Serving as the village buffer

As the first woman trustee in the Village of Cedarhurst’s 100-year history, Myrna Zisman is up for re-election and said he hopes to continue to serve on a board for a village she loves.
Both she and fellow board member Ronald Lanzilotta Sr. are unopposed in the village election on Tuesday. Voting will take place at Village Hall from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.
Ten years ago, Zisman moved to Cedarhurst from Brooklyn with her husband Leo to be closer to her family. “Every time I drive down Central Avenue it’s like a Norman Rockwell painting,” she said. “It’s just a great place to live and I love it.”
Zisman has a long history in politics and activism. She previously served as a state committee woman for the 41st Assembly District in Brooklyn, co-founded Women’s Pro Israel National Political Action Committee and was appointed to the Citizens Committee for the Democratic National Convention by former New York City Mayor Ed Koch.
When she arrived in Cedarhurst, Zisman asked Mayor Andrew Parise if there were any trustee openings to which he replied, “No and there won’t be because trustees here tend to stick it out to the end.”

Then trustee Michael Fabrizio unexpectedly moved out of the area. Zisman was appointed in 2006. Her eagerness to serve is spurred by her tremendous respect for the mayor. “I wouldn’t have taken on anything unless it was for Mayor Parise,” she said. “I was on the Board of Zoning Appeals for six months (in 2006) and when Parise told me there was an opening for a trustee I said, ‘now you’re talking.’”
Zisman also serves as a board member for the Town Village Aircraft Safety Noise Abatement Committee (TVASNAC), which seeks to mitigate noise from aircraft flying to and from John F. Kennedy Airport. “The flight patterns are supposed to change every period and when we find that they fly over our village too often, we make noise,” she said.
Zisman was among nine other New Yorkers who accompanied Mayor Rudy Giuliani to Israel after the Hamas bombing there in 1997. She received the Nassau County Woman Trailblazer Award in 2009.

Though Zisman is running uncontested for her second, four-year term, she stressed the importance of residents voting. “If people support the candidates it makes a tremendous difference because then we are noted as a voting bloc (by New York State), which then constitutes possible funding for the village,” she said.
Being a village diplomat is how she views her role. “Those residents who have been living in Cedarhurst for 50 or 60 years now see the demographic changing and there are bound to be conflicts,” she said. “My job is to be the buffer because in my political career I’ve dealt with many different kinds of people. The village is pretty perfect and we have to continue to keep it that way.”

Myna Zisman
Profession: Interior designer
Affiliations: Chabad of the Five Towns
Family: Married to Leo, 53 years, three children, 10 grandchildren and five great-grandchildren