Shelter Island Reporter letters to the Editor: Sept. 3, 2026
CORRECTING THE RECORD
To the Editor:
The Community Housing Board is working on a number of projects to further our mission of creating stable and affordable year-round housing for Island residents.
To correct the record on recent letters, yes, we are currently working with CDLI to create 10 units of rental housing at 12 South Ferry, 69 North Ferry and 16 Manwaring Road. We view these rental properties as an investment in the infrastructure and the community of our town, and we do want them to last for decades — housing many Island residents who need affordable housing now and into the future. We hope to finalize our contracts with CDLI and partners this fall and start clearing the sites over the winter to begin construction next year.
Despite the allegation, there have been no suggestions by the CHB to let the town pick up the tab for the purchase of 2 School Street and then to use it for future affordable housing or to increase property taxes to pay for any of our programs. If the Town decides that community housing is the best use of the lot (we are still waiting on their facilities master plan for that determination) we’ll be happy to take on the purchase price and renovate and rebuild the property to create more affordable housing in the town.
And yes, we will be looking for more property in the future — purchased with the .5% transfer tax fund, or donated by community members — any land would create more opportunities for future projects like affordable houses for sale (with the land forever owned by the Town) or additional rentals.
Community members with concerns can feel free to contact me with questions if they’d like to learn more about our work. Thank you!
BRAN DOUGHERTY-JOHNSON, Chair, Community Housing Board
NO PRIVATE ARRANGEMENT
To the Editor:
Mr. Ashner’s response (13 August 2026 to my letter of 6 August) deserves a reply.
He says the condition “came off for both alike.” He is right on the facts and wrong on the point. A trustee benefited, and the presiding trustee — Ashner — removed the condition. That stands.
He says he never spoke in favor of the CO law. The two proposed laws interlock: an updated CO cannot be obtained without first satisfying the tank requirement. At the Aug. 8 meeting he stated on the record: “My personal view is that we definitely need some regulation around this … to have a pool going through the village that could possibly contaminate our water supply … will be catastrophic for the village.” That is not silence.
Invoking the environment does not answer the structural questions I raised about who benefits and who presides.
He invites evidence of a private arrangement. I allege none. I allege a structural one.
On April 15, 2023, the Board adopted a local law folding the independent Planning Board into itself — “sponsored by the entire Board of Trustees,” including Trustee Benacerraf, who already co-owned property with resident Eric Deutsch. Section 4 explicitly supersedes Village Law §7-718(3), the provision prohibiting trustees from serving as Planning Board members. They knew they were overriding the prohibition and wrote a suppression clause to do it.
At the May 13, 2023 meeting, I stated on the record that this joint ownership would require a lot line adjudication before a board both now sit on, and that the Suffolk County Planning Commission had warned against the consolidation in writing, using the word “bias.” Mr. Deutsch was in the room. Trustee Benacerraf did not deny the ownership.
That is precisely what occurred.
The record Deputy Mayor Ashner asks me to respect is the record I am citing.
JOHN T. COLBY JR., Shelter Island
INFINITE THANKS
To the Editor:
On July 24, early in the morning after a swim gone bad (an ischemic stroke), I found myself lying on the dock of the Beach Club, wondering what in the world was happening.
But luckily for me, the Shelter Island EMS team knew exactly what was happening.
My husband had run back to the house and called 911, and within minutes, there they were, lifting me in my bathing suit into the waiting ambulance, and taking me — well, I wasn’t sure where.
They were, though.
“You might not appreciate this,” my husband informed me, “but you’re having a private ferry ride!”
Looking back now, I do appreciate it, all of it. It actually seems almost miraculous. The EMS volunteers, including a doctor dressed for yoga who’d given up her class to help, first commandeered the ferry, and then rushed me to the Greenport hospital, where they’d called ahead, so a team was waiting to give me a tPA shot that breaks up blood clots, which is why I am fine now.
Fine, and what remains from that very bad morning is the gratitude we feel for the EMS first responders who gave up their mornings to rush to my aid. They made all the difference in the outcome, and please forgive me if I call them angels from heaven.
We on Shelter Island are blessed to have them. I will never drive past them on Manwaring Road again without sending out a whisper of infinite thanks.
VICKY SHORR, Shelter Island
