Readers Write: It’s time for a new Mayor in Great Neck Plaza

The Island Now

On March 18th, the Village of Great Neck Plaza will be holding its mayoral election. After a quarter of a century of the Jean Celender regime, we need a new mayor and a new administration.

The “REVIVE GREAT NECK PLAZA” team, led by Leonard Katz, will make it happen! As mayor, Leonard’s goal will be to make our Village, once again, a place where people want to live, work, dine and shop in a beautiful, clean, viable and safe environment, and where the entrepreneurial spirit that used to flourish and thrive in Great Neck Plaza is restored.

Even though Jean Celender is finally retiring after 25 years as mayor of Great Neck Plaza, Ted Rosen, the current deputy mayor, is running to replace her. If Ted is elected, it will be politics as usual—no transparency; unwillingness and inability to listen to the people or respond to their concerns; a ghost town where a thriving business district used to be; more accidents and deaths due to lack of concern for pedestrian safety; code enforcement that fails to do its job; not enough parking throughout the Village; and a continuing decline in quality of life in Great Neck Plaza that is driving out businesses, families, and visitors.

Every business in the Plaza must obtain a conditional use permit that contains specific guidelines for the manner in which the business is allowed to operate. Going back to the early 2000s, Ted Rosen was the point person tasked to address the illegal nightclub that the former Tulip Restaurant on 4 Welwyn Road ran every Saturday night, and whose drunk and disorderly patrons wreaked havoc on the neighborhood. Not only did Ted do nothing about the problem, but the nightclub also continued even when a new owner took over in 2010. And once again, Ted closed his eyes and did nothing about it.

The Village appears to pick and choose certain violations that they wish code enforcement to handle and those which they direct code enforcement to bypass. Ted Rosen is in charge of code enforcement, where he “pretends” to oversee the Village’s purposeful lack of enforcement for some businesses’ conditional use permit infractions by closing his eyes to what he does not wish to see.

For several years, Jean Celender had been making hollow promises about creating a residential garage on Welwyn Road to alleviate the dire parking problem in the area. With a great deal of urging from residents, in 2016 a deal was finally made with the post office to lease the unused garage space under the post office for the purpose of turning it into a parking garage for residents of the area. Ted Rosen was selected as the point person. Nothing transpired for over two years. When asked about the progress of the garage, Ted’s response was always the same: “I can’t talk about it.”

When Ted Rosen was running for re-election as deputy mayor in March of 2018, he stated the following in his March 2 interview that appeared in this paper:

“I think there’s at times a perception that parking is a challenge, but I think in reality there is parking and I think that’s something over the years we’ve tried to address.”

Only a few weeks later, an article appeared in the April 27th, 2018, Great Neck News with the following headline: “Parking spot delivery possible for G.N. Plaza.” When asked by the interviewer about providing the sorely needed parking garage for residents, Ted Rosen responded that Welwyn/Shoreward is an “area of the village that desperately, desperately requires additional parking.” (Notice the urgency of the word “desperately” used twice!) Four years later, the residential garage has not come to fruition; it has been rented to a local business.

Do you think Ted and his team will serve the needs of their constituents if elected? Past history makes a compelling case for future actions. Ted Rosen simply doesn’t get the job done.

The “REVIVE GREAT NECK PLAZA” team with Leonard Katz as mayor is dedicated to improving the quality of life for all residents and businesses in our Village, with the hope of restoring Great Neck Plaza to the high standards that we remember and deserve.

It’s time for a change. Please come out and vote for Leonard Katz and his team on March 18th. They will get the job done.

Muriel and Leo Pfeifer
Great Neck Plaza

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