Great Neck Park District holds election Tuesday as candidates spar over last year's results

A former candidate for Great Neck Park District commissioner who filed a lawsuit alleging the election he lost last year was “unfair” is challenging an incumbent for one of three seats on the board.

Gordon Charlop, 66, who lives in an unincorporated part of North Hempstead Town, is looking to unseat incumbent Vanessa Tamari, 47, of Kensington, in the election Tuesday. Charlop, a partner at a Wall Street securities firm, was defeated by incumbent Tina Stellato last December, 1,580-710.  

Tamari, elected to the board in 2021, is seeking a second three-year term. She is an attorney specializing in medical malpractice and insurance defense.

Tamari was inspired to run after watching her children make memories around the park system, like sledding during snowstorms, and hiking, she said.

Park commissioners operate 16 parks spanning 264 acres, and the department's 2024 budget is $19.9 million, Tamari said.

Tamari is particularly proud of the implementation of a farmers market during her term, as well as diversifying the district’s concert series: In August, Vivi Hu performed a bilingual concert in English and Mandarin.

Tamari said the district recently bought a portion of waterfront green space, a little more than half an acre, adjacent to Steppingstone Park, with a panoramic view of the Throgs Neck Bridge.

“Our parks are busier than ever,” Tamari said. “People are getting out of the house, socializing, breathing fresh air, enjoying nature, enjoying music, enjoying company, enjoying the change of seasons, nature.”

Tamari would like to continue more of the same initiatives if she's reelected. She’s also expressed interest in adding pickleball courts and acquiring more parkland. 

Charlop, however, paints a darker picture of the state of the parks system.

“It shouldn’t be that my senior citizens can’t walk around my parks safely because the cement is cracked and uneven,” Charlop said. He said he has heard from parents who won’t allow their children in the playgrounds because of nearby piled-up trash.

Charlop, a partner at Rosenblatt Securities, accused the current board of misallocating funds for various projects.

“There’s a lot of questions, and the only way we can figure it out is if I can get in the building, if I can become a commissioner,” Charlop said.

After the election last year, he filed suit in State Supreme Court in Nassau County, accusing the park district of employing "illegal" absentee ballot procedures.

His lawsuit asked the judge to invalidate the results of the election. He claimed the absentee ballot application the park district distributed to voters was improper. The park district argued in court papers that a State Supreme Court judge has no standing to interfere with the results of an election.

Charlop's attorney, Jonathan Silver, eventually acknowledged in a follow-up motion that the park district was correct and instead asked for access to the race’s absentee ballots and voting machine results.

In September, a State Supreme Court judge in Nassau granted Charlop access to the absentee ballots from the election. Charlop then hired Richard Picciochi, a Floral Park-based forensic document examiner, to review the results. Picciochi reviewed 144 copies of absentee voter applications and their corresponding ballots and found that 114 pairs were “either probably or highly probably not written by the same person,” according to his report.

Charlop has expressed skepticism about the integrity of this year’s election.

Tamari said Charlop’s claims were “preposterous.”

“I think we’ve brought a lot of joy to people’s lives. I don’t want to delve into whatever narrative he’s putting out there,” Tamari said. “I know that we’ve run the elections very fairly. I know that we’ve done everything the way it should be.” 

By Joshua Needelman

joshua.needelman@newsday.com

Joshua Needelman covers the Town of North Hempstead for Newsday. A Long Island native and University of Maryland graduate, his work has appeared in publications including The New York Times and The Washington Post.