The Garden City News (1/24/25) by Litmor Publishing

Friday, January 24, 2025

Vol. 102, No. 4

When You’re My Client, You’re My Client for Life

FOUNDED 1923 n LOCALLY OWNED AND EDITED

Linda Brunni

Lic. R. E. Sales person O 516.307.940 6 | M 516.728.4 800 linda.brunnin g@elliman.com Garden City Office | 130 7th Street 516.307.9406 | elliman.com

DAR reception PAGE 6 n Cathedral fellowship PAGE 36

Before approval, Trustees state positions on survey

MULCHFEST 2025

BY RIKKI MASSAND

Hempstead Town Supervisor Don Clavin (right) and Town Clerk Kate Murray (2nd right) greeted James and Courtney Noumair of Garden City as they participated in the Town of Hempstead Mulchfest event on January 11 at Veterans Memorial Park in East Meadow. Mulchfest provides an environmentally friendly manner for residents to dispose of their Christmas trees, exchanging them in return for a bag of mulch that can be used at a later date.

Chaminade student supports cancer research to honor late relative BY GARY SIMEONE

Cancer research and treatment is something that is very personal to Graham Hefelfinger, a 9th grade student at Chaminade High School. He recently lost his godcousin, Bailey Buell, to a rare cancer called Rhabdomyosarcoma.

“We are a close family and I was very close to my cousin so her passing hit us hard,” said Hefelfinger. “I have been very active in Cycle For Survival, a cancer fundraiser and at school to try and raise money for both cancer treatment and research projects.” The fundraiser he’s refer-

ring to is the ‘Cycle For Survival’ organization , which is part of the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. It is the official rare cancer fundraising program that encourages people to cycle for a cure. Over a million dollars has been raised so far through See page 41

As the Garden City Village Board of Trustees prepared to vote on the much-anticipated St. Paul’s Survey at their January 16 meeting, Deputy Mayor Bruce Chester raised concerns about the survey’s development, which excluded him and Mayor Mary Carter Flanagan. Participating via Zoom in last week’s meeting, Chester criticized the survey, saying, “The survey is flawed to produce results that I believe they (the six other trustees) want – not to get the unbiased results of 7,000 village households who will receive the survey. After all the surveys and revisions we should have done better than this. While I appreciate the hard work that has been put in by this Board, the bottom line is that we are not giving the residents all the choices they should be given to make a decision on this building and to get this going. St. Paul’s has taken so much of our time out of all the other projects and issues we have in this village.…It was just disappointing to have a survey that is limited and that is why I can’t vote for it.” Deputy Mayor Chester also noted that en route to developing the final survey, “various concoctions were rejected” and the mayor began to get frustrated. He cited her Mayor’s Column in The Garden City News the week of November 15, 2024, “when she voiced her disappointment of the continued rejection of the surveys” expressed disappointment in the process and criticized the survey for limiting residents’ choices, particularly regarding demolition. He then said the mayor was “attacked” at the Board’s second meeting in November by the six trustees opposing him and Mayor Carter Flanagan on this issue. “They were saying she is totally wrong and that everyone would have an opportunity to tell us what they think about the building….the process would be community-driven, and the finished survey project would be a fair, open and unbiased survey.” Deputy Mayor Chester said he remained quiet when those ideas were asserted by the rest of the Board, but from his perspective the “finished” survey that came up for a vote last week was blatantly biased towards a preservation outcome for the nationally-recognized historic building. See page 40

GC Grapplers continue to excel PAGE 48 POAs introduce trustee candidates PAGE 26