Centre Island mayor's race features incumbent and a challenger fighting a village lawsuit

Centre Island, a wealthy waterfront enclave on Nassau's North Shore, is bracing for a contentious mayoral election for the second year in a row.

Mayor Walter Roll, 66, faces 29-year-old challenger Ragnar Oelsner,  who is embroiled in a nearly yearlong lega l dispute with the village over the use of his waterfront property.

Centre Island officials have alleged that Oelsner installed shipping containers on his property without village approvals. Then, village officials allege in a lawsuit, he marketed them as short-term rentals on Airbnb. Oelsner has denied the charges. The lawsuit was filed in August in Nassau State Supreme Court.

Roll was appointed mayor last summer after the death of Lawrence Schmidlapp, who had led the village for more than a decade. Roll had been a village trustee and deputy mayor.

Oelsner, who has a background in finance and real estate, has a long lineage in the community: His family has lived in Centre Island for five generations, and his grandfather, James Oelsner, served as mayor in the 1970s.

The term is for one year. Three of the four village trustee seats are contested. Oelsner is running on a slate with three trustee contenders.

Oelsner said the village arbitrarily targeted his property for enforcement but that his motivation for running isn't linked to the lawsuit. "I want to do it because I think I can genuinely add value," Oelsner said. "I can modernize things."

Roll said Oelsner was issued numerous summonses by the village and felt his challenger "was running to just get rid of the lawsuit against him." Roll said the position requires someone with experience in government. "It's all the kind of really mundane stuff about fixing our roads," he said. "It's really time consuming. ... It's an everyday effort."

Containers dispute

Oelsner said the containers are allowed and that he filed permits to build them on his property as permanent structures. But the request was delayed by the village's building department, he said.

The construction and use of the containers, according to the village's lawsuit, pose "an ongoing and imminent threat to life and safety."

He denied marketing the containers as Airbnb rentals. Village officials included a copy of an online listing for the property showing the containers and other amenities. But in a court filing, one of Oelsner's business associates said he made the "sample 'Airbnb' listing" to test the platform ahead of a future hospitality venture. The listing was used as a "marketing exercise," the filing states.

There is dispute over whether the parcel, near the waterfront, could be developed because of its size. The village said the plot is about three-quarters of an acre. In the residential district where the property lies, the village allows development on plots 3 acres or largergreater. But Oelsner contends that development is allowed on smaller plots as part of a 1920s-era zoning law.

“The Village’s application rests on misrepresentations, selective enforcement, and the continuation of a decades-long pattern of denying me, my family, and our entities due process in the exercise of long-established property rights,” Oelsner wrote in the lawsuit.

In April, Oelsner filed a counterclaim. He alleged that village officials have not addressed his pending permit requests, including to build permanent containers, in a reasonable time frame.

An attorney for the village declined to comment.

A second contentious race

Schmidlapp was reelected last June following a contentious legal battle: A prospective challenger, Andrew Woodstock, was denied ballot access and sued. A judge denied the request, ruling the challenge was not filed in a timely fashion.

Roll said the position comes with a litany of challenges. He said the village is negotiating a new police contract and remains in litigation with the Bayville Fire Department over charges for a truck used to fight fires in the village. Centre Island has no fire hydrants.

"We're continuing to try and make improvements on the island and get our building department working more efficiently," Roll said.

Oelsner said he's running to modernize and improve transparency in village government. A chief concern is improving the permitting process. He said he has developed an app for residents that would enable notifications and alerts, and supports livestreaming village meetings that are recorded and published online.

"I want people to be more engaged," he said.

Oelsner is joined by a slate of trustee candidates. Ralph Romano and Linda Marra are each running for two open one-year-term trustee seats against incumbent Mark DeNatale and Carole Gutierrez, whose husband, Ted, is a sitting trustee. Alex Carciu is challenging for one of two trustee seats held by Andrew Farren and Grace Haggerty, who are both running for reelection. Those seats come with two-year terms.

By Joseph Ostapiuk

joseph.ostapiuk@newsday.com@OstapiukJ