Nearly two months after Greenport Village trustees passed emergency resolutions in his absence to jump-start repairs to the storm-battered Mitchell Park bulkhead behind the East End Seaport Museum, Mayor Kevin Stuessi said last week that work still hasn’t started — but again he promised his colleagues that action is imminent.
The continued delays — on the emergency measures behind the museum and the broader $3 million bulkhead repair project — have fueled tensions simmering on the Village Board for more than a year. With another nor’easter season underway, those frustrations spilled back into public view at last week’s work session.
Village Trustee Mary Bess Phillips — who has warned for more than a year that utility boxes damaged by the collapsed bulkhead could fall into the harbor — pressed the mayor on why the emergency repairs haven’t started. Despite emergency resolutions, persistent public criticism of the mayor’s management of the project and what she and the other trustees describe as clear urgency, no ground has been broken.
The exposed electric panel near the railroad dock is badly damaged and leaning toward the water (see image above and video below). If it tumbles into the bay during a storm, Phillips said more than a year ago, “it’s like electricity in the water. It’ll just go through every boat,” with the potential to blow transformers, shut down the North Ferry and even knock out electricity “all the way to Third St.”
At a September 25 board meeting — where Stuessi was absent — Deputy Mayor Patrick Brennan and his fellow trustees unanimously passed emergency resolutions and directed the clerk and treasurer to “immediately solicit” proposals for the work without a formal bid process. The board also authorized design work and a state Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) emergency-permit application for bulkhead repairs behind the museum.
On Thursday, the mayor said the emergency work had not begun and Phillips wondered why.
“I was just under the impression that, when we passed [the emergency resolutions], that this would have been one of the first things that would have been done,” she said. “I just had hoped that that situation would have been worked [on] a little bit sooner than it has.”
As in previous meetings, Stuessi cited the project’s complexity, saying asphalt removal and repairs to electric conduits, water lines and the failing bulkhead must be “coordinated.” He said three dock builders have walked the site, new price quotes are expected this week and that required DEC permits were “in process” — though no application had been submitted on the DEC website as of Monday, Nov. 24.
Phillips and other board members have been publicly seeking progress reports on the bulkhead project since last fall and have been met with a flurry of headwinds that the mayor says are to blame: the ferry-queue redesign, state-agency coordination, missing paperwork, federal system glitches, subcontractor delays and any-day-now engineering updates.
In September, the North Fork Sun documented a pattern of sliding timelines throughout 2024 and 2025 in which the mayor pledged without delivering updates “within about a week,” “after the Thanksgiving holiday [2024],” “within … 45 days” and “literally a 30-day process,” according to meeting transcripts and interviews with trustees.
At Thursday’s meeting, the mayor said that the work cannot begin until several trades are coordinated.
“The issue is, this needs to be coordinated with pulling back all the blacktop over there as well, which [the contractor] is doing. And we’ve got a price on that … so that work is scheduled for next month, right after the holiday,” he said. “We have three quotes coming in from three different dock builders … [The contractor] has managed all of that. And we’re supposed to be getting numbers … early next week, which includes an additional quote on electric.”
It’s not clear whether “next month, right after the holiday” refers to Thanksgiving or Christmas. Stuessi did not reply on Sunday to a request for comment. Last year at this time, the mayor promised emergency repairs would begin “right after the Thanksgiving holiday.”
In interviews over the weekend, Phillips and longtime trustee Julia Robins each said the board had already secured estimates, a purchase order, and a clear directive to move the exposed electric panel, but said that Stuessi has “ignored” the emergency resolutions and slow rolled the work from getting underway.
Both trustees expressed concern that the mayor has taken unilateral control of the project — sidelining board votes, inserting an asphalt contractor into a marine-construction role and repeatedly shifting explanations about what’s holding up the emergency work.
Robins said she no longer believes the emergency bulkhead project will begin this winter, and Phillips warned that the undermined ground near the railroad dock is deteriorating.
“One of these days, it’s going to collapse in.”
Expired permits
For months, Phillips has said in public meetings that the work cannot proceed without new DEC permits. Stuessi previously said the village would file for them. On Thursday, he told her the contractor’s application was “in process.” As of Monday morning, according to the DEC website, no such applications have been submitted.
“I’m just surprised,” Phillips said at the work session. “I just had hoped that the situation would have been worked on a little bit sooner… I believe the board felt it was an emergency situation … it’s just a little bit frustrating that it’s taken this long to get it moving.”
