math at Great Neck North High School. She worked as a teacher until 2013 when her job was eliminated due to budget cuts, she said.

Mendelson has lived in Great Neck most of her life – she spent two and a half years living in Woodbury – and has served as a board member of the Great Neck Synagogue and the Great Neck Synagogue Sisterhood.

“After 10 years of having the current people in power, they have been dismantling everything we hold dear in this village and turning it into a place we don’t’ recognize,” Mendelson said.

She said she wants to create an ombudsman position in the village to make sure laws are applied consistently and transparently, according to a release from Gilliar. She said she also wants to attract businesses to fill the empty storefronts in the village.

Plakstis, a former Great Neck Alert Fire Department chief, lead teams of volunteers at Ground Zero after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, according to the release. He has decided to run for office because “the current mayor, with the approval of his trustees, has interfered in decisions by the zoning and planning boards, lobbying on behalf of developers.”

Plakstis ran for Great Neck Park District Commissioner in 2011, losing to current commissioner Dan Nachmanoff. Plakstis came in second with 368 votes, Neil Leiberman, husband of Great Neck News columnist Karen Rubin, received 347 and Great Neck resident Martin Markson received 342.

Plakstis, according to the release, also wants to reinstate term limits for elected positions.

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