E IN RED “PICTURES WITH SANTA” And then make FR EE CHRISTMAS PHOTO WITH SANTA bigger.
___________ SEA CLIFF/GLEN HEAD __________ FREE CHRISTMAS PHOTO WITH SAN TA
HERALD
Saturday Dec. 10 12-2pm
Taking spirit of giving to heart
A tough loss for the Vikings
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VOL. 31 NO. 49
DECEMBER 1 - 7, 2022
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Giving children holiday joy for a decade By WILL SHEELINE wsheeline@liherald.com
Courtesy Guardian Angel
EVELYN, 5, IS one of dozens of children who have received gifts through the Giving Tree program over the past decade at Sea Cliff’s Guardian Angel Family Crisis Center.
As the holiday season kicks off, millions of American families are beginning to plan which presents to get for their loved ones. The nonprofit Guardian Angel Family Crisis Center, in Sea Cliff, is asking North Shore residents to consider extending their shopping lists to include their neighbors in need. This marks roughly the 10th year that Guardian Angel has hosted its Giving Tree, a Christmas tree set up in the store with cards written by
local children in need listing a small gift that they would like this year. Residents of Sea Cliff, Glen Head, Glen Cove and Glenwood Landing who visit the store are encouraged to take one of the cards and take on the role of Santa Claus for one of the children. Barbara Costello, director of Guardian Angel, explained that by engaging the community to help their neighbors in need, the nonprofit hopes to not just help residents, but foster a sense of support and camaraderie in the area. “Guardian Angel’s very CONTINUED ON PAGE 2
Missing deed is delaying renovations of a Sea Cliff park By WILL SHEELINE wsheeline@liherald.com
One of Sea Cliff ’s proudest attractions is the many walking paths and parks that dot its landscape. The village has recently received several grants for roughly $150,000 to help maintain, beautify and improve several of these green spaces. Roslyn Park is not one of them, however, because the original deed ceding ownership of the park to the village is nowhere to be found. In 2019, Sea Cliff received money from State Sen. Jim Gaughran for a park improvement grant. But when the world
was thrown into chaos because of the coronavirus pandemic, the village switched its focus to addressing lockdown and pandemic-related issues. So it was not until 2021 that the village government began filling out the paperwork to accept the grant. That’s when officials realized that something was missing. The deed granting Roslyn Park to Sea Cliff could not, and currently still can not, be located. Without it, the village is unable to prove it has “site control,” a development term meaning the right to own or lease a property. According to Mayor Elena
Villafane, without the deed or a similar document that proves the village’s ownership of Roslyn Park, Sea Cliff is unable to use any of the grant funding it has received for maintenance and renovations of the property. The money would be used to repair and replace the park benches, do some touch-up work on the field and generally improve the utility and ambience of the space. “What we’re trying to do is get that money in place so that we can revitalize the park by next baseball season,” Villafane explained. “We’ve found a lot of historical village notations that imply our control of the park,
but we don’t have a single piece of paper that says, ‘Mr. ABC deeded Roslyn Park to the Village of Sea Cliff,’ for example, and that’s what we need in order to complete these grants.” The search for the deed has been exhaustive, but hampered by the difficulty finding and accessing village records from the late 19th and early 20th cen-
turies. Part of the problem is that Sea Cliff is nearly three decades older than Nassau County, and was formerly under the jurisdiction of Queens, meaning that some of its earliest and most important documents may not even be in Nassau’s public records. Erin McDonnell, the village’s CONTINUED ON PAGE 4