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Massapequa School Board to hold hearing on question raised about candidate Gary Bennett's residency The Massapequa School Board is holding a special meeting tomorrow night, Thurs., May 15, 7 p.m., to determine if school board candidate Gary Bennett should have candidacy declared invalid. The district has received a complaint from a resident who said that Bennett’s primary residence is not in Massapequa; it’s in Ocean Beach, a claim that Bennett vehemently denies. “In order to qualify to run for the school board you have to be a resident of the school district for one year, uninterrupted,” said School Board President Richard Krebs. “A complaint was brought to us and we have an obligation to look into it.” Krebs declined to say who raised the issue, but Bennett said the district told him that it was former school board member Christine Nottonson. She stepped down from the school board in 2002. Efforts to reach her for comment were unsuccessful, but Krebs said the issue involved a story that appeared in the Fire Island Tide last year. At that time, Bennett was running for the Ocean Beach Board of Trustees. The article quoted Bennett as saying he recently established his primary residence in that village. “That’s simply not so,” said Bennett, and I cannot be held accountable for what the papers wrote. The fact is that Massapequa is my primary residence and has always been my primary residence. This is simply another attempt by the ‘powers that be’ to keep me off the board.” Bennett, who owns a summer home at Ocean Beach, is running against seven other candidates for the school board, including Krebs, an incumbent and another incumbent Christine Perrino. Krebs added, however, that the election had nothing to do with the board’s decision to hold the hearing. “It is the board’s responsibility to make sure that the petitions are legitimate and that is all we are doing,” he said. Bennett said he is prepared with a large file of paperwork to support his claim that his home in Massapequa is his primary residence. It includes copies of his tax returns, driver’s license, insurance premiums, and Social Security records. Even bills for work done at his home on Ocean Beach are sent to his home in Massapequa he said. “This is nothing but a witch hunt against me because there are many people within the district who don’t want me on that board,” he said. “They know I will question things and provide the public with a lot of information that I believe they are entitled to have. The irony of it all is that the district sent the notice for this meeting to my home in Massapequa.” In related matters, the district has announced that the meeting will take place in executive session, which means it will be closed to the public. Under New York State law, all meetings by public bodies are open to the public. Eight exemptions are listed, including meetings at which things like litigation, real estate purchases or personnel are being discussed. The Massapequa Post is making a formal request of the district that the meeting be open as required by law. Discussions about Bennett’s residency are not covered under the exemption, a letter to the district stated. “If and when the district decides to litigate the matter, then and only then should the meeting be closed,” the letter stated. “If this is nothing more than a hearing to determine where this individual lives, it is subject to the open meetings law and should be held in public,” said Robert Freeman, executive director for the Committee on Open Government. “There is nothing in the exceptions within the law that would apply to discussion about an individual’s residence.”
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