5 Candidates Vying for 2 Greenport Trustee Seats Face Off in Forum

Greenport Village held a Meet the Candidates Forum on March 6 in advance of its upcoming elections on March 18, when two board of trustees seats are up for grabs, in what proved to be a cordial departure from the village’s recent cantankerous political debates.

All five candidates who are vying for the two board seats were in attendance, including two incumbents who are seeking re-election to new four-year terms. The candidates largely agreed on affordable housing, short-term rental policies, infrastructure projects, the village sewer system, overcrowding during the summer, and of course, local tax rates. All five candidates said that they were open — to varying degrees — to considering property tax increases to help raise revenue and pay for village improvements.

The upcoming election features five-term incumbent Deputy Mayor Mary Bess Phillips and four-term trustee Julia Robins facing off against each other and a field of three additional challengers: Margaret Rose de Cruz, Scott Hollid and Roric Tobin, all of whom are political newcomers.

Robins is a real estate industry veteran and property manager with long experience as a contractor who is running on the Greenport United party line. Phillips is in the local commercial fishing industry with her family and is on the Greenport Pride line. As for the challengers, Tobin is a contractor and interior designer on the Roric for Greenport, de Cruz is a holistic healthcare practitioner on the All Hands CommUnity line, and Hollid is a longtime village firefighter and a self-described stay-at-home dad on the Families First line.

“As a member of the board of trustees for the past 12 years, I served as liaison to village utilities (electric, sewer and water), the Business Improvement District and the carousel committee,” Robins said. “[I was also] the committee chair for the Greenport Tall Ships Festival and various other municipal projects and festivals. And I was a chair of the Waterfront Advisory Planning Subcommittee on Infrastructure.”

Phillips also wove together an argument for re-election that combined long experience on the board with an eye toward the village’s future.

“I seek re-election to another four-year term to improve our infrastructure, including the wastewater treatment plant, the electric grid, the water and road departments,” said Philips. “I intend to protect natural resources like Moore’s Woods, Mitchell Park and Peconic Bay to ensure access for our community.”

The three challengers argued effectively for themselves. Promising to bring “transparency and action” to his role as Trustee if elected, Roric Tobin focused much of his allotted speaking time on revenue generation.

“Yes, we want the businesses in Greenport to represent the historic character and the charm that we love,” Tobin said. “But vacant businesses don’t do anyone any good. They don’t help our tax base and they don’t bring jobs.”

“Why am I running for Greenport Trustee?” asked de Cruz. “I fell in love with Greenport before I moved here, and I would like to preserve its special qualities and make it wonderful and affordable for everybody… I’ve run my own small business for 40 years, and I’ve learned to be a leader through a lot of training with different organizations.”

“I feel like Greenport is just a community that needs to have new leadership that’s going to benefit from forward thinking,” said Hollid. “I’m a family first person. I want to try to find out how we can develop the ability to have families with young children stay here – young people that are going to benefit the community.”

A large chunk of the forum was devoted to the development of affordable housing and accessory dwelling units (ADUs), an issue that affects the entire East End:

“I think that the village should be working with the Town of Southold to locate and develop multi-family, multi-unit condominium-style housing that could be connected to our sewer,” Robins said. “Multi-family housing uses resources more efficiently than single family homes… I support the creation of ADUs. However, the cost to build them and what incentives homeowners will receive will determine how successful they’re going to be.”

De Cruz added: “I’d like to really advocate for accessory dwelling units. I’d like to create a team where we research it. We figure out how many buildings are two-family and how many are three-family. We need to really work on trying to incentivize people to go for [ADUs] and get the construction people involved in some way because their workers need affordable housing, too.”

Hollid noted: “I think we need to be forward thinking. We need to understand that there are priorities that need to come first, whether it be roads or infrastructure or affordable housing. Affordable housing should be a big priority for us. We need to look at the fact that things are not affordable now. A lot of people can’t afford to live here. They can’t move here, they can’t stay here.”

Phillips countered: “I look at housing, not the terminology of ‘affordable housing.’ People just need a safe place to live. There has been discussion about developing the campground. I am not in favor of that because, first of all, it generates income into the general budget… We need to work with the Town of Southold. Perhaps some of the preserved land that’s within the town needs to be used for housing.

Torin said: “In speaking with business owners, a lot of them know that they need people year round. You can’t just have to hire a crew every summer and expect a business to run well. They want their managers and the people that run those businesses to be able to afford to live here year round. And I think the answer can’t always be no. We need to ask businesses, what will it take? How can we work with you so that your business can survive and thrive and your staff can live here?”

Throughout the forum, there appeared to be no lingering effects from recent political fireworks in the village. In 2023, the election was marred by something of a mini-scandal, when, due to what they said was a paperwork mixup, Village of Greenport officials neglected to include seven candidates on the ballots, leaving no challengers to the two incumbents who were running for re-election at the time: then-Mayor George Hubbard and then-Deputy Mayor Jack Martilotta.

After a public outcry that saw local residents picketing outside village hall, the board rectified the error and allowed all seven candidates’ names to appear on the final ballot.

Ultimately, current Mayor Kevin Steussi, a restaurateur and developer, won a surprise victory over two-term incumbent Hubbard and voters also ousted Martilotta. The role the ballot snafu played in the election is difficult to quantify, but there’s no question that it was a factor in Steussi’s victory.

Registered village voters will cast their ballots at the Village of Greenport Station One Firehouse, located at Third and South Streets in Greenport, 6 a.m.-9 p.m. March 18.