At a brief special meeting on Tuesday, the East Hampton Town Board unanimously passed a resolution in support of a home rule request concerning companion bills in the New York State Legislature that would stagger the terms of office for the nine-member town trustees and increase the trustees' terms from two to four years.
Should it become law, the legislation would achieve staggered terms for the trustees by providing that the five candidates receiving the most votes in the 2023 election would win a four-year term, and the candidates finishing fifth through ninth would win a two-year term. Thereafter, elections would continue on a biennial basis, but with fewer candidates up for re-election and all elected trustees serving a four-year term.
State Senator Anthony Palumbo and Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. are sponsoring the bills in their respective chambers in the Legislature. Both are at present on the chambers' local government committees.
"There are nine trustees that currently come up every two years, and there's long been discussion about changing that and staggering the terms," Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc said before the vote. Indeed, the present trustee board has held multiple discussions on the subject, citing the instability and lack of continuity resulting from two-year terms, and the cumbersome nature of an election campaign that routinely includes 18 candidates vying for the nine seats. Francis Bock, the trustees' clerk, said upon his re-election in 2019 that introducing staggered terms would be a priority.
At the trustees' April 12 meeting, Susan McGraw Keber told her colleagues that she, Jim Grimes, and Bill Taylor had submitted the draft legislation to Mr. Thiele. Daniel Spitzer, outside counsel to the trustees, "said it's exactly what we need," she said.
Also at Tuesday's meeting, the town board voted to waive dump fees for the Peconic Land Trust, which has purchased the parcel on Georgica Pond in Wainscott on which the building most recently housing the Il Mulino restaurant stands. The trust plans to demolish the building and, in a separate move, install a permeable reactive barrier on the parcel as part of an effort to reduce nitrogen and bacteria inputs to the pond. That project is covered separately in this issue.
