O’side sanitation election to take place amid controversy

Kramer, Horowitz, Samoles vie for open seat

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At least three candidates will be vying for one open seat on the Oceanside Sanitation District No. 7 Board of Commissioners, as the department’s June 15 election approaches.

Oceanside residents Joseph Samoles and Matthew Horowitz are set to challenge Commissioner Jean Kramer, who is seeking a five-year term after former board member Florence Mensch stepped down last year.

The race is likely to get heated as controversies continue to roil the district. Most recently, an anonymous post on the Oceanside Taxpayer Concerns Facebook page accused Board Chairman Ed Scharfberg of being involved in a motion to hire H2M Architects — a contracting firm for which he works — for services regarding the construction of a parking lot and fuel tank behind the district’s Mott Street headquarters.

The May 12 post appeared to show the minutes of a 2015 meeting — which stated that Scharfberg put forth a motion to retain H2M’s services — and called on him to step down.

Scharfberg told the Herald that he should have recused himself from the 2015 vote, but insisted that he never benefited from the contract. “I welcome the D.A.’s office or state comptroller to personally investigate my finances,” he said.

The post was not the first time the issue was brought to light. At a May 4 meeting, Scharfberg described other online comments regarding the perceived conflict of interest as “discouraging,” and said that after the 2015 vote, he chose not to vote on matters concerning H2M at least eight times.

“If you truly believe there is any form of corruption, I ask you to notify the authorities,” Scharfberg wrote on Facebook. “… The bullying, intimidation and scare tactics do not annoy me, but they are [an] annoyance to the Oceanside community.”

The allegations come on top of the March 13 dismissal by a Westchester County judge of a class-action lawsuit brought against both current and former members of the board.

The suit alleged that former commissioners Joseph Cibellis and Mensch, as well as current board member Tom Lanning, did not do enough to recoup more than $800,000 in retirement payments made to former district supervisors Michael Scarlata and his son Charles.

In his decision, the judge described the legal effort as “laudable,” but decided he could not let the case proceed due to a technicality on the legal definition of what constitutes a municipal corporation. Former Oceanside sanitation workers Samoles and Dennis Rockefeller originally filed the suit in November 2015.

Although not named in the suit, Scharfberg said in his May 16 statement that he had successfully voted to terminate Scarlata’s contract, and voted to bring in special counsel to investigate potential corruption. Other members of the board voted down the latter measure.

Ary Rosenbaum, a 20-year Oceanside resident and retirement attorney, expressed disappointment in Scharfberg’s actions, and said he thought his Facebook post was disingenuous. “I was a big Ed Scharfberg supporter, and I’m really dismayed with the way things turned out,” he said. “He was supposed to be a voice of change from the Scarlata era.”

In the wake of the recent controversies, Samoles and Horowitz are looking to bring their voice to the board. Others can pick up their application and petition forms in the Oceanside Sanitation Department building at 90 Mott Street. The deadline is June 5.

The signatures of at least 25 qualified voters are required to run. Polls will be open from 3 to 10 p.m. at the same location on June 15.