In a divisive race that turned on the issue of whether the village has been overdeveloped, Mineola voters re-elected Mayor Scott Strauss, Trustee George Durham and Trustee Dennis Walsh for four more years on the village board in Tuesday’s election.
They received nearly twice as many votes as their opponents.
The three, all with the New Line Party, beat former Trustee Larry Werther, who ran against Strauss, and two newcomers, Regis and Cristi Gallet, who ran for trustee on the Mineola My Home Party ticket.
Werther, who said he and his team ran an issue-oriented campaign, said the low voter turnout upset him.
Of the approximately 13,000 registered voters in the village only about 1,500 voted, Werther said.
“But I ran a campaign because I care about this village,” Werther said. “There’s a couple of people who made some incredibly complimentary posts not only for me but also for Regis and Cristi, who they said are lovely, articulate people who really care about this village.”
Efforts to reach Strauss were unavailing.
During the campaign, Werther’s vision for Mineola clashed with Strauss’ and the current board’s downtown revitalization plan.
Werther and the Gallets, a married couple who own and operate the Recovery Room bar and grill at 214 Station Plaza North, said the apartment buildings being built or recently finished are overdeveloping the village.
The members of the Mineola My Home Party said the village was starting to resemble a New York City borough, and said it should look more like Huntington or Garden City’s downtown areas.
Werther also said the buildings should not have been given tax breaks from the Nassau County industrial Development Agency.
Strauss said the spots where many of the buildings were built were not on the tax roll before.
The village now gets money from them that it would not have had before, he said.
Under the current administration, the board has kept village taxes low in the last few years, Strauss, Walsh and Durham all said during the campaign.
There were also no increases in the last two years, the board members said.
Werther also raised the issue of the presence carcinogen, 1,4-dioxane, in Mineola water.
“How can people not care about the quality of their water,” Werther said.
Strauss had said during a campaign debate that it was only found in trace amounts, and noted that it is an issue across the island not just the village.
He also said that there is no approved treatment solution by the Environmental Protection Agency or New York State Department of Health.
As soon as solution comes out of the testing phase, Mineola will get it, Strauss said.
This will be Strauss’s fourth term on the board. He was first appointed trustee in 2010 and was elected mayor in 2011.
He served a two-year term as mayor and just finished a three-year term.
Werther was previously elected as a trustee as part of the New Line Party in 2003, and served as deputy mayor under then-Mayor Jack Martins.
Werther served out the rest of Martins’ term in 2011, when Martins was elected to the state Senate.
Werther lost his spot on the board when Durham and Walsh beat him in a three-way race in 2013.
Walsh first served a two-year term and just finished out a three-year term.
Durham, a fourth-generation Mineola native, was first elected to the board in 2011. He just won his fourth term.
He served two two-year terms, and a three-year term following his 2015 win.
Trustee and mayor terms were two years until 2013 when they were changed to four-year terms, according to village Clerk Joe Scalero.
The terms were phased in over multiple elections, pursuant to state law, and mixed in two-year, three-year and four-year terms between 2012 and 2016, he said.
All terms are now four years.
Werther, who would be 69 for the next election, said he doesn’t think he will run again.
Village Justice John O’Shea, who ran unopposed, also won with 1,196 votes. He was appointed in 1996 and has been re-elected to four-year terms since.
