Another candidate has thrown their hat into the ring for a seat on the Village of New Hyde Park’s Board of Trustees. New Hyde Park resident Bassam “Sam” Khoury, who is from the Common Sense Party, is hoping to make a change when it comes to village affairs by hoping to increase resident participation.
Khoury is the son of immigrants, born and raised in Queens. He graduated from New York University’s Stern School of Business with a BS in Information Systems. He’s worked in Information Technology for the past 28 years with the past 16 years at JRI America—a division of Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group. Over the course of his career, he’s managed dozens of people and successfully completed numerous information technology projects. His wife Chiqui, her mom and him moved to the Village of New Hyde Park in February 2016. He and his wife have a son, Christian.
“I’m running for village trustee because I care about our community and I want to help improve it,” he said. “I just love helping people in general. Being a village trustee will enable me to do a lot more for our community and its residents. Ever since I moved here I’ve regularly attended the village board meetings and I’ve been an active participant, asking questions and making suggestions, some of which have been used by the village board. I believe my combination of caring for the community, love of helping people and leadership experience will allow me to make a positive contribution to the board and the village.”
If elected, Khoury would like to put policies in place to attract more small businesses to the village and also encourage more residents of the village and surrounding communities to patronize village businesses.
“Over the past year small businesses have been decimated by the pandemic and unfortunately many of them didn’t survive,” he explained. “As we come out of the pandemic, I’d like the village board to put policies in place that encourage entrepreneurs to look at the village as a place where their business should be located. One idea I had was to look at speeding up the approval process for new businesses through the use of technology if possible.”
Khoury said he’d also like to encourage more residents to be regular participants in the village board meetings so they can help influence village policy.
“I believe greater participation from the residents will help them view the board in a more positive light,” he said. “Since the meetings moved online last year, I’ve noticed increased participation since residents can attend them from the comfort of their homes. One of my goals is to make sure the online meetings continue after the pandemic is over, and to increase participation I’d like the village to send email and text message invitations for every board meeting and public hearing to all village residents who are subscribed to the SwiftReach / Swift 911 notification system.”
This year’s village election is Tuesday, March 16 from 12 to 9 p.m. at Marcus Christ Hall located at 1420 Jericho Tpke. Due to the pandemic, residents can vote via mail-in ballot. The ballot can be found at www.vnhp.org/village-elections.
