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See who’s running in this year’s Greenport Village Board election

Greenport Village Hall

Four candidates are running for two seats up for grabs in this year’s Greenport Village Board election.

Trustees Mary Bess Phillips and Julia Robins will face challengers Paul Kreiling and Lucy Clark, village officials confirmed Wednesday. Each seat carries a four-year term.

Mr. Kreiling, a 25-year Greenport resident and owner of Easterly Sailing school, said this is his first time running for office and he plans to campaign on protecting the harbor.

“I would like to turn my attention to the actual quality of the water and the accessibility for the locals to our lovely waterfront,” said Mr. Kreiling, adding he’s calling his party the Harbor Party.

While he said the village offers many activities for tourists, he believes more aquaculture activities should be provided for locals, too.

“I believe that if more people saw [Greenport] from the water, they would value the waterfront more and its aquaculture and its history,” he said. “They should appreciate it.”

Mr. Kreiling said he has no particular axe to grind with the current Village Board and he would like to be another set of ears for villagers.

Ms. Phillips, owner of Alice’s Fish Market in Greenport, has served on the board since 2009. She said she’s running for a third term to focus on making it easier for young families to remain in the village.

“We live in a village where there were opportunities for young people to become a part of the community — to raise their children here, to send them to school,” she said. “Over the last couple of years … I have seen the Planning Board and the ZBA struggling with out current code to try to accomplish that.”

“We have this battle between ‘Are we a community or are we a destination?’ and that’s something that we need to come to grips with,” she added.

Ms. Robins, who was first elected in 2013, is a salesperson at Albertson Realty and serves as the Village Board’s liaison to the Greenport Business Improvement District.

In a statement, she said she’s seeking a second term in order to continue the work of planning for the future of the village’s electric generation and capacity.

“Energy and power are going to change dramatically in the next 10 to 20 years with the development of renewables,” she said. “As a small municipal electric company, we can be part of this exciting new opportunity for our ratepayers.”

Ms. Clark, whose legal name is Mary Louise Given, is a member of the village Planning Board. She could not immediately be reached for comment.

The four candidates have been invited to a debate hosted by The Suffolk Times and SoutholdLOCAL scheduled for 7 p.m. Monday, March 13, at Floyd Memorial Library.

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File photo: Greenport Village Hall. (Credit: Barbaraellen Koch)