As a resident of Great Neck Plaza for over 40 years, I felt the need to comment on the current Village election as not all of the pertinent information finds its way into this newspaper. I’ve seen and been personally involved in many Village elections over that stretch.
I’ve reviewed all of the petitions filed by the various candidates and read the decision and minutes of the Nassau County Board of Elections disqualifying the petitions of Messrs. Katz, Au, and Farajollah. Each of them filed separate nominating petitions and each of which was rejected for having the wrong election date, among other irregularities.
Only the convoluted and incredible excuses of Mr. Katz, including figuratively throwing the Village Clerk of 28 years, Pat O’Byrne, “under the bus,” notwithstanding that he knew the correct date more than a month before he filed his petitions and the correct date is stated in the New York Election Law if he had bothered to check, have gotten any press.
But Au and Farajollah also had their own petitions rejected for having the wrong date of the election. And this is the team that is asking to be elected because they can more competently run our Village than their opponents, Ted Rosen, Pam Marksheid and Mike Deluccia, when they cannot even correctly do something as simple as getting the correct date of the election on their petitions!
In all my years here, I had never seen a candidate get the date of the election wrong on a nominating petition. Certainly not all three candidates. And while they may claim their petitions were rejected on a “technicality”, the Board of Elections disagreed, and being competent is not a technicality. At its core, this is a question of basic competence in knowing the date of the election. What other mistakes will they make excuses for if they got elected?
But it gets better for Au and Farajollah. While I’ve attended all of the Board of Trustees meetings the past four months, and most of the others in the months before that, I have never seen either of them attend any Board meetings. Until this year, I had never seen a Village election where a candidate running for office did not attend any Board meetings in the months before the election, both to get a little experience as to the workings of the Board and the Village and, at a minimum, to show an interest in the position. How do you vote for candidates like that? And does someone, in good conscience, run for public office without showing minimal interest in the position?
While Katz’s ads recite slogans, they offer no details and do not say how he would do better than Ted Rosen or his running mates, Pam Marksheid and Mike Deluccia, who have the experience to govern our Village. His purported running mates, Au and Farajollah, have been invisible. What more do you need to say about that?
They obviously are not willing to make a commitment to this village if they cannot spare two evenings a month since declaring their intentions to run.
Attending the Village Board of Trustees meetings should be their main concern if they are running for office. Clearly, Great Neck Plaza is not their priority and how can any resident in good conscience vote tor this team? Instead, vote for the dedicated, experienced team that does show up because they care for all the residents. Vote for Rosen, Marksheid, and Deluccia.
Jeffrey Schwartz
Great Neck Plaza
