{"id":159226,"date":"2026-03-10T15:09:06","date_gmt":"2026-03-10T15:09:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/159226\/"},"modified":"2026-03-10T15:09:06","modified_gmt":"2026-03-10T15:09:06","slug":"saddle-rock-incumbents-disqualified-from-running-for-reelection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/159226\/","title":{"rendered":"Saddle Rock incumbents disqualified from running for reelection"},"content":{"rendered":"

Village of Saddle Rock incumbents<\/a> Mayor Dan Levy, Village Justice Julia Gavriel, and trustees Dan Chadow and Alex Kishinevsky have been disqualified from running in the Wednesday, March 18, election after the Concerned Residents of Saddle Rock slate challenged their petitions.<\/p>\n

The Nassau County Board of Elections found that six of the slate\u2019s eight pages of petition signatures lacked a witness signature, as required by state election law.<\/p>\n

Attempts to reach the disqualified incumbents have been unavailing.<\/p>\n

Current Trustee Robert Kraus, often a lone dissenting voice on the board and the only incumbent who was not disqualified, is running for a four-year term as mayor under the Together for a Better Saddle Rock slate.<\/p>\n

Martine Alter and Vivian Kollenscher are running to serve four-year terms as trustees under the Concerned Residents of Saddle Rock slate, and Sigalit Sanilevich is running to complete the final two years of a four-year trustee term under the Tree Keeper banner.<\/p>\n

Kraus, Alter, Kollenscher, and Sanilevich are campaigning together despite running on separate slates.<\/p>\n

And under the Friendly Neighbors Party, Kambiz Akhavan is running for mayor, and Joshua Rabanipour and Kousha Askari are running for trustee.<\/p>\n

No one will appear on the ballot for the village justice position, so a write-in campaign is expected.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been a very, very long month,\u201d said Village Clerk Carmela Speciale.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a village code, and I don\u2019t think it\u2019s being adhered to,\u201d said Kraus, who was appointed a trustee in 2024.<\/p>\n

Kraus, Alter, Kollenscher, and Sanilevich\u2019s main issue in the campaign has been what they call a lack of process and transparency in the village government.<\/p>\n

Under the state\u2019s Open Meetings Law, villages are required to post agendas, minutes, and notices of public hearings on their website, but the village does not regularly post such documents.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no transparency,\u201d said Alter. \u201cThe way that things are going in this village is not OK.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kraus said traffic cameras have been illegally installed in the village, buildings are regularly altered without proper permits, and 33 trees have recently been cut down without village approval.<\/p>\n

Sanilevich said encouraging the planting of new trees in the village will be a priority for her if she is elected trustee.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe government of Saddle Rock did not follow any of the codes of ethics that a municipality needs to,\u201d Kollenscher said.<\/p>\n

One hot-button issue roiling the Saddle Rock community is the temple reconstruction plans for the Saddle Rock Minyan, which burned down<\/a> on the night of Yom Kippur in 2024. Saddle Rock Minyan had operated out of a residential building without a special-use permit for several years, with the village\u2019s knowledge.<\/p>\n

Sanilevich, who lived beside the Saddle Rock Minyan before it burned down due to unsupervised candles, said she got involved with local politics after the fire.<\/p>\n

\u201cI always supported them, but then when the synagogue went on fire, it almost caught my house, and from that moment on, I looked on it a little bit different,\u201d said Sanilevich. <\/p>\n

Sanilevich said she attended services at the temple on the night of the fire and has donated to Saddle Rock Minyan, but she is adamantly opposed to building a new temple in the planned location next to her house.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Alter and Kollenscher said they also began attending board of trustees meetings after the fire, when the temple applied for a special-use permit to legally operate a new temple.<\/p>\n

At the last board meeting, the village approved a special-use permit for the Saddle Rock Minyan, with Kraus casting the sole dissenting vote. Kraus said that since the village did not follow proper procedures to allow the temple to operate, it did not require the enforcement of proper fire codes, which could have prevented the fire.<\/p>\n

\u201cSince the special use permit has been granted, I think the law is going to allow them to move forward,\u201d Kraus said.\u201cThe ship has sailed.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

But he clarified that the courts will ultimately decide whether the temple can be built in that location.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe other slate is extremely involved with the building of the minyan,\u201d Kollenscher said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Attempts to speak with members of the Friendly Neighbors Party have been unavailing, but Askari provided campaign flyers and candidate statements.<\/p>\n

The flyers call for \u201cefficient, no red-tape government,\u201d to \u201cmodernize [the] village website to include all key information,\u201d and to \u201cimprove communication with residents.\u201d<\/p>\n

The slate also pledges to \u201cbrighten our streets with enhanced lighting.\u201d<\/p>\n

Akhavan touted his experience as a lawyer and his time living in \u201cSaddle Rock for nearly 30 years.\u201d Rabanipour stated that he has been living in the village for over 20 years and works as a \u201chighly skilled dentist.\u201d Askari said that he is a pharmacist in Nassau County who has lived in Saddle Rock for more than 10 years.<\/p>\n

This is the first contested election in several years for the Village of Saddle Rock, which has just over 1,000 residents and drawn less than 200 voters in each of the last 13 elections.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Village of Saddle Rock incumbents Mayor Dan Levy, Village Justice Julia Gavriel, and trustees Dan Chadow and Alex…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":159227,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[7946,9,24,63,122,124,123,48005,48006],"class_list":{"0":"post-159226","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-queens","8":"tag-great-neck","9":"tag-new-york","10":"tag-new-york-city","11":"tag-nyc","12":"tag-queens","13":"tag-queens-headlines","14":"tag-queens-news","15":"tag-saddle-rock","16":"tag-saddle-rock-minyan"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=159226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159226\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/159227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=159226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=159226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}