By Jeff Lipton
Candella captured about 70 percent of the vote to remain on the board in the district, which encompasses the Five Towns and small portions of Valley Stream and Lynbrook.
By garnering 1,606 votes to Merrill's 691, after all absentee ballots were counted, Candella earned a third five-year term as a commissioner. A longtime Lawrence resident, Candella has been a board member for 12 years, and for the last 18 months he has served as board chairman.
Speaking on behalf of Candella, who was on his way out of the state following the election, Nat Swergold, an attorney for the board since 1972, said the commissioner was pleased with the result. "It reflects that the community is satisfied with the level of [sanitation] service and his leadership," Swergold said of Candella.
Had he won, Merrill, of Cedarhurst, would have been the first Orthodox Jewish commissioner to ever serve on the five-member board, said Swergold. "Nobody from that community has ever showed an interest," he said.
But before the election, Swergold admitted, "The Orthodox are very well organized. It could be a continuation of other voting patterns. Look what they've done with the schools." Swergold was referring to the Lawrence school board, which now has a majority of yeshiva parents sitting on it.
Contested elections for Sanitary District 1 commissioners are rare - this was the second one in about a dozen years - so Monday night's turnout was much heavier than usual. In the days leading up to the election, an e-mail was distributed that urged the Orthodox community to turn out in support of Merrill and disparaged the incumbent.
Swergold said he had expected the negative attacks, which, he added, were rife with "falsehoods." Despite this, he said, the district receives no more than five complaints per week from its 18,000 customers.
"I'm still trying to figure out why somebody was running [against Candella]," Swergold said. "Enough people have said the service is absolutely the greatest and the tax rate is the lowest and we give them enough goodies such as rear-door pickup."
Merrill has said that he ran for the post because of what he considered to be the commissioners' shabby handling of the district's $14 million budget. The district's inadequate financial controls were cited in a 2005 audit by Nassau County Comptroller Howard Weitzman.
After the election results were announced, Merrill said, "Clearly we had a nice showing by those who are in favor of changes in District 1. Although I did not win this election, I feel that my candidacy opened the eyes of the residents to the mismanagement within the sanitation commission, and that alone meant I was successful."
Merrill, who manages a multi-million-dollar budget as the director of operations at Weill Cornell Medical College, said that if he had been elected, he would have used his expertise to establish financial controls and restore fiscal stability to the district. Although he acknowledged that residents are happy with their sanitation service, he said the status quo needed to be changed to offer services at a cheaper rate, possibly through consolidation.
Candella, the founder and CEO of one of the largest warehouse and moving businesses in New York, has said he is proud that Sanitary District 1 offers many unique services to its customers, such as backdoor pickup, and is the only sanitation department in the state to have its own recycling plant.
Candella said he opposes the idea of consolidating services such as sanitation, feeling that it would ultimately be more expensive and bad for residents.
Merrill, a Democrat, received the support of Nassau County Legislator Jeff Toback (D-Oceanside), who has said he backed the challenger because the Republicans have controlled the sanitary district for too long and a one-party government is unhealthy.
The voting took place between 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. at District 1 headquarters on Bay Boulevard in North Lawrence. Some elderly residents complained about the time and location of the vote.
Comments about this story? JLipton@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 210.
