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The Miller Place board of education incumbent Keith Frank is running unopposed to maintain the position he’s held for the last three years.

The trustee has been a Miller Place resident since 2003, and currently works as a labor and employment attorney for the Silverman Acampora law firm based in Jericho. He moved to Miller Place to raise his kids in what he saw as a good school district and kid-friendly area.

Keith Frank is running for his second term. File photo

Two of his three kids are currently enrolled in the district. His oldest child graduated from last year. While his kids matured he coached North Shore Little League soccer, softball and baseball.

When Frank ran in 2015 he said he wanted to meet the needs of his own children as well as the rest of the students in the district.

“I got a lot of fulfillment and satisfaction working on the board,” Frank said. “I want to continue that with the great team we have here.”

He said he believes that the main focus of the board should be offering programs for all students with different interests.

“We’re trying to balance the needs and the wishes of everyone, whether it’s arts, athletics or music — whatever the kids want to do,” Frank said. “Not all kids have the same interests. For example, with my kids, one’s athletic, one is interested in the arts. It’s about making sure we can properly fund those and support any of those activities.”

Frank said that technology, science and math focused courses should be a staple in the school’s curriculum to deal with a developing world.

“Kids should be able to go out and properly tackle the world,” he said.

Board president Johanna Testa said she was happy to see Frank put in an application for a second term.

“We’re looking forward to the next couple of years with him here,” she said. “What I find with our current board is we may not all agree with each other all the time, but we work well together and we work toward the common good of the district. [Keith Frank] is an attorney and he’s had experience dealing with contract negotiations and things of that nature. That’s been a benefit to us and the district.”

Last March Miller Place School District hired one armed security guard for each of the four school buildings in the district.

Frank would not go into detail on continuing those services or putting more effort and funds in new security upgrades, but he said options will be reviewed again going into the next school year.

“We’re taking it one step at a time,” Frank said. “We have approved [the security guards] through the end of this year, then we will take up that issue and review it again.”

Board elections will take place with the budget vote Tuesday, May 15 from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. in the North Country Road Middle School gym, at 191 North Country Rd. in Miller Place.

This version was updated to correctly identify at what time and where the budget and trustee vote will take place.

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The district is hosting a meet the candidates night May 2

Mount Sinai School District's budget and trustee vote is May 15 from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. at Mount Sinai Elementary School, located at 118 North Country Rd. in Mount Sinai. File photo

By Kyle Barr

Two are running for two open seats on Mount Sinai’s board of education this month, with eight-year board veteran and president Lynn Capobianco stepping down.

Capobianco said she will not be seeking re-election, saying she believes it’s time for different community members to lend their voices to the discussion.

Lynn Capobianco. File photo

“All my children are through school, my youngest is now a freshman in college and I think it’s time for new faces and new voices to come in,” she said.

Incumbent trustee Michael Riggio is running for a second term and newcomer Steve Koepper is running first time. Both are running unopposed.

Riggio, the board’s vice president, is a 12-year resident of Mount Sinai finishing out his first three-year term. He has a 12-year-old daughter enrolled in the district.

Riggio is a retired officer of the New York Police Department’s counterterrorism unit who now provides security consulting. He said Mount Sinai’s push toward new security measures is something he has advocated for since he first arrived to the board.

“That’s one of the things I ran on three years ago,” Riggio said. “The new security’s working out, and it’s great to see it finally taking shape.”

Riggio said his focus is on making smart financial decisions to make sure school programs don’t get cut.

“Let’s say for example you have a senior and you have a kid in eighth grade,” Riggio said. “The senior was exposed to all these special programs and had great teachers, then, when the eighth-grader gets here, you want him to have the same things as the senior. You don’t want to tell the eighth-grader, ‘oh, we cut this program,’ and this is all gone because we have fiscal problems.”

Michael Riggio. File photo

Koepper and his family moved into their Mount Sinai home in 2000. He has previously volunteered on the district’s bond committee. The father of two said he understands the financial part of schools well, as he’s currently the superintendent of buildings and grounds for the Sayville school district.

“I have been involved with the community as a firefighter for over 15 years,” Koepper said in an email. “I felt now was a good time to offer more of my volunteer time in service to educational process to help shape the future of Mount Sinai schools. There are problems like declining enrollment that need to be looked at, and I’m here so that we can work together and move forward.”

He also has a 12-year-old daughter and a 3-and-a-half-year-old son in the district. Capobianco endorsed Koepper for the open seat.

