Contenders for two key local offices — Suffolk County Legislature’s First District and the Southold Town Trustees — faced off against each other at Tuesday night’s Meet the Candidates forum, sponsored by the North Fork Civics of Southold. Candidates across both levels of government returned to the same refrain: protecting the North Fork’s character means managing growth, restoring ecosystems, and making government work better for residents.

County Legislator, First District

The county forum brought together Republican incumbent Catherine Stark and Democratic challenger Greg Doroski — the two candidates for Suffolk County Legislature’s First District — for a conversation about how county government can support the East End’s environmental and housing priorities. Both framed their answers around collaboration, but their visions of leadership diverged.

Stark focused on tangible results — farmland preservation, grant programs and infrastructure planning — while Doroski made the case for a more visible, vocal brand of leadership, rooted in regional coordination and civic engagement. The questions centered on climate resiliency and cooperation among towns, and each candidate’s top priorities if elected.

Question 1 – Collaboration: “How will you work with all East End municipalities to share plans, resources and solutions to face our collective challenges such as climate resiliency, water quality and quantity?”

Stark said the county is already collaborating with East End towns, citing former legislator Al Krupski’s law requiring climate considerations in all major road projects — a measure she said is directly shaping the planned elevation of flood-prone stretches of County Road 48. She highlighted Suffolk County’s ongoing water quality initiatives, from expanding shellfish restoration to providing grants for new innovative and alternative septic systems. Stark encouraged residents to apply for funding now, warning that “the lines are long” and “the money’s going to get tighter.”

“The county is planning on raising portions of County Road 48, and that’s due to legislation that [Al Krupski] passed while he was here,” she said.

On the proposed North Fork pipeline, Stark said she regularly attends hearings but emphasized that the county legislature’s authority is limited to approving water authority board members.

Doroski countered that the East End needs stronger leadership from its county representative — someone who can actively convene local governments, state agencies and civic associations to tackle shared problems. “Many of the issues that we’re facing are regional issues,” he said, arguing that collaboration has too often been led by towns rather than the county. Doroski criticized Stark for not speaking publicly at hearings on the SCWA pipeline and said he has already worked across party lines to pass practical legislation, citing his bipartisan deer management bill as an example of “how we build coalitions and get results.”

“The legislation itself is only the starting point,” Doroski said. “How it’s implemented is what’s key here.”

He also called for better use of the county’s Water Quality Improvement Fund, saying Southold needs its legislator to “help put us in the best position to get access to these funds.”

Question 2 – Accomplishments: “If elected, what are the top three accomplishments you will work to achieve?”

Doroski said his first priority would be bringing an engaged, visible presence to the legislature — showing up at meetings, chambers and civic gatherings “not just during election time.” He said the legislature’s most important function is to “help towns achieve their goals” and to ensure local needs are reflected in county policy.

To address the region’s housing crisis, Doroski called for streamlining the Health Department’s approval process for accessory dwelling units and larger projects, saying it’s “confusing” and often discourages development.

“I’m a firm believer in local control,” he said, “not just for local control’s sake, but because it reflects the goals of our community.”

He also proposed forming a regional advisory council of East End towns to coordinate on major cross-border challenges — including climate change, groundwater protection and waste disposal after the Brookhaven landfill closure — ensuring that local governments “aren’t operating in silos.”

Stark said her priorities remain rooted in preservation, working waterfronts and water quality. In her first 18 months, she said, she has helped preserve “over 290 acres of farmland and open space” and has another 400 acres under contract or appraisal. She also highlighted the new Working Waterfront Committee, an 18-member panel modeled on the farmland board, to support marine-based industries.

“My favorite thing to do is preservation,” she said. “That’s incredibly important to keep our character.”

Finally, she emphasized expanding access to county and state grants for septic upgrades ahead of the 2026 sewer map rollout. “People who are not hooked up to a sewer will not get a bill,” she said, “but you will at some point have to upgrade your cesspool or septic system … Get your application in now before the money runs out.”

Both candidates agreed that water quality, housing and climate resiliency are central to the North Fork’s future — but they diverged on how leadership should look. Stark’s message centered on steady stewardship and incremental progress — preserving land, protecting water and expanding long-term county programs. Doroski’s pitch was about urgency and engagement — building partnerships, streamlining bureaucracy and leading from the front.

Southold Town Trustees

Southold’s Town Trustee candidates — four incumbents and challengers from both parties — weighed in on two of the most complex issues facing the town: how to modernize the town code and how to protect fragile shorelines from erosion and overdevelopment while keeping the permitting process fair and transparent.

The trustees, who serve as stewards of Southold’s wetlands, bays and waterways, were asked two central questions.

Question 1 – Town Code and Transparency: “Town trustees have the authority to make town code recommendations to the Town Board. What recommendations would you make — or, for current trustees, have you made — to the Town Board on town code as it concerns your mandate as a trustee? What would you like to see changed in the town code?”

Liz Giloolly, a Democratic incumbent, called code modernization her “passion project,” saying she spent her early months as a trustee painstakingly reviewing the outdated town code “line by line.” She said many rules were being enforced by precedent rather than clear language.

“It had been years and years since the code had been updated, and I took it on personally as a project of mine to make sure that some of the things we were doing as precedent would be clearly spelled out in our code,” she said.

