For residents of the Village of Flower Hill, a familiar name will be absent from the election ballot next month for the first time in half a decade, with Trustee Jay Beber’s decision not to run for another term.
A 34-year resident of the village, Beber had an unexpected starting point on his route to the board: a neighbor’s home gym.
“Maybe five or six years after we moved in, I met Herb Reichenbach at the gym at the [Sid Jacobson] JCC,” Beber said. “And one day, he said, ‘You know, why don’t you come over to my house? I have a full gym in the basement. We could do this before we go to work.’ And I did. And every morning for 26 years, I’ve gone to his house around the corner. We walk in the neighborhood, we exercise, we are each other’s therapists.”
Near the end of 2014, Reichenbach’s wife, Karen, then a village trustee, recommended the recently retired Beber to then-Mayor Elaine Phillips to fill a trustee position left vacant when former Trustee Eileen Mills stepped down.
“My first response was, ‘what possibly could I have to offer the village?'” Beber said. “I didn’t really know much about what goes on there. And [Karen Reichenbach] said, ‘Why don’t you have a meeting with Elaine Phillips?’ which I did. And Elaine said that the board is not about having prior board experience. It’s about having relatable life experience and a skill set that the board could use.”
The experiences that Beber could bring were decidedly unlike those of any trustee before that time. After graduating with a graphic arts degree from the Rochester Institute of Technology, Beber spent years working as a printer in print and digital formats, but in the early 1990s teamed with his wife, Lynn, for what he would call “a rollercoaster ride.”
“In 1990, I had my own printing company and a very large art department, and we bought a Macintosh computer and a laser writer,” he said. “[It was] the smallest computer and the most expensive laser writer in the world. But I had an epiphany. And as a result, I contacted Apple. And my wife and I became the first Apple dealership in the United States to be given to somebody who wasn’t an electronics store.
“We were printers, but it was right at the dawn of desktop publishing and [Apple] wanted to promote that aspect. And it was a rocket ship ride. We started with no experience and 11 employees, and in two years, we had 108 employees and $28 million in sales. We became Entrepreneur of the Year from Inc. Magazine for retailing in New York. And then Apple decided to open their own stores.”
Beber’s background in communications, design and technology impressed the trustees and Phillips, and he was approved as a board member that December. He described his first few months on the board as “nerve-wracking.”
“I had no idea what to expect, even though I had gone to several meetings prior to being nominated,” Beber said. “I think there is always a little bit of reluctance, you know, to speak out at the beginning, but I think now it’s a comfortable thing. I saw what took place and then it got easier and easier to feel comfortable voicing my opinion. And I try to impart that to the new members of the board when they came on.”
In 2015, Beber won his first elected term, and he won two more in 2017 and 2019, spearheading changes to the village’s newsletter and communications. He has served under three mayors, including Phillips, the late Robert McNamara, and sitting Mayor Brian Herrington, and was part of the board that rejected ExteNet System’s applications to build wireless cell nodes in 2019.
The job is hard, he said, but added that his camaraderie with his colleagues is “great.”
“People come to the Board of Trustees because they tend to want to voice their concern over a particular problem, or somebody is riled up about something,” Beber said. “It’s a hard job, because in many ways it’s thankless in terms of recognition.
“But the board is diverse, it certainly represents a cross section of the residents. I think, as far as I know, we tried to have equal representation from the three school districts in Roslyn, Manhasset and Port Washington, young people and old people, the latter of which I claim the title at the moment. And I love the job. It’s this great camaraderie and people working together to do the best they can for the village. People are really doing this because they want to, and I think that makes for a good team.”
Beber grew up in New Hyde Park and graduated from Great Neck South High School. He has been married to Lynn, a fellow Great Neck South alumnus, for 49 years, and the two are parents of three and grandparents to six. Two of their children reside nearby in the Great Neck and Bellmore areas, he said, and after receiving their second doses of the COVID-19 vaccine, they plan to visit their third child, who lives in Marina del Rey, California, for several months. In addition to visiting family in his free time, Beber will continue to pursue photography on his Instagram page, @jaybeber.
The trustee said that his exit will be a kind of “passing of the torch.”
“When people get elected, they tend to run again and again, and I get it, but I am a firm believer in the need for institutional memory,” Beber said. “You need leadership that serve for many terms because they know the what and why of our village governance. But you also need members to come and go, representing a segment of our community, then passing the torch to others with a different perspective.”
Some of his duties to the village won’t end, though.
“Mayor Herrington recently advised me that not being a trustee in no way relieves me of my responsibilities as the resident graphic artist,” Beber said with a laugh.