“[Koepper] did a great job on the bond committee, so I think he will be a nice fit for school board,” she said.

Mount Sinai School District is hosting a meet the candidates night May 2 at 7:30 p.m. in the Mount Sinai Middle School auditorium. The school is located at 114 North Country Road in Mount Sinai.

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Northport Village Hall. File photo

Votes are in for the March 20 Northport Village Board trustee election, and results show that an incumbent and a former trustee have captured the two open seats in the three-candidate race.

Ian Milligan, a trustee since 2014, has come out on top with 1,078 votes, while Thomas Kehoe, who served as a trustee for two terms from 2006-14, came in second with 788. Each candidate secured titles for the next four years.

Ian Milligan. Photo from Ian Milligan

Trailing Kehoe by just 16 votes was Joseph Sabia — a former Northport police officer, Northport-East Northport school board member and a mayoral candidate in 2014 — who received 772 votes, all according to the office of the village clerk at Northport Village Hall as of March 21. The trustee-elects will begin their terms April 6.

“I’m glad to be back on the board,” Kehoe said. “I was here for eight years, so people know me — they know my work ethic, know that I get things done and that’s what they want. They want someone who’s going to work hard for them and be ethical and transparent, so, I think that’s why they voted for me.”

Kehoe, the owner and operator of East Northport-based K & B Seafood for more than 30 years, ran on an agenda to push the village into the 21st century by updating its infrastructure and antiquated codes, maintaining its public safety by securing the future of the village police department and helping solve problems of the local business community.

When he was trustee, Kehoe served as the commissioner of commerce, police and sanitation, and created the Northport Business & Economic Development Committee — a group he said he plans to re-implement. He said the committee’s first mission will be to tackle parking in the village.

“I’m very thankful that, hopefully, Northport can now return to some stability,” he said. “We have a lot of different opinions and lifestyles in the village and we make it work and, so, I’m happy to get back to it.”

Milligan, a Northport native and the owner of Electric Harbor Inc. on Willis Street, has focused his bid for re-election on maintaining Northport’s quality of life for residents, keeping taxes low, continuing to better the Northport Village Dock and getting a rain garden into the village to absorb rainwater runoff to keep the waterfront clean.

Thomas Kehoe. Photo from Thomas Kehoe

He could not be reached for comment following the election results, but in a previous interview with TBR News Media, Milligan said of re-election: “I have enjoyed this work and there is more work to be done.”

Sabia, also a local businessman as the owner of Sabia’s Car Care on Fort Salonga Road since 1977, ran for trustee promising to keep taxes low, restore the village’s crumbling roads and sidewalks, update village codes and push to bring a full-time paramedic to the vilalge’s firehouse.

Despite his disappointment in the overall results, the challenger said he’s proud of how he ran his campaign.

“I think [my opponents] spent a ton more money than I did, and they had more manpower, and I think I did pretty good,” Sabia said. “I think the people of the village spoke based on the tight race. Fifty percent of the people in this village aren’t happy. God bless everybody and God bless all the people that voted for me.”

Asked if he plans on running for the position in the future, Sabia said he wouldn’t rule it out.

“You never know what’s going to happen in life — I leave all my avenues open,” he said. “I’m not a quitter.”

The results also saw the election of new mayor Damon McMullen, a longtime trustee and the unopposed mayoral candidate in the race who secured a total of 1,078 votes. Paul Senzer was elected village justice with 966 votes.

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Joe Sabia file photo

Joe Sabia will be waiting for results on a stressful election eve for the third time in his 39 years as a resident of Northport Village on Mar. 15.

Sabia, a former member of the Northport-East Northport school board and a mayoral candidate in the 2014 Northport election, is running for trustee on the village board this time around.

“I’ve been here since 1977,” the 60-year-old Sabia said in a phone interview. “I’m not a newcomer.”

Sabia will face incumbents Jerry Maline and Damon McMullen in the 2016 election. He said that his experiences running for school board and mayor have prepared him.

“I realized people have to get out and vote,” Sabia said, adding that he knocked on about 1,400 doors when he was running for mayor in 2014 against incumbent George Doll. But that wasn’t enough to unseat the incumbent mayor.

Sabia said that he was not happy about the village’s proposed budget that was released in January, which included more than a 3 percent increase to the tax levy. Lowering taxes was one of several issues that Sabia said is important to his campaign and eventual term, if he is elected.

