Village of Saddle Rock incumbents 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 opposing slates challenged their petitions.
The Nassau County Board of Elections found that six of the slate’s eight pages of petition signatures lacked a witness signature, as required by state election law.
Attempts to reach the disqualified incumbents have been unavailing.
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.
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.
Kraus, Alter, Kollenscher, and Sanilevich, who challenged the incumbents’ petitions, are campaigning together despite running on separate slates with their main campaign issue being what they call a lack of process and transparency in the village government.
Under the banner of the Friendly Neighbors Party, Kambiz Akhavan is running for mayor, and Joshua Rabanipour and Kousha Askari are running for trustee.
No one will appear on the ballot for the village justice position, so a write-in campaign is expected.
“It’s been a very, very long month,” said Village Clerk Carmela Speciale.
Attempts to speak with members of the Friendly Neighbors Party have been unavailing, but Askari provided campaign flyers and candidate statements.
The flyers call for “efficient, no red-tape government,” to “modernize [the] village website to include all key information,” and to “improve communication with residents.”
The slate also pledges to “brighten our streets with enhanced lighting.”
Akhavan touted his experience as a lawyer and his time living in “Saddle Rock for nearly 30 years.” Rabanipour stated that he has been living in the village for over 20 years and works as a “highly skilled dentist.” Askari said that he is a pharmacist in Nassau County who has lived in Saddle Rock for more than 10 years.
Kraus and his allies had a clear message for in their campaign.
“There’s a village code, and I don’t think it’s being adhered to.” he said.
Under the state’s 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.
“There’s no transparency,” said Alter. “The way that things are going in this village is not OK.”
Kraus, who was appointed trustee in 2024, 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.
Sanilevich said encouraging the planting of new trees in the village will be a priority for her if she is elected trustee.
“The government of Saddle Rock did not follow any of the codes of ethics that a municipality needs to,” Kollenscher said.
One hot-button issue roiling the Saddle Rock community is the temple reconstruction plans for the Saddle Rock Minyan, which burned down 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’s knowledge.
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.
“I 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,” said Sanilevich.
Sanilevich said she attended services at the temple on the night of the fire and has donated to the Saddle Rock Minyan, but she is adamantly opposed to building a new temple in the planned location next to her house.
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 and that the Friendly Neighbors Party is “very involved with the building of the minyan.”
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.
“Since the special use permit has been granted, I think the law is going to allow them to move forward,” Kraus said.“The ship has sailed.”
But he clarified that the courts will ultimately decide whether the temple can be built in that location.
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.
