With the relentless coverage of the 2023 local elections, it’s difficult to fully understand which positions are the ballots in which towns. With a full slate of positions and some areas having a more packed ballot than others, some elections simply fall off the radar.
The elections that don’t exactly capture our attention are also some of the more esoteric races; some people aren’t even aware of the electability of some positions.
Although not on the November ballot, balance of power for the Smithtown Library Board is on the ballot on October 10, for residents of Nesconset, Kings Park, Commack, and Smithtown.
The seats of incumbent trustees Brianna Baker-Stines, Barbara Deal, Anita Dowd-Neufeld, and Thomas Maher are on the ballot this year. Baker-Stines and Deal are the only incumbents running, with the added challengers of Theresa Stabile and Christopher Jarvis running for the two open seats.
With four seats of the seven-member board up for grabs this year, the balance of power on the Library Board could see a change.
Residents can vote for eight library board candidates. Candidates will not appear with party lines and endorsements, rather they will appear with simply just their names along the bottom of the ballot. With eight candidates, each is effectively assigned a numbered position. The slate we’re previewing this week makes up positions 2, 4, 6, and 8.
Although technically nonpartisan, candidates do have a set of declared positions and run on a slate, effectively a “team,” that can serve as a working majority if they’re elected cohesively.
One slate is made up entirely of challengers, with one previous Library Board candidate, one previous candidate for elected office, and two newcomers: Hector Gavilla, Lucian Durso, JoAnn Lynch, and Vanest Avergel.
Hector Gavilla
Ballot Position: 2
Residence: Village of the Branch
Professional background: Real estate broker
Previous Elected Experience: None, ran for Suffolk Legislature in 2017 and 2019.
Priorities: As a broker and as a candidate, I’ve gotten to know people’s needs. I’m surprised to see what’s going on in the schools and libraries today.
We have people, some of whom are self-avowed socialists, trying to change kids’ minds in the schools today. When my son was at Half Hollow Hills school district not that long ago, a teacher had a picture of Che Guevara hanging up on the wall in the classroom. When I spoke to school leadership about who he was, they said that I educated them on the matter.
There are certain books in the library here that are in the children’s section and they’re not age-appropriate. One book called Gender Queer, a graphic novel, is borderline pornographic and it’s in the children’s section. When I tried to post a page from that book on Facebook, I got banned for twenty-four hours. So if Facebook thinks that book is pornographic, then why is it in the children’s section? If any adult talked about the topics in that book to a child, they would be accused, rightfully so, of pedophilia.
Parents should have a right to talk to their children about sex when it’s appropriate. They should make that decision, not the government or the schools. What’s happening is the government is trying to be a nanny state. There was a time when everyone had standards and it didn’t matter what side of the political spectrum you were on. We should not be sexualizing children.
I want to move these books out of that section. We have age-restricted content at libraries already; it should all be in the same section. We need to have responsibility to the community; they should know what’s happening in their schools and libraries. They should know how their tax dollars are being spent.
Lucian Durso
Ballot Position: 4
Residence: Commack
Professional background: Teacher for more than thirty years, coached sports, worked at the YMCA
Previous Elected Experience: Ran last election in a last-minute bid
Priorities: I have eleven grandchildren. I taught health education in the public schools for about thirty-five years. I taught sex education, nutrition, disease, abortion, and many other related topics. If you “follow the science,” your rates of drug abuse, suicide, anxiety, and other problems with kids are through the roof.
Think of decisions you make as an adult, such as buying a house. They’re stressful decisions that might keep you up at night. Now think of an eight-year-old kid, who’s getting information he’s too young to get. It throws them off. He’ll go talk to the school psychiatrist or psychologist. I’ve worked with many of them, some of them are good, some of them aren’t. Now it’s your child who will be told by someone else what to do.
Here’s a football analogy that fits our situation: in football, you have three teams: the home team, the visiting team, and the officials. Without the officials, you have bedlam. That’s what we have today. We have bedlam because there’s no right or wrong anymore. You can’t weasel your way out of wrong.
You shouldn’t have pornography in the children’s section. If that’s okay, then we should just get rid of ratings at the movie theater.
The bottom line is: we’re all human. None of us are perfect, but we have to find the balance of right and wrong again. If we’re going to raise the next generation for greatness, we can’t confuse them at this age.
JoAnn Lynch
Ballot Position: 6
Residence: Kings Park
Professional background: Pharmaceutical technician, worked in hospitals
Previous Elected Experience: None, ran for Smithtown Library Board in 2022.
Priorities: I get a lot of reports from the community about what’s going on in the libraries and schools. My daughters have told me that a third of the high school will say that they’re part of the LGBT group just to fit in, just so people will leave them alone. It’s prevalent in the libraries and on social media. It’s making them turn inward instead of helping them strive for their aspirations, such as what kind of career they would want or what school they would want to attend.
Usually, by the time they get to college, they don’t know what to do because they’re conditioned to constantly watch their language and their social situations. At the latest library meeting, they contemplated taking the word “adult” out of the library vernacular, for the sake of “inclusion.”
I’m for family values, community values, and freedom of our values and expression. We need to have freedom to display morality in raising our families. These are things the education system has whittled down. Essentially, these are Marxist tactics; the American Library Association (ALA) have pushed all kinds of strange policies that whittle away the nuclear family in favor of the educational departments and teachers unions. They want to teach kids what’s “appropriate,” but most of the time it never includes any kind of morality.
Vanest Avergel
Ballot Position: 8
Residence: Smithtown
Professional background: Accountant, worked as a service
Previous Elected Experience: None
Priorities: This district is the largest special library district in the state; we have four buildings serving over 115,000 people and 6,000 children under the age of 5.
We want to give parents the confidence to walk into the children’s section and not have to see pornography when they open a book.
Electric vehicle charging stations were approved earlier this month. The utilities and the upkeep are paid for by Smithtown residents. It has nothing to do with the library mission of lifelong education.
I’d like to bring back family programming, such as Dancing Under the Stars or Merit Badge Nights. These are things you can do with your families or friends that bring various age groups together.
There are seven people on the board now and constantly agree on everything in 7-0 votes. While the four of us [Lynch, Durso, and Gavilla] don’t agree on everything, we agree on family and community values. We can bring back healthy discourse to an otherwise one-way board.
In addition to voting for new members of the library board, residents can also approve the budget for the entirety of 2024. The proposed budget is $17,292,960.00, which includes the annual financing costs of the bond previously approved by the electorate, with the rest financed by taxable property within the Library District.
Voting will take place at all four libraries: Smithtown Main Building Library, Kings Park Branch Library, Commack Branch Library, and Nesconset Branch Library. Residents’ polling sites are determined by their home addresses and Suffolk County election districts. Go to https://voterlookup.elections.ny.gov/ to determine your polling site.
Polls will be open between the hours of 9:30a.m. and 9:00p.m. on October 10.
Qualified voters may obtain an absentee ballot at the Community Relations Department in the Nesconset Building, located at 148 Smithtown Boulevard on days the library is open to the public. Public hours are 9:30a.m. to 5:00p.m, excluding holidays and weekends.
