54.0°,
Mostly Cloudy Nedbor-Gross, Murphy, Sekelsky win Glen Cove BOE seats
School district’s budget passes by over 3 to 1
UPDATE (5/17): Several additions and a few minor corrections have been made to the previous update, below.
UPDATE (5/16): The total vote tallies listed in the sidebar of this story have been updated to reflect new information provided by the school district. According to school officials, a "clerical error" resulted in a ballot miscount.
The district's budget passed by a margin of three to one, not two to one as we had originally reported. The error resulted in 204 more "No" votes being tallied than were actually cast.
In the election for the three open Board of Education trustees, 307 more votes were counted for Gail Nedbor-Gross than were actually cast. Following what district officials described as a thorough recount, all other candidates were within two votes of their originally reported total.
The correct tally of votes cast at the High School for Nedbor-Gross was 437. The originally reported tally was 743, a different configuration of the same digits.
Superintendent Dr. Maria Rianna said that the district's clerk, Ida Johnson, runs the district's elections, and has consulted with the Nassau County Board of Elections about the proper procedure to follow in this situation. The Board of Elections is only involved insofar as the electrical ballot readers used on election day were rented from the county.
Trustees will have to re-certify the election results at their next business meeting, scheduled for May 30 at 7:30 p.m. at the High School. The results were first certified on election night, but were nullified when the error was discovered.
We will update this page as we learn more about the situation.
The Budget Vote:
| First reported | Official results | Difference | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Yes | 857 | 863 | -6 |
| No | 475 | 271 | 204 |
School Board Trustee Election:
| First reported | Official results | Difference | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gail Nedbor-Gross | 851 | 544 | 307 |
| Rosemarie Sekelsky | 766 | 764 | 2 |
| Mary Murphy | 645 | 645 | 0 |
| Amy Franklin | 485 | 486 | -1 |
| Maria Venuto | 469 | 471 | -2 |
| Daniel Rios | 274 | 273 | 1 |
Gail Nedbor-Gross will be returning to her seat — which she has held for 10 years and counting — on the Glen Cove School District’s Board of Education. Former district employees Rosemarie Sekelsky and Mary Murphy have ousted incumbent trustees Amy Franklin and Maria Venuto.
The district’s $88 million budget also passed by a factor of just over three to one.
Nedbor-Gross’s win came on the heels of an apparent mudslinging effort by a fellow school board trustee, Robert Field, whose seat was not up in this election. The day before the election, Field posted in the Glen Cove Neighbors Facebook group — without comment or context — a picture that appeared to show Nedbor-Gross moving the campaign signs of one of her opponents and replacing it with her own.
In the comments on the picture, in between accusations and namecalling from many of the group’s members, Nedbor-Gross explained that she had permission from the property owner to post her sign there, while her opponent did not.
The tumultuous weather of election day, with torrential post-workday rains that some of those assembled at the High School to hear the results speculated drove down turnout. The storm did leave Connolly school — one of the district’s two polling places — in a ten minute blackout.
At an work session of the city council on the evening of election day, Mayor Tim Tenke noted that he cast his ballot in the dark. According to district officials, during that time, the electrical ballot readers operated on emergency generators capable of sustaining them for about two hours.
