Civic activist cites need for transparency in bid for seat on Floral Park trustee board

A civic activist and frequent critic of the Floral Park village board has announced her candidacy for a trustee seat, promising to be more transparent than current board members. 

Nadia Holubnyczyj, former president of the Hillcrest Civic Association, recently resigned from the group to pursue her first bid for a trustee seat. Holubnyczyj, 50, said she is running because she believes residents have lost confidence in the current board. 

"Residents express to me that they don't feel there's transparency, and everything is done behind closed doors and that decisions are made prior to public meetings," said Holubnyczyj, who works at John Lewis  Childs School in Floral Park. "If you don't have that confidence in your administration, you've got nothing — and that's basically why I'm running."

There are two contested seats, each carrying two-year terms, for the March 19 election. Those seats are occupied by former schools superintendent Lynn Pombonyo and Bronx District Attorney's Office investigator Frank Chiara, both of whom are expected to seek re-election. Trustees receive a $5,000 annual stipend to serve on the board.  

Chiara and Pombonyo are part of Floral Park’s Citizens Party, whose members have governed the village for nearly a century. In a statement Thursday, the Citizens Party said the trustees would be “honored to continue this work and make Floral Park that great place it is.”

Floral Park is a 1.5-square-mile community that straddles the border of Hempstead and North Hempstead towns. The village, which operates its own library and police department, employs 123 full-time staff and has about 16,100 residents.

Holubnyczyj has two sons and has degrees in communication and speech pathology from Queens College. She had led Hillcrest Civic since September 2013. 

In recent years, Holubnyczyj has been a vocal opponent of Floral Park's handling of a matter involving the village's police commissioner, Stephen McAllister, who was mentioned in an NYPD payoffs-for-favors federal corruption trial in Manhattan in 2018.

Jona Rechnitz, a trial witness, said he bought McAllister a Chopard watch, a diamond ring for his engaged daughter, other jewelry and paid for meals. In exchange, Rechnitz said that McAllister arranged for NYPD officers to have protesters cleared from in front of the jewelry store owned by Rechnitz's boss. Rechnitz also said McAllister, while working for the NYPD, arranged for him to have a bogus appointment as police chaplain and clergy liaison, a position that came with a parking placard for Rechnitz. 

Holubnyczyj said village officials should have conducted a full investigation into the claims made against McAllister during the trial. Instead, village officials “met with the commissioner and declared that there was no wrongdoing,” she said in a statement on her campaign website.

"My issue is not with Commissioner McAllister,” Holubnyczyj said. “My matter of contention is the absolute manipulation and interpretation of existing policies, procedures and laws by the village."

The village also poorly handled the McAllister situation by not revealing when officials conducted their investigation and not releasing what documents McAllister submitted to the village to clear his name, Holubnyczyj said.

"The whole process was just done very quickly," she said.