Stuessi again insisted the job requires sequencing multiple trades and seemed to be throwing shade at his former deputy mayor when he offered to take Phillips on a tour of the site.
“There’s three major things that are happening that all interrelate,” he explained. “If you look at what’s in the ground over there — and I’d be glad to take you over there.”
Phillips, whose family has worked the Greenport docks for decades, shot back, “I’m very aware of it. That’s why I brought it to the board’s attention. This is something that really should have started well before now … I’m just upset that it took this long.”
With responsibility for the DEC permitting process now appearing to shift to the asphalt contractor, and no application filed, Robins questioned at last week’s meeting whether the work could begin before winter weather shuts down asphalt and marine construction.
“If we’re going to be waiting on the DEC front, then it’s not going to happen,” Robins said.
It has been 19 months since Greenport was awarded a $3 million federal grant to rebuild the entire failing Mitchell Park bulkhead, which spans the village’s working waterfront. That extensive emergency repair project has yet to break ground.
The delay has already cost taxpayers $135,000 in interest after the village returned the unused $3 million bond anticipation note borrowed against the grant. A separate $1.5 million emergency note taken out after a storm-driven bulkhead collapse in the spring of 2024 remains unspent.
A 2018 engineering report found the bulkhead was already failing, citing bowing, sinkholes, soil loss, marine borer damage and the risk of collapse, contamination and damage to the village marina, which is a key revenue source that generates more than 20 percent of the village’s general fund.
The bulkhead protects the marina, Mitchell Park, the ferry queue and the waterfront business district. A major failure, village records show, could devastate the harbor and cripple village finances for years.
‘What have you been doing for 11 months?‘
Last Nov. 21, Stuessi said the village was “finalizing the [request for proposals] for the bulkhead redo” and that the contractor was “teed up and ready to start after the Thanksgiving holiday,” pending one subcontractor’s paperwork upload.
“They were missing one thing from one subcontractor, which I’m told was uploaded today,” Stuessi told the board. “So we’re following up with the state tomorrow on that, and then we would have a resolution on our meeting right after the holiday in order to move forward.”
Despite the detailed assurances, no public resolution emerged.
By February 20, discussion shifted to financing. Phillips wanted to know when the bond anticipation note (BAN) came due. Village Treasurer Adam Brautigam said Aug. 1, 2025. Phillips asked if the paperwork was moving forward.
“We’re working on that with [the] federal government and there’s an issue with it now … relative to the system,” Stuessi replied. Pressed on whether the issue was with the federal system or the application, he said it was “the federal government system.”
That same month, Robins, campaigning for re-election, vowed to focus on infrastructure. “We have to deal with the Mitchell Park bulkhead,” she said. “A collapse would be a disaster for the village.”
At a candidate debate, Phillips — also seeking re-election — said in an answer to a moderator’s question that her biggest regret was the board’s failure to fix the bulkhead.
After Village Administrator Paul Pallas retired in early 2024, Stuessi resisted calls inside and outside village government to hire a replacement — instead assuming the role himself. A village administrator would typically oversee projects like the emergency museum-area repair and the larger $3 million rebuild.
Recently, the village posted the job opening, and interviews with village administrator applicants are ongoing, according to several village board members.
Frustration with the delays in repairing the Mitchell Park bulkhead peaked in June when Planning Board chair Patricia Hammes confronted the Village Board.
“What was supposed to have been done, what needs to be done, and what the plan is … and why it wasn’t done for the last 12 months?”
Village trustees seemed to suggest at that meeting that the blame lies with the mayor, not the trustees.
“I can’t answer that,” Phillips told Hammes.
“I don’t have any satisfactory answers for you,” Brennan added.
In August, as the village voted to return the $3 million plus interest, Hammes pressed again.
“There’s still not been any public explanation of the bond anticipation note… Why didn’t the project proceed… how does the village intend to make sure this doesn’t happen again?”
She warned that if the grant fails or the bulkhead collapses, “the village can’t afford to gamble.”
Zoning Board chair John Saladino echoed the frustration, and demanded an update from the mayor.
When Stuessi said he needed time to prepare a timeline, Saladino shot back: “What have you been doing for the last 11 months?” He later mocked the shifting deadlines: “We’re going to play a little pinochle, then we’re going to kick it around, and then we’ll let you know some time in the future?”
“I … kind of feel like I’m getting blown off,” he said.
Stuessi again promised a new update at the next meeting and assured the community that construction would begin “this fall.”