After an amazing run of 36 years on the Village of Roslyn Harbor board of trustees----including 20 years as mayor---Gerson Strassberg has retired from village politics.

Mayor Strassberg presided over his last village hall meeting on Wednesday, March 20. Earlier, village officials and residents honored the mayor with a luncheon at the Jolly Fisherman.

Not only did Mayor Strassberg serve on the board for nearly four decades; he never missed a single BOT meeting during those 36 years. At the Jolly Fisherman luncheon, Deputy Mayor David Samber hailed Mayor Strassberg as "the Cal Ripken of our village," adding that while Ripken never missed a game in 16 years of professional baseball, Mayor Strassberg went a good 20 years further in his quest for perfection.

Gerson Strassberg moved to Roslyn Harbor in 1970. He worked as the general contractor for his home in both 1969 and 1970. However, during that time he became dissatisfied with the operation of the village's building department and the fact that there were, in his words, "a lot of holdovers" on the BOT. And so, in 1972, he ran for the BOT, running the most votes in that election.

By 1988, Mayor Strassberg was ready to become mayor. He has served in that office longer than anyone in the village's history. "If someone breaks my record, I want to be there to congratulate them," he joked.

Looking back on his time in politics, Mayor Strassberg noted that over the decades, he has signed over 20,000 checks and documents, all pertaining to village business. His most significant achievement was his resistance to the liquid natural gas tank "farm" in Glenwood Landing. Since 1950, Keyspan, Mayor Strassberg said, had 12 tanks, containing one million gallons of propane liquid lying underground near Roslyn Harbor. The explosive power of such tanks, Mayor Strassberg claimed, was "greater than Hiroshima."

After years of hard work and often at his own expense, Mayor Strassberg, as Deputy Mayor Samber related, organized a meeting at the Swan Club, one that included officials from LIPA, the Village of Roslyn Harbor, the Town of North Hempstead, Nassau County, and New York State. They all agreed on the removal of the gas tanks.

Deputy Mayor Samber also cited Mayor Strassberg's work on the intersection of Glen Cove Road and Back Road, where safety concerns had long been a major issue.

The mayor's action, Samber claimed, "saved countless major injuries and probably lives." Over the years, that intersection had seen a number of serious accidents and "more than one fatality," Samber noted. However, with the assistance of then-State Senator Michael Balboni, Mayor Strassberg, Samber added, "was relentless in pursuing the state to stop traffic from turning across Glen Cove Road on to Back Road other than when protected by a dedicated green arrow." As a result, accidents and possible serious injuries are down considerably.

As his career in politics came to an end, Mayor Strassberg concerned himself with the work on the Roslyn Viaduct, most especially how barges of steel were being transported. The original route was abandoned once it was discovered that a turtle colony near the bridge was being disturbed. Now, the barges are moved down Bryant Avenue, from 12 midnight to 5 a.m. Negotiations over safety matters are still ongoing, the mayor said.

Asked about the best part of serving as mayor, Strassberg replied that simply "being there" was rewarding.

"It never bothered me to get 6 to 8 phone calls a day," he said. While he also had to make a living, Mayor Strassberg still gave his primary efforts to his village duties. He also enjoyed the people he worked with it and, naturally, the village itself. "We have one of the nicest-if not the nicest---village on the North Shore," Mayor Strassberg proudly claimed, adding that the village is in the best shaped it's ever been in.

"We've tightened up the building department," he said. "Plus, we have re-codified the whole village government, making it more difficult to get a building permit." The purpose of such laws, which have been duplicated in villages across the North Shore, is not just to ensure the safety of local residents, but also to preserve the character of small villages such as Roslyn Harbor.

At his retirement dinner, Mayor Strassberg received citations from the Office of the County Executive, the Office of the Town Supervisor of Oyster Bay, the Office of the Nassau County Comptroller, plus a proclamation from the Nassau County Village Officials Association.