Supervisor Siller to give State of the Town report at the library

Supervisor Gerry Siller will present his State of the Town report on Friday, May 13 at 7 p.m. as part of the tradition hosted by The League of Women Voters of the Hamptons, Shelter Island, and the North Fork.

Offered as one of the library’s Friday Night Dialogues (7 p.m. on Zoom and in-person at the library) the tradition is being revived at the library as a temporary venue after being waylaid by the pandemic for the past two years.

Having first served as Supervisor from 1998 to 2001, Mr. Siller ran again in 2019 and has just been re-elected for his second successive term — both times with strong support at the polls. 

As was noted in a 2019 Shelter Island Reporter interview when he ran again after so many intervening years, “Eighteen years later … some of the same issues he worked on then [in 2001] are still front and center on the Town’s agenda, including water quantity and quality, deer overpopulation/tick-borne disease and affordable housing…”

Truer words were never spoken as we look back on just this past year when the Town Board proposed legislation to transfer development rights on Town preserved properties; a new Comprehensive Plan was being written; the Town transferred West Neck Water District jurisdiction to the Suffolk County Water Authority; and support for a referendum on an affordable housing tax is discussed; to name a few. Oh, yes, and let’s not forget the pandemic.

As in any messy political process, things haven’t always gone smoothly — after all, there’s no shortage of opinions on Shelter Island.

Come on May 13 and hear about the supervisor’s perspective on how all these issues are being addressed by the Town Board, and as attendees, take advantage of the opportunity to put questions directly to our supervisor. For Zoom link, register at silibrary.org.