Contested trustee race in Woodsburgh village

The possible development of a country club is coloring the village trustee race in Woodsburgh on June 20, and there was a failed candidate petition in Lawrence.

Woodsburgh
Three candidates are vying for two board seats in an at-large election in Woodsburgh. They are incumbent Trustees Gary Goffner and Jake Harman and newcomer Jeffrey Smith. In this at-large election, the two candidates with the most votes will win.

Goffner, 52, is running for his third term. He owns pharmacies in Brooklyn and Queens, and is the chairman of the board of the Wyckoff Heights Medical Center in Brooklyn.

The lifelong Five Towns resident, who has lived in Woodsburgh for more than 20 years, touts the installation of additional streetlighting and license plate readers to enhance safety and security, and incorporating what he called Florida-style landscaping at the entrances of Woodsburgh for an improved appearance, as the accomplishments of which he is proudest.

“Everything we’ve done is in the best interests of the residents,” Goffner said. “Our village inspector works more with people and enforces the village code.”

With the Woodmere Club likely to close in five years, its 110 acres could be targeted for development. Weiss Properties and 2020 Acquisitions bought the 109-year-old club earlier this year. Troon Privé, a global golf course management, development and marketing company, will it for the next five years.

The Town of Hempstead imposed a six-month moratorium in November on residential development on privately owned golf courses. The ban was extended for another six months in May, and could be continuously extended.

Part of the club is in Woodsburgh. Goffner said that as a former longtime member of the Seawane Club in Hewlett Harbor, he loves the beauty of a country club, but understands the economics behind a downturn in membership.

“My dream is the club stays,” he said. “Right now it’s just a lot of talk. [The new owner] might find it’s profitable to make changes. One thing was presented, and we turned it down.” Phillips International Real Estate proposed a 23-unit townhouse complex on 2.2 acres on Railroad Avenue. The village board denied the company’s request to create a new zoning district.

“We have a proven track record and [have] made the community much cleaner and worked very closely with the Fire Department and the police to maintain the beauty of the community,” Goffner said of the board’s accomplishments.
Also running for his third term, Harman, 62, an certified public accountant, was in finance for nearly 38 years and is now a vice president and chief financial officer of Yeshiva University.

He, too, has lived in the village for more than 20 years, and pointed to what the board has done as the reason that he should be re-elected. “The team concept, as I describe it, is the entire board,” Harman said. “We’ve been involved in the community, and what we have done over the past four years, including the license plate readers, made the village a desirable area.”

Harman also addressed the potential closure of the Woodmere Club. “There is no benefit to the village helping a developer build additional residences to the area we live in,” he said. “Protecting the beauty of the village is our first and foremost desire.”

Smith, 31, is one of the leaders of the Residents of Five Towns, a group that strongly opposed the sale of the Woodmere Club and continues to contest the possible development of the land. He is in real estate management, and his portfolio includes 20 million square feet of property and billions in revenue, he said.

“There are a lot of people concerned for the future of Woodsburgh,” said Smith, who moved in three and half years ago. He and his wife had their first child this year. “I plan on living here 30, 40, 50 years. People here have done a great job. It’s time for new blood, which looks at things differently. I want to build on their legacy.”

He said he loves the community and would like it to remain as beautiful and quaint as it is, especially with the Woodmere Club. Should development occur, he said, he would work to help ensure that the village would not be adversely affected.

When he was offered a spot on a committee that would review any proposed plans for the club, Smith declined. “Yes, I was offered something,” he said. “The situation was not quite what it was made out to be.”
Should Smith lose, he said he would remain involved and work to get others involved with a “sense of ownership, not just their house,” he said.

The vote in Lawrence
Incumbent Trustees Daniel Goldstein and Michael Fragin are most likely the only two candidates running for board seats in Lawrence.

Larry Kolodny’s submitted candidate petition was deemed insufficient by the Nassau County Board of Elections. “The bipartisan research team determined that 33 signatures are invalid,” read a statement from the county board’s meeting minutes of May 22.

“The required signatures did not meet the rule on objections,” said the board’s chief clerk, Essma Benkouka. She added that signatures were ruled invalid for a variety of reasons, and the most common one is that people are not registered to vote.

Kolodny, who had submitted his petition representing the Taxpayer Party, with Fragin as a running mate, said he was not notified that the signatures were ruled insufficient. He said he hand delivered a letter to Village Administrator Ron Goldman about not being notified. Goldman said he received the letter, and said,“The matter will be resolved through the appropriate forum.”

Kolodny, who said the petition objection was brought by Goldstein, had yet to say whether he would challenge the Board of Elections’ decision. Goldstein and Fragin’s petitions were approved, and they are running together, representing the Unity Party.

Goldstein, 53, an electrician who is also involved in real estate, is running for a full two-year term after having served the one-year unexpired term of Alex Edelman, who was elected mayor last year. Fragin, 43, a communications consultant, is running for a fifth term.

Both said they believed the village board had improved Lawrence in the past year, from mitigating flooding at the Lawrence Yacht & Country Club to resurfacing the roads and making progress in the effort to move Peninsula Public Library to a new building by Zion Park.

With the country club losing close to $500,000 annually, Goldstein said that he and the board are looking into having a private company run it on a lease basis. “They can run it more efficiently, and private companies are good at management. They know what to do to save and cut back,” he said.

Fragin agreed that the country club’s finances need to be straightened out, and that there are other issues that must be addressed, but he maintained that Lawrence has improved.

“There are new streetlights on 878, [and] we improved the village’s accounting and the website,” he said. “We need to improve the financial situation at the country club, take care of the decommissioning of the sewage plant, and we are making progress on the library.”

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