Two years after a contentious election, five Greenport residents are vying for two available seats on the Village Board. Deputy Mayor Mary Bess Phillips and veteran trustee Julia Robins’ seats are open and both are running for re-election. Their three challengers are interior designer and general contractor Roric Tobin, Southold Town Anti-Bias Task Force member Margaret Rose de Cruz and Greenport firefighter Scott Hollid. In interviews, four of the five candidates talked about their priorities and hopes for the future of the village.
JULIA ROBINS
Ms. Robins said if re-elected, her primary focus would be on infrastructure and utilities.
“We should be concentrating on our infrastructure, our enterprises, the electric, the sewer and water. I think we should develop a 10-year capital plan to upgrade our sewer,” she said. “We have to deal with the [decaying] Mitchell Park bulkhead … A collapse of that bulkhead would be a disaster for the village.”
Ms. Robins served for years as the Village Board liaison to the electric department, the Business Improvement District and the carousel committee. She wants to see the carousel remediation completed and set up an annual maintenance schedule for it. She also wants to prioritize sidewalk and pothole repairs.
“That’s one of the things that I hear from people the most,” she said.
On housing, she supports continuing work on accessory dwelling units (ADUs), updating the short-term rental code, and working with Southold Town to develop multi-family housing where a sewer connection is available. She also wants to develop financial incentives for the volunteer fire department.
“They have so many calls they can’t keep up with it,” Ms. Robins said.
MARY BESS PHILLIPS
Deputy Mayor Mary Bess Phillips is running on a platform of “embracing progress with tradition.”
“Our village has evolved multiple times since its incorporation in 1838,” she said. “I am seeking re-election … to maintain a vibrant community and waterfront year-round. By reflecting on our history, we understand the values that shaped our village and can apply these lessons to present and future challenges.”
She stressed the need to maintain and update the village’s key utilities: “We need to take care of our assets.”
She sees a need to improve communication and consensus-building to advance capital projects, and said that the village’s project to upgrade the parking lot and queue at the North Ferry terminal needs more attention.
“There needs to be cooperation between the North Ferry and the village of Greenport,” she said, calling it a “financial responsibility that needs to be shared.”
Ms. Phillips said the village is understaffed in key positions.
“This is not a one-person village. We all need to work together … We are all leading the charge on the future of this village,” she said.
She also said Greenport is a unique East End community and needs to be governed with that in mind: “We are the Village of Greenport, and we need to do what’s best for our residents and business and property owners … We can’t just cut and copy what some other community did on the south side.”
MARGARET ROSE DE CRUZ
Margaret Rose de Cruz moved to Greenport from Brooklyn a decade ago and said she wants to unite the community under her party, All Hands United.
“We have three different groups in Greenport … the African-American population, the Spanish population and the white people. So I’d love to have more shared participation, more civic engagement and more connection … a community that’s connected is more resilient.”
Ms. De Cruz works with the Southold Town Anti-Bias Task Force and spearheaded “repair cafes,” where community members bring broken appliances for free repairs by volunteers.
“Repair cafes are about reducing waste and using things we already have … A lot of young people don’t have any skills anymore, as far as screwdrivers and fixing things,” she said.
Ms. De Cruz also said she is a strong proponent of ADUs: “I really like to educate homeowners and help them see that it’s possible and it’s not that expensive and they can do it because it’s on land that’s already cleared.”
Ms. De Cruz said she met with Village Mayor Kevin Stuessi.
“I met with the mayor right after he found out I was getting signatures, and he was very encouraging,” she said. “We talked about how one of the reasons I came out here was to swim. He said, ‘I think we should have an indoor swimming pool.’ And I’m like, ‘I have been wanting that for years,’ so we will probably try to figure out a way to do that.”
RORIC TOBIN
Interior designer and general contractor Roric Tobin said he is running to try and help change the way the village does business.
“What prompted me to run was a general frustration with the way things have been run in the village,” he said. “For the various laws they try and pass, there’s no communication, no transparency … There’s no coherent vision or direction.”
Mr. Tobin wants officials to clarify their vision for commercial development. “It’s difficult for people who do want to develop responsibly … There’s this sort of arcane process and no one knows what the motivation is,” he said.
He believes village inaction has led to confusion.
“If the village had a clear direction… people could tailor to that. Instead of just saying ‘no’ all the time, the board needs to say, ‘How can we make this work?’” Mr. Tobin said.
While he acknowledges the need for careful development, he opposes leaving properties vacant and suggests vacancy taxes on unused commercial properties.
“One of the biggest complaints… is that ‘The [closed Arcade Dept. Store on Front Street] just sits there year after year, right in the center of the village,’” he said.
Regarding housing, he believes affordable housing is a “huge problem with no quick and easy solution” and that restricting short-term rentals won’t solve it.
“The board’s solution is just to say ‘There’s not enough affordable housing.’ And going to 30-day [minimums on] short-term rentals is not going to create affordable housing,” said Mr. Tobin.
Mr. Tobin said he is firmly against “outside corporations owning single or two-family homes for short term rentals. A lot of communities have banned those, and I think we absolutely should because they can ruin a community.”
Still, said Mr. Tobin — who with his husband has built or renovated six North Fork homes — there’s room in the community for short-term renters who are “good actors.”
“These are expensive old homes to maintain and so longtime residents or people who’ve bought them and put in the money to fix them up — if it’s a two family and they want to rent out to responsible people, I think they should be allowed to do that to supplement their income … the vast majority of people who have short term rentals are very good actors,” he said.
He believes better code enforcement would address disruptive renters: “If there are a few bad actors, we should absolutely go after them, but there’s no enforcement of existing code.”
He also wants to see fuller staffing in the village.
“People are not getting what they pay taxes for … Everything takes months to happen,” he said. “The village isn’t fully-staffed … We should have a full-time code enforcement officer and the parking fees alone could pay his salary.”
SCOTT HOLLID
Mr. Hollid did not respond to emails, voicemails, visits to his workplace or through messages left with the village fire chiefs.
PREVIOUS ELECTION CONTROVERSY
Next month’s election comes two years after a bitter election dispute that ended up in the state Supreme Court — in which seven of nine Village Board candidates, most of them new to politics, contended that they were kept off the ballot after being misled by the village clerk about paperwork requirements.
At the heart of the dispute was a pair of letters sent to the presumptive candidates by village officials.
In the first letter, dated Feb. 14, 2023, then Village Clerk Sylvia Pirillo informed the candidates that they had been nominated and that their “name and party shall appear on the ballot as such. Kindly note that the last day to file a certificate of declination is Feb. 17, 2023.”
In a subsequent letter from then Town Attorney Joseph Prokop, dated Feb. 22, the non-incumbent candidates were informed that they “did not … comply with the requirements of Election Law Section 6-144, which required you to file a proper certificate of acceptance with the Village Clerk by Feb. 17. I am therefore writing to inform you that pursuant to State Law your name cannot appear on the ballot as a candidate for office in the 2023 election.”
Ultimately, the Village Board took the extraordinary step of filing a petition in State Supreme Court challenging its own village clerk’s determination that the prospective candidates failed to file the appropriate paperwork to get on the ballot. The court sided with the village and the candidates’ names were restored.
The new administration declined to renew Ms. Pirillo’s term, which ended in 2023. She was replaced by current village clerk Candace Hall. Four sources with direct knowledge separately confirmed to The Suffolk Times that Ms. Pirillo helped collect signatures for Mr. Hollid’s campaign. She did not respond to a request for comment.
In a letter sent out to this year’s prospective candidates, the requirement to file a certificate of acceptance is bolded and underlined, according to a copy of the letter obtained through a public records request.