Great Neck Estates Board of Trustees recruits resident at meeting to help restart popular summer camp

Nassau Great Neck Estates Board of Trustees recruits resident at meeting to help restart popular summer camp By Nicholas Gordon … Comments Posted on November 12, 2026 The Great Neck Estates Board of Trustees was agog at its recent meeting when a lifelong resident with two toddlers expressed interest in helping restart the village’s once-popular summer camp. Nicholas Gordon The Great Neck Estates Board of Trustees’ recent meeting started off with a few routine agenda items before boiling down to a single unexpected highlight of the night: the recruitment of attendee Jayson Rokhsar, a 31-year-old lifelong resident and father of two toddlers, to potentially help restart the village’s once-popular summer day camp. The camp started in 1996 and ran for 30 years before ending last summer due to low enrollment. The meeting was held Monday, Nov. 9 at Village Hall. Rokhsar first expressed enthusiasm for the board’s decision to potentially forgo the village’s kiddie pool in favor of a new poolside experience of some sort. He explained that as a father of two young children, he’s noticed that the stairs of the big pool are the hot spot for kids to hang out, not the kiddie pool. “I’d love to see more action at the park in general,” Rokhsar said. “When I grew up here, the park was banging.” At this point, Rokhsar had the board’s full attention. He was promptly invited to join the forthcoming parks committee. Phone numbers were exchanged. “We want you to be part of this trajectory,” Mayor William Warner said. As the discussion broadened to the topic of reigniting the summer camp and needing volunteer parents to contribute, Deputy Mayor Jeffrey Farkas said of Rokhsar, “This guy’s perfect.” “Where have you been for 31 years?” the mayor quipped. “Well, I’m going to live here my whole life,” Rokhsar said with a smile, explaining that he couldn’t make it to prior board meetings due to his busy schedule caring for his children and running his own asset management business. Rokhsar expressed interest in joining the camp initiative. Nicole Toch, the village’s park commissioner who ran the summer camp for more than a decade from 2009 to 2020, said that the camp is an unparalleled community builder. “One of the many benefits of the camp is that it brings the whole community together,” Toch said. “The kids get to know all the Great Neck Estates kids that go to different schools. They build relationships with the lifeguards and camp counselors. Even as a parent, I got to know all these different parents and their children.” Toch described how the camp could reach across generations, citing how her daughter attended the camp as a child before returning to work there as a teenager. “When my daughter returned to work at the camp, she told me so many great summer camp memories came back to her,” Toch said. “She wanted to be a great mentor for the kids, like the ones she had when she attended.” Before going under, the camp had roughly 100 to 145 kids per summer and featured a range of activities, including swimming and other sports, art, dance, improv, and science activities. The staff was constantly adding new activities to keep the kids coming back and learning each summer, Toch said. While Toch described working on the camp as “a labor of love,” she acknowledged that a new iteration of the camp would need to evolve based on community needs and feedback. “That will be the important thing,” Toch said. “Building up the camp for new generations.” Though Rokhsar was bubbling over with additional well-received ideas throughout the meeting, such as digitizing residents’ access to village matters, the board members explained that some of them would not be easy to implement due to costs. But no matter. The board had found their guy. About the Author All comments are subject to our Community Guidelines . Schneps Media does not endorse the views shared by readers in our comment sections.