A simmering debate over how to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Community Preservation Fund resurfaced Thursday night during a joint meeting between Greenport Village and Town of Southold officials.
At the heart of the disagreement is a state law that now mandates 10% of CPF revenues be directed to “disadvantaged communities” — a category that includes the Village of Greenport.
Village officials, led by Mayor Kevin Stuessi, are pushing for CPF money to be used within Greenport’s dense, 1.2-square-mile footprint, for water quality and historic preservation. Town officials remain focused on using CPF funds exclusively for open space and farmland preservation — the historic priorities of the fund.
In 1998, the five East End towns of East Hampton, Shelter Island, Southampton, Southold and Riverhead approved a 2% real estate transfer tax to be used for protecting farmland and open space from development and preserving community character. A 2016 water quality amendment has been adopted by other East End towns, but not Southold. Last year, Southold’s CPF took in an estimated $11.1 million.
‘The village has needs’
“For 30 years, the Village of Greenport has been contributing to the CPF fund,” Stuessi said. “And we have not received one dollar directly within the village.”
He and fellow village trustees argued that, for Greenport, the traditional CPF focus on farmland and open space preservation simply doesn’t apply.
“The village has needs,” Stuessi said. “Our needs are related to water quality and historic preservation. We now have a state law which specifically states 10% … it’s super clear what it says.”
Southold Land Preservation Coordinator Lily McCullough said that while the law does require 10% of CPF funds to benefit disadvantaged communities, the existing language remains vague and lacks clear guidance from the state.
“It’s one sentence in the law,” McCullough said, based on a framework taken from climate-related legislation with different goals and metrics. Still, she urged village officials to formulate plans for potential funding for water quality and historic preservation.
“There are a lot of uncertainties,” she said of the new language in the legislation. “That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be thinking about how to do it … I encourage you to come talk to me. Let’s figure something out, because we’re going to have to figure how to make this work.” She said the 10% language “is in the statute … but right now, it isn’t very clear.”
‘A conscious decision’
Southold Supervisor Al Krupski defended the Town’s historic CPF strategy, citing the preservation of over 345 acres in the Greenport area, including Pipes Cove and Moores Woods. The veteran legislator also pointed to decades of successful stormwater management, shellfish bed restoration and beach protection efforts town-wide — all funded through other mechanisms.
“We have put a great emphasis on water quality improvements for 30 years, but we haven’t used the CPF funds because we made a conscious decision not to use CPF funds for anything, really, other than land preservation.”
Town Engineer Michael Collins said the town had eliminated nearly 60% of its stormwater outfalls since 2019 — many of them discharging directly into Greenport’s harbor — without using CPF money.
“We’ve been successful finding other sources,” Collins said. “That doesn’t mean it’s not a priority — it just means we’ve funded it another way.”
Southold Town Board member Greg Doroski emphasized that the town was not opposed in principle to expanding CPF uses, but argued that the town must take a holistic approach — not one that prioritizes Greenport at the expense of other hamlets.
“We need to rebalance all of our priorities,” Doroski said. “We can’t just say ‘Greenport village is only place we’re going to do water quality work with the money.’”
Greenport Deputy Mayor Patrick Brennan questioned why CPF money couldn’t be more equitably distributed — especially if only a fraction of it was redirected to urgent infrastructure needs within Greenport.
“If it took 25 years to substantially obtain the land preservation goals,” Brennan said, “it strikes me that it would be very little impact if 10% of those funds were pulled off for water quality … a 25-year project would turn into a 27-and-a-half-year project.”
Town officials pushed back, highlighting their substantial investments in water quality using non-CPF funds. Collins cited the elimination in the last six years of 82 stormwater outfalls and ongoing work on Greenport West’s Champlin Place discharge system. “It’s just the way we’ve chosen to fund this,” Collins said. “It doesn’t mean that we’re not following this objective.”
Have a plan
Greenport officials argued that Southold’s decision not to adopt a water quality component within its CPF Project Plan effectively locked them out of funding sources other East End municipalities have embraced for years.
“Every other town has adopted water quality as part of CPF,” Stuessi said. “We’re asking Southold to do the same.”
McCullough acknowledged that the town’s CPF Project Plan — the policy document that outlines what types of projects are eligible for CPF funding — hasn’t been updated since 2016. Under state law, the plan is supposed to be revised every five years. But she said the first step for any kind of funding at any level of government is a clear plan.
“Having a plan for water quality improvement projects listed out that’s very clear, that’s basically a step-by-step how-to — and a historic preservation plan with a clear mission — allows you to go shop that around to other funding sources too, so that if CPF isn’t available for whatever reason, you can immediately shop it” elsewhere. But, she said, “there’s no public funding you can get without a plan.”
She encouraged the village to view CPF funding as a possible component of a broader financial strategy — not the only one. “Every successful preservation plan has other funding partners,” she said. “If CPF isn’t available, a good plan still helps you go to the county, the state or federal agencies for support.”
Doroski also reiterated a call he had made at a meeting last summer on the same topic of how to spend the CPF money, and again urged village officials to formulate and submit formal plans to the town.
“When you came to the board over a year ago,” he told Stuessi, “we said, ‘Let’s work within the specific confines of the plan that we have right now. Give us a list of parcels you would like us to preserve. You have not provided us a single parcel in the village that you would like preserved.”
The mayor replied that “as of yet, no one has brought a parcel that they want to submit for CPF” funding.
As the conversation wore on, officials on both sides began to inch closer to a potential path forward: collaboration. Southold Councilmember Anne Smith proposed the formation of a joint working group to identify “shovel-ready” projects in Greenport that could qualify for CPF funding under the new law once the plan is updated.
Village and town officials agreed to reconvene for an upcoming work session focused solely on CPF priorities and potential water quality projects.
Smith, McCullough, and Village Board members — including Lily Dougherty-Johnson — will collaborate to identify project priorities and begin drafting updates to the CPF plan.
As the meeting drew to a close, Southold Town Councilmember Jill Doherty voiced a sentiment that many seemed to share by the end of the lengthy discussion.
“I have faith we’re going to get on the same page with this eventually, once we have all our answers, once we’re a little more clear from the state … But,” she said, “we can continue to work on it. Let’s do that. Let’s say right now that we’re going to meet again, just on this topic.”
Pictured above, during a moment of silence at the start of the joint meeting, are — from left, Southold Town Councilmembers Anne Smith, Jill Doherty, Brian Mealy and Greg Doroski, Southold Town Supervisor Al Krupski, Greenport Village Mayor Kevin Stuessi, Deputy Mayor Patrick Brennan and Village Board members Lily Dougherty-Johnson and Mary Bess Phillips. (Chris Francescani photo).