“You’re pushing people to the limit,” Sabia said about taxpayers in the village.

He also mentioned fixing sidewalks and roads in the village, changing the way that snow removal is handled, improving village parks, addressing environmental concerns associated with storm water runoff and upgrading street lights to be more efficient as some of the issues that are important to him and in need of the village’s attention.

“I have fresh ideas,” Sabia said. He said he is also interested in “revamping” village hall, though he said he would prefer to fund a project like that through donations, not tax dollars.

Asharoken Village found success with resident donations financing parts of the cost for the new village hall, which opened in January 2015.

Sabia has a history of wanting to keep costs low.

He went after his former school board colleagues at a board of education meeting on July 1, 2015, after they approved the appointment of Lou Curra as the district’s interim assistant superintendent for human resources, a position that paid Curra $935 per day during his six months in the position. He said he believed Curra was being overpaid.

Sabia owns Sabia’s Car Care, an automotive repair shop located on Fort Salonga Road in Northport. Nonetheless, he said he’s confident that he would have more than enough time to effectively serve the village as a trustee.

Sabia’s daughters, ages 25 and 29, were products of the Northport-East Northport school district, and his late wife Valerie served as the village court clerk until she passed away about four years ago, he said.

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Mount Sinai school board Trustees Robert Sweeney, left, and Peter Van Middelem, right, are sworn in as board president and vice president, respectively. Photo by Erika Karp

The Mount Sinai school board has a new vice president this year.

At the district’s annual reorganization meeting on July 1, Peter Van Middelem, who just finished his first year on the board, was elected to the position in a 4-1 vote. Van Middelem, a retired New York City firefighter, succeeds former Vice President Donna Compagnone, whose term was up this year and decided not to seek re-election.

Van Middelem said his main objectives for the new year include keeping positive communications and relations with the community and the district’s teachers, seeing how new programs, such as Columbia University’s Teachers College Writing Project, which provides writing curriculum and professional development for teachers, is implemented, and keeping taps on the new full-day kindergarten program.

“I know that our emphasis right now is to make sure kindergarten is running and up to speed,” he said in a phone interview.

Van Middelem commended his predecessor for all of her work and stated that he had big shoes to fill as vice president.

Trustee Lynn Capobianco, who was re-elected to her second three-year term in May, cast the lone dissenting vote at the meeting. She said she couldn’t support Van Middelem as he allegedly did some political campaigning in his role as president of the Mount Sinai Lacrosse program. According to the Internal Revenue Service, 501(c)(3) organizations are “prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office.”

Lynn Capobianco takes her oath of office. Photo by Erika Karp
Lynn Capobianco takes her oath of office. Photo by Erika Karp

Capobianco said that in doing so Van Middelem jeopardized the tax-exempt status of the organization. According to an IRS database, Mt. Sinai Lacrosse Inc’s status had been automatically revoked in February 2013 for failing to file a return for three consecutive years. Van Middelem declined to comment on Capobianco’s concerns.

“I respect him greatly for the work he has done for that organization, but based on those issues I think the leadership comes into question,” Capobianco said.

While the board saw a change in its vice president, Robert Sweeney, who was elected to his second three-year term in 2014, is staying put as president. Board newcomer Mike Riggio was unable to make the first meeting and was sworn into his position at an earlier time.

Sweeney thanked the board for its vote and seemed to set the tone for the 2015-16 school year. He pointed out how the trustees were all wearing pins that read, “Respect public education.”

“This is an important statement that we are making about our teachers. … We respect them,” he said.

Sweeney continued to speak about the importance and need for public education.

“I wouldn’t be here and in my career without it,” he said.

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The Incorporated Village of Poquott. File photo

The Incorporated Village of Poquott voted in three new trustees and a write-in village justice candidate in Tuesday’s election, the village clerk confirmed Thursday.

In the trustee race for two seats carrying two-year terms, Harold Berry and Jeffrey Koppelson were elected with 105 votes and 131 votes, respectively, beating out Gary Garofano, the third candidate vying for one of the spots.

Another trustee position, but carrying a one-year term, went to Sandra Nicoletti, who received 113 votes over Karen Sartain, who garnered 69 votes, the village clerk said Thursday.

Poquott also elected a new village justice on Tuesday with a write-in candidate, the clerk said. The village did not have any names on the ballot for the position, so the spot went to Paul Edelson, who received 96 votes, over Alexander Melbartis — another write-in — who received 87 votes.

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