Nyack, March 21 — There will be one new face on the South Nyack Village Board after last Tuesday’s election. There won’t be any changes in Upper Nyack — but a strong showing by a write-in candidate is probably giving the incumbent board something to think about.
South Nyack
Village Board member Bonnie Christian will be the next mayor of the village. Christian ran unopposed, promising to appoint the current mayor, Tish Dubow, to her vacated trustee position. She received 160 votes from the 169 people who came out to vote last Tuesday. A little over nine percent of the registered voters in South Nyack turned out on Tuesday.
In the race for the two open trustee seats, Catherine McCue was the top vote recipient getting 43 percent of the ballots cast. Tom Neff, an incumbent member of the village board, finished second with 33 percent followed by Cliff Weathers with 24 percent.
Upper Nyack
Write-in candidate Greg Fisher, President of Precast Concrete Sales in Valley Cottage, received three out of ten votes cast — an impressive showing for someone who wasn’t even on the ballot. Incumbent Mayor Michael Esmay was still the runaway winner with 52 percent of the vote. Jennifer Chaitin finished third with 18 percent.
Incumbent trustees Jeff Hinden and Vincent Morgan ran unopposed. Despite the strong turnout — 35 percent of registered Upper Nyack voters cast a ballot — many of those who voted for mayor didn’t vote for either of the incumbent trustees. Hinden captured only 71 percent of the possible votes and Morgan received only 67 percent.
McCue says she decided to run for her first public office at age 62 because of her involvement with the new Tappan Zee Bridge as president of the Salisbury Point Apartments Board of Directors. “I think that the mayor and the trustees have their work cut out for them, not just in the every day running of the village, but for the huge impact of this massive public works project,” she said. McCue says she wants to make sure the governor keeps promises he has made to the community regarding the new bridge. “We have an opportunity to right some wrongs that occurred with the first bridge construction in the 1950’s and I think the new mayor and the board want to accomplish this as well.”
Graphs courtesy of the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) Create A Graph project