Changes are coming to the Village of Kings Point Board of Trustees as longtime Mayor Michael Kalnick and a pair of incumbent trustees will not be seeking re-election in the village’s June 21 election.
Kalnick, who has served as Kings Point’s mayor for the last 40 years, will not be running for re-election, according to village officials. Kalnick has spent more than four decades living in Kings Point and has served in a variety of roles, including as member and chairman of the Board of Appeals as well as deputy mayor and trustee.
A senior partner of the law firm Kalnick, Klee & Green, he has a B.S. degree from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Finance and Commerce and a law degree from New York University School of Law. He is also a chairman for the Alert Fire Company’s Length of Service Award Program and chairman of the Water Authority of Great Neck North.
Officials said Trustee Kouros “Kris” Torkan, the founder of the real estate company Villadom Corp., will be running for Kalnick’s seat. Torkan was first appointed to the board to fill the seat left vacant by former Trustee Ron Horowitz in 2019. Torkan is unopposed in the mayoral election.
Deputy Mayor David Harounian and Trustee Ira S. Nesenoff will also be retiring from the board following the village’s June 21 election, with Kings Point residents Tedi Kashinejad and Shahriar Victory running unopposed for their seats.
Harounian, a Kings Point resident for 40 years, has played an integral role in establishing three Iranian synagogues throughout the Great Neck peninsula. A former board member for Temple Israel, Harounian still serves as its President’s Advisory Board chairman. Harounian has a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Fairleigh Dickinson University and established a company that manufactures and imports hand-made oriental rugs in the 1960s.
Nesenoff served as a member of the village’s zoning board for nearly 20 years and is a managing partner of Nesenoff & Miltenberg, a law firm based in New York City. Nesenoff ran unopposed for a one-year term last year.
The election will take place at Village Hall, 32 Steppingstone Lane, from 12 p.m.-9 p.m. All seats are two-year terms.
In the Village of Great Neck, resident Sam Yellis announced he will be running against incumbent Trustees Bart Sobel and Eli Kashi in the June 21 election.
Yellis, a social studies teacher for the Village School, said he is fighting against overdevelopment and for the other village residents. Yellis also said he would work with parks and schools to bring more cultural celebrations to the peninsula.
Sobel, a Great Neck-based lawyer, was first elected to the Board of Trustees in 2010 after former Trustee Edna Guilor stepped down. Sobel was appointed the village’s deputy mayor by Mayor Pedram Bral in 2017.
Kashi won an unopposed election to fill the seat of Norman Namdar. Namdar served on the board for seven years before stepping down for unspecified reasons.
The election will take place at the Village Hall, 61 Baker Hill Road, from 7 a.m.-9 p.m. Both seats are two-year terms.
Village of Lake Success Mayor Adam Hoffman and Trustees Fred Handsman, Robert Gal and Spyro Dimitratos are running unopposed for re-election to the board. The election will take place at Village Hall, 318 Lakeville Road, from 12 p.m.-9 p.m. All of the seats are for two-year terms.
