Greenport Village officials arrived at Southold Town Hall this week in a show of force, and left no doubt that their long-simmering dispute with the town over Community Preservation Fund spending has reached a boiling point.
One by one, at the start of the meeting and again near the end, Mayor Kevin Stuessi, every village trustee and Planning Board Chair Patricia Hammes stepped to the podium to beseech, plead, scold, shame and demand that Southold abandon its long-standing practice of using Community Preservation Fund (CPF) proceeds exclusively for land preservation — and begin directing CPF dollars to water-quality and historic-preservation projects inside the village.
“We have real needs for this,” Stuessi said. “Whether it’s fixing drainage issues down at the bottom of Fifth and Sixth Street Park — one of the most active parks and beaches in the entire community, and the only one in all of Southold Town that doesn’t require a permit — [or] getting sewer lines over to Sandy Beach … the marina over off Stirling Creek is an area that I wouldn’t swim in. They have no ability to put in new septic because of the water table over there.
“We can fix these things,” he continued. “But we need you guys to work with us in order to do this. Now is the time. We can’t wait any longer. Be on the right side of history and make this happen now. It is the law.”
Town Board members, just as visibly aligned, pushed back with a familiar refrain: Southold has invested heavily in stormwater controls, drainage work and other water-quality efforts throughout the town — including in and around Greenport — but made what Supervisor Al Krupski has repeatedly described as a deliberate, “conscious” decision to keep CPF focused on open space and farmland acquisition.
Fueling the clash is a recent change in state law that requires towns with a “disadvantaged community” to ensure that “not less than 10%” of annual CPF proceeds are used to benefit that community — a designation that includes Greenport. Village officials argue the mandate is clear, overdue and unavoidable.
“In towns with one or more disadvantaged communities, not less than 10% of the annual proceeds of the fund shall be utilized to benefit such disadvantaged communities,” Trustee Lily Dougherty-Johnson said, quoting directly from the amendment for the Town Board.
Town officials countered that the requirement is not a blank check, requires an updated project plan and a defined application process, and must be weighed against needs across the entire town.
“It doesn’t work where we just give you 10%,” said Town Board member Jill Doherty. “It has to be an application, on particular projects. So we don’t just say, ‘Here’s 10%.’ It has to be the cost of the project.”
More than once, Doherty said, “The Town Board has not formally gotten that list.”
Stuessi disputed that claim — “You’ve had a list for many, many months,” he told her — and argued that the town’s failure to update its CPF plan has become a convenient barrier.
“There’s no way for us to apply,” Stuessi said. “We submit tomorrow if you give us an application.”
“We understand that it’s not a blank check,” Dougherty-Johnson added, responding directly to Doherty. “Unless it was open space, there’s no way for Greenport to apply — because that’s what your CPF plan says. And that plan is now almost 10 years out of date.”
Dougherty-Johnson has been meeting for months with Town Board member Anne Smith, who was not present Tuesday night, to develop a list of projects that could qualify for funding in Greenport. She said village officials have already provided the town “a document with a list of over a dozen projects,” but felt dismissed.
“We’re being told no before we even have a chance,” she said. “It just looks like you don’t really want to allow water quality or historic preservation.”
Still, in what appeared to be a shift in tone Tuesday, Town Board member Greg Doroski said the town has begun setting money aside in recognition of the amended law — an acknowledgment village officials and residents said they have been seeking for months.
CPF was created in 1998, when voters in the five East End towns — East Hampton, Shelter Island, Southampton, Southold and Riverhead — approved a 2% real estate transfer tax to protect farmland and open space from development and preserve community character. While other East End towns have adopted a 2016 amendment allowing a portion of CPF revenue to support water-quality projects, Southold has not. Last year, Southold’s CPF took in more than $11 million.
Southold has been slow to adapt to the new statutory requirements.
At a joint Town Board–Village Board meeting in June, Southold Land Preservation Coordinator Lily McCullough said that while the law does require 10% of CPF funds to benefit disadvantaged communities, the language remains vague and lacks clear guidance from the state. “It’s one sentence in the law,” she said.
At a September work session, planning staff outlined a long-overdue effort to refresh the town’s Community Preservation Fund Project Plan — the policy roadmap that determines which projects are eligible for CPF funding. The plan is supposed to be comprehensively updated every five years; the last full rewrite predates Southold’s 2016 Comprehensive Plan and a series of state CPF amendments adopted between 2021 and 2024.
Deputy Mayor Patrick Brennan framed the town’s CPF strategy as more than a technical disagreement.
“I think we need to recognize that this is, in some respects, a political calculation,” Brennan said. “It prioritizes one community’s needs over another community’s needs.”
He accused the town of treating “the notion of a disadvantaged community as something abstract, something out here, something that you can ignore,” when in reality it is “about disadvantaged people — actual people, my friends, my neighbors.”
In unusually sharp language, Brennan continued: “The course of action that this board has taken to date strikes me as arrogant and shameful and perhaps unlawful.”
He said that he believed town officials “deeply, deeply care about your community,” but urged them to “do the right thing.”
Krupski rejected any suggestion that Southold has ignored water quality, pointing to decades of stormwater remediation funded outside CPF.
“The town’s efforts to improve water quality through stormwater remediation go back three decades,” he said. “But we have not used CPF money to do so because we have such a limited pot of money. It was a conscious decision to use CPF for land preservation.”
Dougherty-Johnson noted that the calendar is closing on the first year the new 10% requirement has been in effect.
“To do this in December, in the holiday season, feels very much like we’re begging,” she said. “We’re asking for little scraps off the table for projects in a disadvantaged community.”
Hammes, speaking as a resident, said, “I feel like I’m in Groundhog Day here,” and warned, “I’m not sitting here having this conversation again in another year.”
Another resident, Julia Moran, said it “shocks” her that trustees appeared “hat in hand,” and described the town’s approach as “stonewalling.”
As the meeting wound down, Southold Town Attorney Paul DeChance noted that the village had counsel present.
“Can I suggest that we have a conversation this week?” he asked.