By Doug Miller
Lynn Gergen, the former president of the Central Council PTA, emerged the winner of a vacant Board of Education seat in unofficial tallies released Tuesday night. She held a margin of 233 votes over Long Beach Library Trustee Kathleen Dwyer, with 114 absentee ballots and 66 affidavit votes still to be counted. Gergen will succeed Trustee Steve Weitz, who did not seek re-election, when his term ends June 30.
Turnout was low for a school election that did not offer much in the way of excitement - fewer than 2,500 people went to the polls in a district where there are more than 10,000 registered voters. The school budget breezed through by an early tally of 1,545 to 940, and the library budget passed by a margin of 1,382 to 741.
The school spending plan passed by huge margins in the middle of the district to make up for the votes of opposition on the fringes. It received 180 no votes to 165 yes at the West School, while Point Lookout voters, who skew more affluent and tend to send their children to private schools in greater numbers, voted against it, 106 to 69.
Elsewhere, however, the school budget, with its modest 4.8 percent tax increase, passed by huge margins. In Lido Beach the tally was 257 to 85. At the Martin Luther King Center, which was a polling place for the first time, the vote was 39 to 11. Voters at Temple Emanu-El passed it by 314 to 141.
The library budget lost only in Point Lookout, and even there, according to early returns, by only a vote, 76 to 75. It carried the West End by 152 to 141, and by much larger margins elsewhere. Long Beach residents have never voted down a library budget. Two ballot questions also easily passed. One, the creation of a capital reserve fund for the school district, was approved 1,550 to 826. The second, the acceptance of a New York state Excel grant that will be used for the rehabilitation of the Lindell School, passed 1,536 to 661.
While Gergen and Dwyer's race was low-key, it had its ugly moments. A flier was distributed at a City Council meeting that anonymously described an incident that allegedly involved Dwyer's children. Dwyer said later that Gergen told her she knew nothing about it. Meanwhile, Dwyer sent out a letter that hit mailboxes on Election Day, claiming that Gergen would spend recklessly and making a point of mentioning that Gergen no longer has children in the district.
After the vote tallies were announced, Dwyer and Gergen shook hands in the lobby of the district office building in Lido Beach and exchanged congratulations. Dwyer then left the building and rebuffed a request for an interview.
Gergen said she was ready to put the "pettiness" of the campaign behind her and recapture the atmosphere of mutual respect that no longer exists between the school board and the teachers' union. "But it's not going to happen in the first 100 days," she conceded.
"I'd like to see the community get more involved in the district," Gergen said when asked of her immediate goals. "I'd like to reach out to the community rather than wait for them to come to us, since that hasn't happened."
She also took a tougher line on school safety issues than she had during the campaign. "There are students [at the high school] who are doing dangerous things," she said. "We have to start being tough on discipline, and make parents more accountable."
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