Susan Lopatkin has been the face of Great Neck’s Kensington for 17 years, serving the village as its mayor. But she is now saying goodbye to her seat and the village as she steps away from her longstanding position.
The exit, she said, is bittersweet.
“I love this village, I really do,” Lopatkin said. “I grew up in Flushing very modest. I never dreamed of having a house, a community like this. It was really extraordinary to be part of this and I wanted to just participate and just keep it going and make it better.”
Lopatkin’s decision to step down was fueled by her and her husband’s decision to move out of the village, but she said the move comes in tandem with her readiness to pass the baton. Lopatkin will also not be far, remaining in the greater Great Neck area but no longer in Kensington.
She said that while she has enjoyed filling this job for nearly two decades, she is also ready to move on.
She is being succeeded by Jeffrey Greener, who has served as trustee on the village’s board for about a decade. She said the village is in good hands with him leading it.
Lopatkin said she is the kind of person who is always looking for a way to get involved, starting with student government bids in high school and organizing events with her synagogue as a teenager.
“I kind of always like to organize things,” Lopatkin said. “It’s sort of in my blood.”
Lopatkin moved into the village in 1994 and immediately got involved civically. Her engagement started with the Kensington Civic Organization but she quickly became involved in the village’s Board of Trustees.
She first started attending their monthly board meetings, but after a couple of years she ran for an open trustee seat. There she served as trustee for a few years before transitioning to a zoning board seat to balance the needs of her family as well.
Fast forward to 2008 when the village’s mayor was not running for re-election and Loptakin said nobody else was really seeking out the opportunity. So she did.
“I sort of looked around and said, ‘Well, I should probably do this and I could do this so why not?’” Lopatkin said.
She was then elected as mayor.
Notable moments Lopatkin highlighted from her tenure included organizing and hosting the village’s centennial celebration in 2009, which came just a year after she assumed the position of mayor.
“People came who hadn’t been residents for years,” Lopatkin said. “It was so much fun.”
Other points of pride for Lopatkin include the village’s responsible fiscal management, which she said kept taxes low with simply inflationary increases and never exceeding the cap, and changing the village’s zoning code to add zoning incentives to ensure new homes were built in a fashion that fit the community’s eclectic architecture.
One of Lopatkin’s favorite projects was redoing the village’s front gates, lighting and shrubbery, displaying the charm of the village immediately as you entered.
“Every time I drive in, I just feel so proud that I made that happen,” Lopatkin said.
But not all moments were positive.
Lopatkin reflected on a microburst, a storm phenomenon of intense winds, that ran through the village and lobbed down trees in 2010. It caused closures on nearly every road, she said.
“I just remembered [thinking] ‘I have to get the roads open,’” Lopatkin said.
But the village rose to the occasion, deploying public works employees to quickly respond to the emergency.
Similar challenges arose when the village lost power during Superstorm Sandy in 2012, when Lopatkin found herself making calls at all hours of the day to get power restored to her residents.
Lopatkin described Kensington as a unique village with not just its eclectic charm but also with proximity to so many resources like the train station and a local police department.
She said that while she has seen changes over the years, the one that stays consistent is the community’s support for local government.
“At the end of the day everyone, I think, still wants the same thing, which is to have local government be responsible for their day-to-day things,” Lopatkin said. “Localized government really is the most efficient.”
She said that within a small community, everyone knows who to call in the local government to get issues resolved and their needs addressed – a plus side to Kensington.
While Lopatkin is exiting local government, she said she will likely find some other way to stay involved as sitting still is not her style. She said she will likely find some other way to get involved.
With more time on her hands now, Lopatkin said she is also looking forward to spending more time with her family – especially her four grandchildren.
