Sag Harbor Village Mayor James Larocca announced an initiative to develop affordable housing on Tuesday. "Preserving, protecting, and nourishing the community requires making it possible for our young to be able to afford to live and prosper here," Mr. Larocca said in a statement.
He appointed two village board members, Bob Plumb and Ed Haye, to chair the endeavor. The appointment of Mr. Plumb appears to signal a thawing of a tense relationship. The recently elected mayor had previously denied Mr. Plumb an assignment, and the tension came to a head at a July 13 board meeting at which Mr. Larocca said he had decided not to have Mr. Plumb, who had been the liaison to the Building Department during former Mayor Kathleen Mulcahy's administration, serve as a liaison.
"I am pleased that he has taken on this critical task," Mr. Larocca said of Mr. Plumb's role as co-chairman. "Ed and Bob form a solid team to help lead the village in the search for real-world solutions to what has become a chronic problem."
The first order of business for the initiative will be a meeting with the Long Island Housing Partnership, a nonprofit organization that develops affordable housing for rent and sale, Mr. Larocca said. He also will meet this week with Greg Ferraris, a former mayor and a director of the Sag Harbor Community Housing Trust, which focuses on developing and protecting work-force housing, with the hope of creating "a link between those efforts and our new initiative."
