Voters in two Port Washington villages will go to the polls on Tuesday to elect five trustees and a village justice.
All are running unopposed.
Sands Point Mayor Edward Adler and Trustees Kay Ullman and Marc Silbert are all seeking re-election, and Manorhaven Trustees Rita Di Lucia and John Popeleski and village Justice Peter Gallanter are all running.
Trustees serve two-year terms and the village justice has a four-year term.
Adler, who was elected to the board as a trustee in 1991, has served as the village’s mayor since 2011.
He said he is running for re-election because he still loves being involved in the village and giving back to the community.
“It’s a hard job that is very complex so you have to be dedicated and put in a lot of time, but I love being involved,” Adler said.
A Sands Point resident for 40 years, Adler served as the commissioner of the Building Department when he first joined the board, tasked with revitalizing the department to make it “responsible and responsive,” he said.
For the next 10 years on the board, Adler served as the police commissioner, where he said the “main job was putting the force in the strongest possible position in term of quality of leadership and officers.”
Adler said the village is beginning new projects, including new conservation methods for residents and the Water Department, negotiating with the PBA for a new police contract and work on the Village Club of Sands Point.
Adler, who lived in New York City before moving to Sands Point, is an attorney who runs a real estate development business.
Ullman, who moved to Port Washington in 1951, was first elected to the Board of Trustees in 1994 after serving on the Port Washington Board of Education from 1979 to 1991.
“I think we have a pretty harmonious board and it’s been like that for most of the years I’ve been on the board,” Ullman said. “If we don’t agree completely, we work until everyone is happy on the board and hopefully the public, too.”
She said she is running for re-election because she believes volunteering for the village is “extremely important.”
While serving on the school board, Ullman said, she was faced with the difficult task of redistricting 50 percent of the children because the district was losing students.
She said that at the school district’s peak, there were about 7,000 students, but suddenly there was a drop, which forced the redistricting.
Ullman serves as the village’s road commissioner and said one of the biggest challenges she faced came after Superstorm Sandy.
Silbert was first elected to the Board of Trustees in 2001 and currently serves as the police commissioner and chief emergency manager.
Efforts to reach Silbert were unavailing.
The Sands Point election will be held at Village Hall at 26 Tibbits Lane from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m.
Last June, Jim Avena beat Gary Pagano to become the mayor of Manorhaven, opening up his trustee seat.
Avena appointed Popeleski, who moved to Manorhaven in 1999 and worked for the Port Washington Water District for 29 years.
He said his time on the board has been very educational.
“I find being a trustee very rewarding,” he said. “As a board, we’re moving forward in the right direction and want to keep plugging away at the important things in the village.”
Popeleski is the president the Atlantic Hook and Ladder Company in Port Washington and is also an ex-captain.
He said he is running to continue improving on the gains the village has made in the past year, including improving the infrastructure by getting a road study and sewer study completed and improving snow removal and keeping the streets clean.
“The streets are a lot cleaner,” he said. “If you drive around the village, you’ll see a big difference, not because the village was dirty but because we fine-tuned a lot of things.”
Di Lucia, a Manorhaven resident for about 20 years, was first elected to the Board of Trustees in 2007.
She said she ran because the administration at the time was trying to build on the waterfront and “not in a favorable way for our residents.”
She serves on the village’s Waterfront Advisory Committee, a group set up to lay out ideas for the future of the waterfront while a moratorium on development there is in effect.
Di Lucia said many people would not consider it an accomplishment but she considers “getting along and listening to each other” as a “great accomplishment.”
“We are finally able to get things done,” she said. “We are all committed to transparency and what is best for the village residents. I am proud to be part of this board and what we are accomplishing.”
Attempts to reach Gallanter were unavailing.
The Manorhaven election will be held at Village Hall at 33 Manorhaven Blvd. from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m.
