No contest in Cedarhurst

Burg, Goldfeder withdraw from race for village board

Posted

After the death of longtime Cedarhurst Mayor Andrew Parise, trustee candidates Daniel Burg and Yoel Goldfeder decided last weekend not to run. 

In an email to the Herald, they wrote that they had initially decided to mount campaigns in the belief that residents can and should expect more from Village Hall, and that, as a community, they all wanted the same things — to raise their children in a strong, safe, enjoyable environment with a local government that supported these goals.

“Our hope was to infuse the Cedarhurst government with new faces and new ideas to bring us forward,” Goldfeder wrote. “We were fully prepared to undertake the challenge ahead; however, the sad passing of Mayor Parise and other issues raised, changed many variables. After consultation with local community leaders, we agreed that it would be in the best interest of the village to take a step back and allow for healing instead of further discord.”

The village election is scheduled for March 18. This year, two trustee seats, occupied by Ari Brown and Deputy Mayor Benjamin Weinstock, are up for re-election, along with the mayor’s position. 

After Parise died on Feb. 8, the village’s Vacancy Committee appointed Weinstock acting mayor. No candidate petitions were submitted for mayor, so Weinstock will run unchallenged. Cedarhurst will have its first new mayor in 20 years.

Brown and Israel Wasser, who was appointed to fill Weinstock’s trustee seat on the village board, will also run unopposed. Cedarhurst’s election is at-large. If there were a third candidate for the two trustee seats, they would go to the candidates with the two highest vote totals. 

The last contested village election was in 1989. 

Weinstock has worked in village government since that year, when he was village attorney. In 1994 he became a trustee, and in 2003 Parise appointed him deputy mayor. He has also served as Cedarhurst’s liaison to the Lawrence-Cedarhurst Fire Department.  

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