Roslyn area to go to the polls

Rose Weldon
From left, incumbent Roslyn school board trustees David Seinfeld, David Dubner and Michael Levine are all running for re-election, and all are opposed by Roslyn's Ronald Gerber, right. (Photos via Roslyn School District, LinkedIn)

BY ROSE WELDON AND ROBERT PELAEZ

Three school districts serving the Roslyn area have new faces seeking board of education seats in the elections on Tuesday.

ROSLYN

Four candidates, three of them incumbents, will compete for three seats on the Roslyn Board of Education.

Incumbent Trustees David Seinfeld, David Dubner and Michael Levine are up for re-election, and resident Ronald Gerber submitted a challenger petition.

Seinfeld, one of the board’s longest-serving trustees and a veteran in educational services, was first elected in 2006. Dubner, an investment banker at Goldman Sachs, was appointed to the Board of Education in 2013 following the resignation of Dani Kline and was elected to fill the remainder of her term, and has since been re-elected once. Levine, a lawyer, was elected in 2018 after former Trustee Adam Haber chose not to run for another term.

Gerber, a newcomer to the school board race, is the founder and CEO of security software company AngelBeat.

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Voters will also decide on a $118,633,250 budget for the 2021-22 school year, which is a $3 million increase from the 2020-21 budget, totaling $115,330,236.  A proposed property tax levy increase of 1.98 percent is below the tax cap limit of 2.45 percent. Also on the ballot is the proposed Bryant Library budget, in the amount of $5,095,669 for the 2021-22 school year.

The vote will take place at Roslyn High School from 7 a.m. to 10:30 p.m.

NORTH SHORE SCHOOLS

School board Vice President Timothy Madden and Trustee Lisa Vizza have not filed petitions for re-election, and four candidates are competing to become the newest additions to the North Shore school district’s Board of Education.

Lisa Colacioppo, who previously served on the district’s Social-Emotional Learning Action Planning Committee; Maria Mosca, a parent active in the district who has given lessons on weather patterns to students; Paul Puskuldjian, COO of trading software company Kinetix Trading Solutions; and engineer Anthony Stanco, who was on the ballot last year, are running for the two positions.

Voters will also decide whether to approve the proposed 2021-22 school year budget, totaling $111,641,018. It represents a 1.20% increase from last year, and calls for a 1.43% tax levy increase. An additional proposition on the ballot seeks voter approval to establish a new Capital Reserve Fund for the district, not to exceed $8,275,000, for infrastructure projects.

Residents can vote in the North Shore High School gym in Sea Cliff from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m.

HERRICKS

Herricks Board of Education Trustees Brian Hassan and Nancy Feinstein are running unopposed for re-election.

Feinstein, a Roslyn resident, is running for her fourth three-year term on the board. She has three children who have all attended and graduated from Herricks schools.

Hassan, an Albertson resident, is running for his fourth term on the board. He has three children who have graduated from the Herricks schools.

The board unanimously adopted a $122.9 million budget last week, a $2.33 million, or 1.94 percent, increase from the 2020-21 budget.

The budget called for a 1.42 percent increase in the 2021-22 tax levy from this year, but it remained below the state cap of 2.51 percent.

The initially proposed 1.86 percent levy increase was lowered to 1.42 percent as a result of additional state aid. The district’s average levy increase since the cap’s inception in 2012-13 is 1.66 percent.

A total of 75 percent, or $91.6 million, of the budget, is for programming, with 15 percent, or $18.4 million, for capital projects, and the remaining 10 percent, or $12.8 million, made up of administrative costs.

The vote for the board and the budget will take place from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. at the Herricks Community Center gymnasium.

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