The East Hampton Town Trustees began 2024 with an organizational meeting on Monday during which three trustees were sworn in by Carole Brennan, the town clerk, including the two who were elected to the nine-member body in November.
Patrice Dalton and Celia Josephson, the newly elected trustees, were sworn in, as was John Aldred, who was re-elected in November. Other trustees had taken the oath of office at the town board’s Jan. 2 organizational meeting.
The seven trustees attending re-elected Francis Bock to the position of clerk, or presiding officer, and Jim Grimes and Bill Taylor as deputy clerks. The clerk’s salary is $29,694 per year, the deputy clerks are paid $25,066 annually, and the annual salary for the other six trustees is $11,865. They voted to again retain Christopher Carillo as their attorney, his law office to be paid an annual fee of $47,100.
Among a long list of annual resolutions were those to reauthorize the employment of Arlene Tesar and Alyson Follenius as secretaries.
The Star was designated the trustees’ newspaper of record for 2024.
Also attending the meeting was Susan McGraw Keber, who served three terms as a trustee until her retirement at the end of 2023. The group presented her with a plaque in recognition of her service. Among her initiatives as a trustee, Mr. Bock said, were the enactment of a townwide ban on the sale or distribution of balloons filled with helium or any other lighter-than-air gas, the annual survey of mosquito larvae in the Accabonac Harbor marshlands, and the trustees’ annual Largest Clam Contest.
“The East Hampton Town Trustees honor Susan McGraw Keber,” Mr. Bock read from the plaque, “for her extraordinary service and dedication to the Town of East Hampton as an East Hampton Town trustee from 2017 to 2023.”
“I am so grateful to all of you, and I loved being here as a trustee,” an emotional Ms. McGraw Keber said. “I’m going to miss all of you. . . . I know you’re going to do great things.”
The trustees’ next meeting is on Jan. 22.
