Incumbent Cedarhurst village trustees retain board seats

Incumbent Trustees Ronald Lanzilotta and Myrna Zisman, who ran under the Citizen’s Party banner, retained their board seats in the Village of Cedarhurst in Tuesday’s election.

“I love campaigning,” Zisman said. “This was something in which I had a lot of faith. On to four more years.”

Lanzilotta and Zisman defeated challengers Daniel Burg and Yoel Goldfeder in Cedarhurst’s first contested trustee race in 26 years.

According to unofficial Election Night results from village officials, Zisman collected 942, Lanzilotta 922, , Burg 295 and Goldfeder 272. Lanzilotta's total was originally reported as 1,122, but village officials incorrectly reported one of the vote tallies as 859 instead of 659.

“I can’t believe the turnout,” Lanzilotta said. “I know who I am, what I can do and what I can’t do. I’d like to continue working with everyone and doing what I’ve been doing.”

It was an at-large election, which means that the two candidates with the most votes win. Burg and Goldfeder ran together for the Village United Party.

According to Cedarhurst officials, it was the largest turnout in village history.
Lanzilotta, a village trustee since 2001 and a lifelong Cedarhurst resident, is also serving as deputy mayor under Mayor Benjamin Weinstock. For the past several years he has been instrumental in overseeing the decommissioning of the village’s sewage plant. Before he became a trustee, Lanzilotta served on Cedarhurst’s Board of Zoning Appeals for three years. He owned his own general construction company.

A trustee since 2006, Zisman moved to Cedarhurst in 1982 from Brooklyn, where she was involved in New York City politics. She also served on the BZA before she became a trustee, and has been the village’s representative on the Town-Village Aircraft Safety & Noise Abatement Committee, which encompasses a dozen villages affected by flights in and out of John F. Kennedy International Airport.

Both incumbents said they were looking to address Cedarhurst’s ongoing flooding problem. The village announced on March 13 that it had signed an inter-municipal agreement with Nassau County and the state to study, design and implement a plan to mitigate the flooding in the low-lying portions of the village, along Peninsula Boulevard, between Rockaway Turnpike and Bayview Avenue, as part of the New York Rising Recovery Program.

There have been meetings involving engineers and hydrogeologists, and village officials said that the final design and funding would be available in 12 to 18 months.