Race for Recchia’s City Council seat begins

March 7, 2013 Denise Romano
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The race for Councilmember Domenic Recchia’s seat is going full speed ahead, with Mark Treyger, community activist and aide to Assemblymember Bill Colton, the latest to throw his hat into the ring.

City Council District 47 encompasses portions of Bensonhurst, Gravesend, Coney Island, Sea Gate and part of Brighton Beach.

Treyger teaches government at New Utrecht High School and has been the president of the United Progressive Democratic Club for the past 10 years.

“Running for City Council is simply an extension of the work I am already doing,” Treyger told this paper. “Our formula is always involving all residents.”

Over the past few years, he helped spearhead a successful campaign to restore B64 bus service to Coney Island.

“We have to engage and build a multi-ethnic coalition to solve problems,” Treyger explained. “We are doing that right now to fight the very dangerous garbage waste transfer station that’s planned. For families who live in flood zones, God forbid we have another storm, there will be mercury and arsenic ending up in basements, not just mold.”

Treyger said he will fight the waste transfer station alongside Colton.

“Our formula is always involving all residents,” he said. “That’s what I plan to do in the City Council.”

But Treyger said that what inspires him the most are his students.

“I always try to teach my students to have faith in the system and participate in the system. I want to restore their confidence,” he said. “I am concerned about the growing cynicism of public service and government. It’s important that civil servants remember that they got involved to serve the people.”

Besides Treyger, those who already declared their candidacy include John Lisyanskiy, a financial analyst for the City Council, and Todd Dobrin, president of Friends of the Boardwalk and a former Community Board 13 member.

“As my slogan says, we need to have people before politics and the choice of the people must be the voice of the people. If the community says they don’t want a concrete Boardwalk, they mean it,” Dobrin told this paper.

“We need someone in office to stand ground and do what they were elected to do: represent the people,” he went on. “The people don’t want a garbage waste transfer station. The bottom line is: I am going to represent the whole district.”

Lisyanskiy said that he has been working in the City Council for 15 years. I have had the fortune and privilege to acquire in-depth knowledge about the functions and powers of the government. When I decided to run for City Council, I reflected on my professional experience over these years and realized that I am ready for this responsibility and this is our time, he said.

He added that he wants to make sure that we continue to live in the safest big city in the world, that our schools will improve for our children and we adequately support our educators, that our small businesses are thriving again, that our college graduates are getting good jobs and that our unemployment rate keeps shrinking.

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