Village of Great Neck residents will head to the polls Tuesday to choose to either keep incumbent Mayor Ralph Kreitzman in the position he has held since 2007 or replace him with challenger Pedram Bral.
Kreitzman is running for mayor on the Better Government Party ticket, with trustees Mitch Beckerman and Jeff Bass who are also running for re-election.
Bral is running for mayor on the Voice of the Village Party ticket, along with Raymond Plakstis Jr. and Anne Mendelson who are both running for trustee.
Kreitzman and Bral have clashed over the village’s recently approved rezoning of Middle Neck and Steamboat roads and the proposed sale of the current Village Hall to build a new Village Hall and Department of Public Works facility at 265 East Shore Road.
Kreitzman, who was elected mayor in 2007 after serving as a trustee since 2001, has defended the rezoning and said he wants to oversee its implementation.
The rezoning, passed by Village of Great Neck trustees in October, condensed the village’s business district in an effort to revitalize the downtown area. The rezoning permits apartments above commercial businesses in the central business core and apartments and townhomes at the northern and southern ends of Middle Neck Road. Under the rezoning, townhomes are also allowed on portions of Steamboat Road.
“I want our rezoning to prove fruitful,” said Kreitzman, who served on the villages’ Architectural Review Board and on the Planning Board before being elected a trustee.
Kreitzman said that according to estimates, the sale of the current Village Hall should pay for the cost of building a new Village Hall and DPW facility at 265 East Shore Road. The Great Neck School District has expressed interest in buying the current Village Hall building, which is located at 69 Baker Hill Road across the street from the E.M. Baker School.
He said he could not disclose how much the estimates were for.
Bral and his running mates have criticized the board for both the rezoning and the proposed sale of Village Hall, while Kreitzman has defended the moves.
“They’ve said they just don’t like what we’re doing,” Kreitzman said of his opponents. “But there’s not much projection about what they want to do in the future.”
He said it will cost less to build a new Village Hall than refurbish the old one.
“Otherwise, we would have to spend over $1 million to refurbish it and we’d still have old facilities,” Kreitzman said.
In defending the rezoning, Kreitzman pointed to the Smart Growth Award that Vision Long Island has awarded the village for the rezoning. Vision Long Island, a smart growth advocacy non-profit, has said the rezoning improves downtown walkability in the Village of Great Neck, enhancing the resident and community experience.
Rebecca Gilliar, campaign manager for the Voice of the Village Party, has said the business district was already walkable and that “thanks to our village officials, no one walks there because there is nothing to walk to, the storefronts being empty.”
Kreitzman, along with Beckerman and Bass, has received an outpouring of support from a wide range of state, federal and village officials.
Letters to the editor submitted to Blank Slate Media over the past several weeks have included endorsements from Congressman Steve Israel, state Sen. Jack Martins, state Assemblywoman Michelle Schimel and a number of village mayors.
Kreitzman has said he had separate conversations with Israel, Martins and Schimel about his campaign and that one out of the three of them offered their endorsement without him asking first, while the other two he asked. He would not specify which official offered their endorsement unsolicited.
Many of the letters in support of the Better Government Party have focused on Kreitzman and his work both in and outside Great Neck as a member of the executive board of New York Conference of Mayors and the Nassau County Village Officials Association, as well as his role as mayor and member of the Great Neck Village Officials Association.
Kreitzman has also received the endorsements of Great Neck Plaza Mayor Jean Celender, Kensington Mayor Susan Lopatkin, Kings Point Mayor Michael Kalnick, Russell Gardens Mayor Steven Kirschner, Thomaston Mayor Steven Weinberg and Saddle Rock Mayor Dan Levy.
He said he began speaking with other mayors after he began to think the Village of Great Neck might have a contested election. He said the opposition candidates ran on a “stealth” basis last time, so he assumed they would be back for this election, but on the ballot.
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.
On voting day in 2013, trustees stood for hours making phone calls outside the polling station to residents, contending with rain as they shored up support against the surprise challenge, officials said at the time.
In one instance, Kreitzman called former Congressman Gary Ackerman (D-Great Neck), who put out a robocall to encourage supporters to vote for the re-election of Kreitzman, Beckerman and Bass, as well as the election of Trustee Mark Birnbaum as village justice.
Kreitzman defeated challenger Bral 325 to 232. Beckerman took 316 votes and Bass won 320 votes, with opposition trustee candidates Christine Campbell and Mendelson receiving 226 votes each.
Bral said he decided to be part of the write-in campaign because he didn’t like the direction the village was going in.
“I saw a lot of things changing in [the Village of] Great Neck and saw a lot of people upset about many things as far as how their lives are being controlled,” Bral said.
He has said Kreitzman has been in power for many years, and that it is time to “empower the people and let them have a voice. I really want to contain wasteful spending and the moving of the Village of Great Neck Village Hall to East Shore Road,” Bral said. “We would spend a lot of money doing it and I really don’t want to sell off the assets the village has.”
He has said he wants to revitalize the village’s downtown to bring merchants to the closed shops.
He also said he is willing to cut back his work days to 15 a month so he can serve the village, if elected.
Bral has downplayed the endorsements Kreitzman has received, saying it is more important to be endorsed by people in the village than mayors and other elected officials who don’t live in the village.
A gynecologist, Bral was born in Tehran, Iran, but left in 1985 with his mother and his sister, following his brother’s direction. His father would leave Tehran two years later as well, Bral said.
Bral said his family left Iran because of the anti-Semitism they saw while there, moving first to Italy, then to Great Neck about 21 years ago.
A graduate of SUNY Downstate Medical Center, Bral is currently the director of Minimally Invasive & Robotic Gynecologic Surgery at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, he said. He said he continued to live in Great Neck because he likes the quiet, suburban nature of the area.
“It’s a beautiful, calm, quiet, serene place,” Bral said. “It’s lively but at the same time we have trees, parks, houses, backyards.”
At a meet and greet event held by the Voice of the Village Party at Great Neck House Tuesday night, Bral addressed concerns that his party wants to close all stores in the village on Saturdays because he is an orthodox Jew. Bral said while he is orthodox, his running mates are not orthodox, and he does not want to close any businesses.
Bral called the email “racial slander” and a “desperate move.”
“I’m trying to be the voice not just for the good of one community but the entire community,” Bral said to a crowd of about 25 people Tuesday.
Voice of the Village supporters at Tuesday’s event said it is time for new people to lead the village.
Daniel Rahmani, a 16-year village resident, said developers who want to start projects in the village are treated better than village residents.
“No good government can stay the same this long,” he said. “There isn’t anything good that can come out of it.”
Bob Meheizadeh, a village resident for 12 years, said he wants to see a younger generation of people on the board of trustees.
“We need new blood in the system,” Meheizadeh said.
Voting will take place from 12 p.m.-9 p.m. at Great Neck House at 14 Arrandale Ave.
The Village of Great Neck Mayor is paid $10,000 a year and trustees are each paid $4,800.