She noted that every year she has submitted code amendments — “almost all of them adopted” — including new definitions like the “vegetated non-turf buffer” and clarifications of confusing terms such as “the pier line.” “This is to make the process more fair,” she said, “so that you don’t feel that there are secret things that only expediters or lawyers know about.”

Nathan Andruski, a Republican challenger, said his top priority would be regulating pesticide use near wetlands and waterways, which he believes is decimating the local ecosystem. “There’s a reason why we’re losing everything,” he said. “There’s a reason why there’s no tadpoles, frogs or shellfish.”

He proposed creating a registry of who is spraying what and where to begin addressing the issue. “It’s not going to be easy,” he said, “but it needs to be addressed because it’s going to become a huge problem in this town.”

Joe Finora, a Democratic challenger and a professional engineer and oyster farmer, said he’d bring both scientific and practical knowledge to the trustees’ code work. He cautioned against adding unnecessary regulation without a scientific basis.

“I’m not going to be a trustee that’s looking to add regulation to make people feel safer or think their water is cleaner if that’s not what’s going to be the case,” he said.

Finora said his focus would be on enhancing public access through better management of town landings and mooring programs and on “enabling more of our working waterfront” to preserve Southold’s maritime character.

Pindar Damianos, a Republican challenger, said his conversations with homeowners from “Mattituck to Orient” revealed widespread frustration with the complexity of the permitting process. “A lot of times they say that you need a Ph.D. to get through the code,” he said.

He called for clearer definitions and simpler processes for residents, coupled with “common sense” and small-business experience. “We’re here to protect our shorelines,” he said, “but we also have to help residents navigate the process.”

Eric Sepenowski, a Democratic incumbent who jokingly referred to his Ph.D. as an acronym for “piled higher and deeper,” said that anyone who attends work sessions and hearings can see the trustees’ “grit and detail.” He cited new code definitions, freshwater protections and reasonable setbacks for swimming pools as recent progress.

“We install natural buffers regularly,” he said. “We work very hard to get applicants to understand the importance of native vegetation.”

Sepenowski also used his time to press county candidates in the audience to fund septic upgrades: “Get those old systems out, let our waters be cleaner, so that we have shellfish and safe places for our children to swim.”

Question 2: Coastal Resiliency and Waterway Restoration: “Looking at the bigger picture, are there projects or programs that you recommend to address coastal resiliency and restore the health of our waterways, knowing that the interagency permitting processes often make it challenging for property owners to obtain permits at both the local and state levels? For example, raising the height of bulkheading. Are there initiatives that meet all permitting agencies standards so that projects can come to fruition?”

Sepenowski said stronger partnerships and better communication with state agencies were key to improving resiliency projects.

“The Department of Environmental Conservation needs to pick up the phone,” he said. “Our state partners could do better.”

He praised fellow trustee Giloolly’s “streamlined checklist” for applicants, saying it helped reduce bureaucratic ping-pong. He also called for closer coordination with the Zoning Board of Appeals, noting the challenge of balancing property rights with the public good on “oddly shaped, trapezoidal” parcels along the shoreline.

Giloolly emphasized that the trustees already prohibit new bulkheads, saying “shoreline hardening” is a misguided response to erosion.

“It sounds like a good plan to put up a wall, but what it ends up doing is eroding the underwater lands and makes it more difficult for your neighbors,” she said.

Instead, she championed “living shoreline projects” — natural barriers that restore habitat while protecting property. She also said the trustees’ ongoing efforts to simplify the permitting process make it “more accessible to the public” and “more transparent than ever.”

Andruski said that while he’s not yet a trustee, his life on the water has given him a front-row view of erosion and neglect. He urged partnerships with institutions like Cornell Cooperative Extension and the Peconic and Long Island Sound Estuary Programs.

“There are plenty of areas where we could be focusing on these projects,” he said. “If you drive around, you see them — and if we fix the bigger problems, it helps private property owners, too.”

He said dredge spoils should be strategically placed to rebuild eroded wetlands and creek mouths.

Finora described coastal management as “inherently complicated and inherently layered,” citing overlapping local, state and federal oversight. He said the system is “set up to create recurring problems” by incentivizing higher bulkheads instead of innovative, nature-based solutions.

“We are not incentivized to take creative solutions to the table,” he said. “Now is the time to start thinking outside the box.”

He pledged to use his engineering expertise to evaluate experimental designs and to “find compromise with people who are trying to do the right thing.”

Damianos agreed with his opponents that the town faces “overdevelopment” and a difficult balancing act between property rights and environmental protection.

“It’s an uphill battle,” he said. “We’re trying to keep residents happy while protecting the environment and those shorelines and wetlands and dunes.”

He said collaboration between trustees, the Town Board and the Zoning Board is essential to “save the family farm” and preserve what’s left of the North Fork’s working landscapes.

The trustee candidates shared one theme across party lines: a sense of urgency. Whether the issue was pesticides, code clarity, erosion or bureaucracy, every candidate acknowledged the fragility of Southold’s waterfront — and the need to protect it with both science and common sense.

The evening’s forums were moderated by Dave Bergen and Carol Lindley. The coalition that makes up the North Fork Civics of Southold includes the Orient Association; the East Marion Community Association; the Greenport Civic Association; the Southold–Peconic Civic Association; the Cutchogue Civic Association; the New Suffolk Civic Association; the Mattituck–Laurel Civic Association and the Fishers Island Community Board.