A new face will join the Village of Kensington Board of Trustees after Ronen Abergel was elected as a trustee via a write-in campaign, ousting the incumbent by just 13 votes.
“I think it goes to show that there are people in the village, people that I’m friendly with, that believed in me to take initiative,” Abergel said.
The village hosted an election on March 18 for two trustee seats. Abergel was elected to one of those seats after securing 51 votes.
Both incumbent Trustees Brent Greenspan and Carey Ye were running for re-election and both received 38 votes. Faced with a tie, Greenspan conceded in the election.
Greenspan, a village resident for more than 25 years, served on the board of trustees for four years and was the building commissioner. Prior to joining the board, he served on the village’s zoning board.
Greenspan said he did not know Abergel before election results rolled in, never seeing him at a board of trustees meeting beforehand, and called the turnout surprising.
However, he said the election showed the village residents’ desire to advance a new candidate to the board. He said he opted to concede rather than draw it out with a run-off election, a decision he said he made in consultation with the other board members.
“We all reach points in our lives where we say, ‘You know, we need to move on to something else,'” Greenspan said. “Sometimes, if we’re lucky, we get to choose that moment. Other times, that moment gets chosen for you.”
He expressed hope that Abergel would help advance the village further once in office.
Abergel has lived in the Village of Kensington for more than a decade. He said that now, with his kids getting older, it was a good time to step into local government.
He said his decision to run for trustee via a write-in campaign was due to a late decision to launch his campaign and a desire to get more involved with the village’s administration.
Abergel, a UCLA and NYU graduate, is the managing director of Arbor Realty Trust. He said his real estate skills will be helpful when he joins the village’s Board of Trustees.
He said he has initiatives he wants to launch once he joins the board but is not ready to share them yet.
Abergel will be sworn in to take his new trustee seat at the Village of Kensington Board of Trustee’s next meeting April 9.
