Last spring, at a pair of Southold Town Board public hearings on so-called “zombie” houses on New Suffolk Avenue, frustrated neighbors described a once-grand Queen Anne as a “disgrace and a danger,” with “many broken windows,” “an open door in the back” and a garage left ajar, inviting “rodents … and squatters.” The long-abandoned home, they said, has deteriorated through “decades-long dereliction of responsibility.”

Another house on the same street, neighbors said, had “reverted to wilderness,” with vegetation “five or six feet” high, an abandoned van on “four flat tires” for a decade, and a structure so compromised that “the porch room has totally collapsed.” One broker called it “overgrown [and] dangerous. It’s a tear down. It is not repairable.” The neighbors cited years of decline, plunging property values and the “immediacy [of a] dire” safety risk.

At the hearings, Supervisor Al Krupski talked about public safety, suggesting the town may need to step in, secure the properties and bill the owners. Councilwoman Jill Doherty pressed for clear next steps and continued efforts to engage unresponsive owners. Councilwoman Anne Smith asked about historic value but stressed safety was the top priority. Councilman Greg Doroski, now a county legislator, questioned whether stopgap measures like fencing actually work. Councilman Brian Mealy remained silent.

After the hearings, Mealy joined his Town Board colleagues in unanimously voting to declare both houses unsafe, ordering them to be boarded up and, in one case, directing that the property be secured with fencing and overgrown vegetation cleared, with the costs charged to the property owner.

A subsequent review of town records indicates why Mealy may have kept quiet.

Neighbors say they have complained for years, to the town and to Mealy himself, about his family’s Grand Avenue property in Mattituck, describing it as a derelict zombie house, its grounds perpetually strewn with garbage and littered with junked cars, deteriorating further with each passing year.

Town record support their claims.

According to more than 150 pages of public documents obtained through a Freedom of Information request, the town repeatedly pressed Mealy to address the conditions, issuing code violation tickets again and again and taking him to court during two separate investigations into the property — one lasting nearly a year and the second lasting two years and ending in a plea deal.

That enforcement began in 2017 and appears to have ended in late 2021, after Mealy was elected to the Town Board.

Despite extensive documentation, including color photos from pending court cases in 2017 and 2019 that appear to show significant code violations, there is no record of any further enforcement action after 2021, even as neighbors say they continued to complain.

Longtime neighbors on two sides of the Mealy flag lot property told the

Sun that the site is an environmental and health hazard, a fire risk and a haven for rats and vermin. They said their complaints to the town have gone unanswered for years.

A third neighbor who borders the Mealy property was blunt: “We hate that property. We all work so hard and spend so much to maintain our properties and keep them beautiful, and then, right there, you’ve got broken swing sets and old cars and stuff.”

‘Nobody will do anything’

In January 2023, neighbor Wayne Sailor filed a complaint with the town attorney’s office, records show. Six months later, he persuaded former Town Attorney Paul DeChance — who retired last month — to personally inspect the property, according to text messages Sailor said he preserved.

Sailor said that he has been complaining for years in calls to the town attorney’s office, and that DeChance came to inspect the property in June, 2023 and agreed to send code enforcement, but never did. DeChance declined comment.

DeChance’s predecessor, John Burke, who served as acting town attorney from late 2021 to January 2023, told the Sun “that was a long time ago. I don’t have any records of that. I’d have to refer you back to the Town Attorney’s Office.” Efforts to reach Burke’s predecessor, William Duffy, who served from 2015 to late 2021, were unsuccessful.

In an interview in his backyard in December, Sailor said that the Mealy house is “completely filled with garbage, top to bottom. There are abandoned cars there: there’s a ’71 Chevy pickup that’s rusted into the ground. There’s a tractor that’s sinking into the ground. There’s a Ford station wagon … a car with the wheels off. This is a hazmat situation. There’s oil leaking into the ground, cars filled with garbage, and nobody will do anything about it.

“I’ve called the town. I’ve called code enforcement. I’ve called [former Town Attorney] John Burke, [former Town Attorney] Paul DeChance, and nobody does a … thing. I called the county, and said there’s rats, possums and raccoons back here.”

Sailor said he grew frustrated reading about Mealy voting “on other peoples’ property, saying ‘this is a zombie house.’

“Well guess what?” he said, pointing over the fence. “So is this.”

In a separate interview, neighbor Donya O’Brien described similar frustrations living next to the Mealy property, and said she once asked the town assessor’s office to reassess her property in light of the blight next door.

“One time my dog was in the back[yard] and I see her tossing around a bag in the air. She would go mess around in his garbage,” she said of Mealy. “He left garbage in his cars and all over the property and she would come back with junk. I was worried about her getting sick and so I grabbed the bag, and it was infested with cockroaches. Then we started having roach problems in the house … I made a lot of complaints to the town and nothing happened.”

Southold Town Supervisor Al Krupski told the Sun that his town board colleague’s family property would “be dealt with the same as any other citizen.”

Town records

Last December, after Mealy was re-elected to the Town Board with the highest vote total of any candidate in the race, Sailor contacted the Sun, claiming the town had been ignoring his complaints about the councilman’s family property for years.

A reporter visited the property, observing it over Sailor’s fence, before approaching Mealy.

In a December 2025 interview at Floyd Memorial Library, where he was working at the time, Mealy insisted he lived at the property, where he is registered to vote, and said he was facing temporary financial challenges that prevented him from addressing the code violations. He assured a reporter that he was working on it. The Sun held the story for three months.

During that time, the Sun learned that current and former colleagues of Mealy were either aware or were made aware of the situation at the Grand Ave. property and had made private overtures offering help. In each case, they said, Mealy declined.

