Ferrara, 73, of Garden City Park, is running for a fifth four-year term on the Republican, Conservative, Reform and Independence lines. He was first elected to the town board in 1997 and is the longest-serving member. He previously served as president of the Greater Herricks Civic Association. After receiving an associate degree in electronics from RCA Institute of Technology, Ferrara worked in sales at Xerox for 20 years. He also worked in sales at printing companies Océ and Monroe Systems for Business. He is the founder and owner of a New Hyde Park-based printing shop and also owns a partial stake in an auto body shop in Suffolk County. He has lived in the town for nearly four decades. He is married with five children.

Ferrara said the town needs to look ahead to the future, and invest in more affordable housing to help young families stay and thrive in the community. He said other challenges include following through on the town’s commitment to parks, such as the renovation of the pool at Clinton G. Martin Park. He would like to streamline the building department’s requirements and procedures to make applications more user-friendly. “We need to be business-friendly; we need to help our residents,” Ferrara said. “There are so many archaic laws that we need to re-look at that don’t make any sense.”

Vattamala, 37, of Garden City Park, is running on the Democratic, Working Families and Women’s Equality lines. He was raised in Garden City Park. He graduated from the University at Binghamton with a bachelor’s degree in computer science and then received a law degree from Hofstra University. He is a civil rights attorney with the New York-based Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, where he litigates voting rights and constitutional cases across the country. He is also an adjunct law professor at New York Law School and has a private practice specializing in elder law. He previously practiced commercial litigation at Proskauer Rose LLP, where he worked on the World Trade Center insurance recovery case, among other high-profile cases. He is married with two children.

As a town resident with a young family and aging parents, Vattamala said he hopes to promote and boost both youth and senior-friendly programming to make services more accessible. If elected, he would work on improving the government’s “responsiveness to the needs of the people in our community.” Parks and infrastructure need more consistent maintenance, he said, adding that Jericho Turnpike in Garden City Park needs greater beautification efforts for its sidewalks and medians. He’s running to “change things at the local level,” he said.