A Sun reporter visited the property to ascertain whether Mealy was living there, since the house appears uninhabitable, and captured video and still pictures of a recent visit.

When the Sun spoke with Mealy again in March — still unaware of the full enforcement history — he said he was continuing to work on the issues but acknowledged that he had made little progress.

At that point, the Sun filed FOIL requests seeking all complaints, inspections and enforcement actions related to the property over the past decade.

After nearly a month, the town attorney’s office produced more than 150 pages of records, documenting complaints stretching back to 2008 and enforcement efforts that began in 2017 and continued through late 2021.

Presented with those records last week, and informed the story would run Monday, Mealy initially declined to comment.

On Sunday evening, Mealy emailed a letter to the Sun, saying the property “was owned by a family member, who died. After the death of the owner, the [Suffolk County Surrogate] Court appointed an Administrator … Unfortunately, the Administrator died. At some point, a Successor Administrator will be appointed … by the Court. I am not the Administrator of the Estate, but merely a beneficiary.”

He stated in the letter that the administrator is the “fiduciary of the Estate responsible for marshaling the assets of the Estate, paying debts, accounting and managing the Estate.”

In fact, county court records show that Mealy’s brother Eric was appointed administrator of the property after their father, Otha Mealy, died in 2016 — and after Eric died in July 2017, Mealy’s sister, Kimberly Ann Mealy, was appointed administrator in Sept. 2017.

Under typical code enforcement practice, municipalities are not limited to citing only the legal owner of a property. They can issue violation notices to anyone with a demonstrable connection to or control over the premises, including occupants, residents or individuals using the address as their primary residence.

Mealy’s letter to the Sun on Sunday evening was the first time in the course of several interviews over four months that the councilman suggested that he is not responsible for the property, which is still registered in tax records in his late father’s name. Efforts by the Sun to reach Kimberly Ann Mealy on Sunday evening before publication were unsuccessful.

‘A serious state of disrepair’

A formal investigation into the property began in the summer of 2017, when a code enforcement officer, a building inspector and a fire marshal inspected the property.

They found “litter and debris” outside and “garbage piles and rotten flooring” inside, along with at least two unregistered vehicles, according to records that include color photos of the conditions.

Over the following year, officials issued notices of violation and pressed Mealy to take corrective action. At one point that year, according to a document in the records, 1.43 tons of garbage was removed. After additional cleanup and follow-up inspections, the case was closed in June 2018.

A new complaint in November 2019 stated that the “house appears to be in a serious state of disrepair. Multiple vehicles and appliances filled with household garbage. The front of the property has junk and litter strewn everywhere and is so overrun with growth the home is not visible when approaching it. These serious issues ha[ve] now attracted mice, rats and animals to the area.”

In December 2019, the town issued new notices of violation and ordered Mealy to clean up the property within 20 days or face intervention by the town Department of Public Works, with costs charged back to the owner, a strategy used in other zombie house cases. The images below were taken by town code enforcement officers in late 2019.

In January 2020, Mealy was issued multiple code violation tickets, first posted on the front door of the property and later served to him personally at Floyd Memorial Library, according to records.

Mealy told investigators most of the vehicles belonged to deceased relatives, including his father and brother, records show.

Additional tickets for the same violations were issued in July and November 2020.

By October, 2021, as the case moved toward trial, the town compiled photographic evidence from 2017 and 2019 showing junked cars, garbage and extensive deterioration of the home. Mealy was notified that his earlier statements would be used in court.

In December 2021, Mealy pleaded guilty to three of at least nine violations and paid a $750 fine, records show. The enforcement paper trail ends there.

In January 2023, Sailor filed an online complaint, citing abandoned vehicles, garbage and overgrowth so severe that “fire apparatus would not even be able to navigate the driveway.”

Six months later, DeChance agreed to inspect the property personally, according to text messages reviewed by the Sun. A second source confirmed the town attorney’s June, 2023 on-site inspection to the Sun. Sailor said he was told code enforcement would follow.

‘Complaint-based code enforcement’

In an interview last Friday, newly-appointed Town Attorney Ben Johnson said nothing in town records indicates why, after extensive code enforcement activity from 2017 to 2018 and again from 2019 to 2021, the town ceased enforcement action at the Grand Ave. property after 2021, even as the property continued to generate complaints. The town currently employs two full-time code enforcement officers.

Speaking broadly, Johnson said, “we are complaint-based code enforcement, so the complaints drive the compliance, generally.”

But he said resources are finite.

“There’s two ways, generally, to do code enforcement. One would be proactive, and obviously that takes more people and is more expensive, and the other is basically doing it by being complaint-driven.”

The town turned over a copy of Sailor’s 2023 complaint, but Johnson said there is no record of a June, 2023 visit by DeChance and no record of any enforcement action after 2021. Johnson said that “our records do not indicate” why Sailor’s 2023 complaint failed to generate a documented response.

The town attorney said on Friday that code enforcement officers will be sent back to the Grand Ave. property in light of the Sun‘s inquiries.

Krupski told the Sun that “if there’s violations … we’ll deal with it.”

“We have a provision in the law,” he said, referring to the town’s ability to declare a property unsafe if necessary and take further action to address code violations. “We did this last year two times. If we get complaints, code enforcement goes out, and if there’s violations issued, we’ll deal with it from there.

“I have not seen the house because I’m not in code enforcement, but if there’s complaints they will be dealt with the same as any other resident.

 “Brian’s great to work with, and we certainly wish him well,” the supervisor said. “I don’t know exactly what is going on there, so we all wish the best for someone who is a work colleague.”