Southold Town Board candidate slate announced for November
The Southold Democratic and Republican committees have announced their candidates who will vie for the three open Town Board seats in November.
Councilman Brian Mealy is running for a second, four-year term on the board and the Southold Town Democratic Committee has nominated two political newcomers — Alexa Suess and Kate Stevens — to run for the two other contested seats currently held by Louisa Evans and Greg Doroski.
Mr. Doroski recently announced he is running for the Suffolk County Legislature 1st District seat in November and Ms. Evans confirmed she plans to retire at the end of the year.
On the GOP side, Republican committee chairman Peter Ganley said former Southold Town councilmember Christopher Talbot and North Fork real estate broker Nicholas Planamento have been nominated to run for the two soon to be open Town Board seats.
At its 2025 Nominating Convention Friday night, the Southold Democrats announced several other candidates, including incumbents Liz Gillooly, Eric Sepenoski, and newcomer Joe Finora for Town Trustees; Dana Forlenza and Leah Tillman Sullivan for Town Tax Assessor; incumbent Dan Goodwin for Town Highway Superintendent; incumbent Eileen Powers for Town Justice and Abigail Field for Town Clerk.
Mr. Ganley said the Southold GOP plans to announce additional candidates on the Republican slate in the coming weeks.
Southold Town Board Democratic candidates
Making history as the first Black elected official in Southold Town, Mr. Mealy, a lifelong Mattituck resident, won his seat in 2021. Prior to serving on the town board, he was twice elected to the Mattituck-Cutchogue school board and served as a three-time elected member of the Eastern Suffolk BOCES board.
He was formerly a member of both the Suffolk County Sheriff Department Citizen’s Advisory Board and the Southold Justice Review & Reform Task Force. In 2018, he was honored with the Helen Wright Prince Award for community service from the Southold Town Anti-Bias Task Force.
As councilman, Mr. Mealy is the liaison for several town committees, including the Anti-Bias Task Force, the Conservation Advisory, the Police Advisory and Youth Bureau. His involvement on these committees include initiatives that focus on maintaining civility, offer job training and spark conversations surrounding mental health.
His priorities include affordable housing, environmental protection and other quality of life matters. If re-elected, Mr. Mealy hopes to continue to strengthen the collaboration between town government and local civics, and improve government transparency.
“It’s just been a blessing to serve our community, and that’s really what’s at the center of my elected service,” Mr. Mealy said. “If Southold Town, including the board, works together, there’s no issue coming down the road that we can’t handle — making sure that we maintain that Southold togetherness, regardless of party.”
Ms. Suess of Greenport, a community organizer and business owner since 2012, is a newcomer to politics. She is a co-owner of the jewelry store and studio Common Ground and has been a member of the Greenport BID, the North Fork Chamber of Commerce and a local business group for Southold women entrepreneurs.
The focus of her Town Board campaign is affordable and workforce housing, which is an issue she has personally struggled with living on the North Fork. She said that just last year, she was working four jobs to pay rent for her second-floor apartment.
Through this experience, she has become passionate about the need for more varied housing stock, such as accessory dwelling units, starter homes for families and supportive housing for retirees.
“There needs to be options for everybody in the community, no matter where they are in their journey of life,” Ms. Suess said. “Without affordable workforce housing, we lose our volunteer firefighters, we lose our small business owners and employees, we lose our younger population who want to sort of settle down, have a family here, and we lose the diversity that makes our children so vibrant and strong.”
If elected, she hopes to “drag Southold into the 21st century” by promoting the health and wellness of small businesses, encouraging entrepreneurship for young people, focusing on technological improvements that aid in accessibility and revisiting previous board decisions, such as the decision to opt out of allowing retail cannabis sales in Southold.
Ms. Stevens is running for the Fishers Island Town Council and Justice Candidate seat, currently held by Ms. Evans. She is an architect, educator, Commission Chair of the Fishers Island Water Management District and a member of Fishers Island and Southold Town civic and community groups.
She said she was drawn to helping the Fishers Island community, starting with earning a spot on the Waste Management Commission, where she gained experience handling land use issues. She mentioned her role in pushing for the lease of the Fishers Island Waste Management District’s Pickett Landfill for solar development.
She has also had experience serving on a zoning committee, which she called “incredibly enlightening” when it comes to making a positive impact on the future of housing, open space and other issues on Fishers Island.
Her main priorities if elected are housing, water infrastructure and quality, coastal resiliency and healthcare coverage — which has become a jurisdictional struggle for Fisher Island residents, she said.
“I think this role is completely about communication and about being a channel and a bridge between Fishers Island and the North Fork,” Ms. Stevens said. “I’m really just thrilled to be getting to know the community out there, it’s already been such a warm welcome that I’ve received, there’s such a strong sense of place there on Fishers Island and it’s one of the things I really admire.”
Republican Town Board candidates
A lifelong resident of Southold Town and graduate of Mattituck High School, Mr. Talbot of Cutchogue currently serves as the Senior Building and Zoning Inspector for the Village of Southampton and is a state certified code enforcement official.
He previously served for one term on the Southold Town Board from 2009 to 2013 and attempted to secure a nomination to run against then-Southold Town Supervisor Scott Russell in 2015. Mr. Talbot is a former Mattituck Park District Commissioner, current Cutchogue Fire Commissioner and active member of the Cutchogue Fire Department, as well as an 18-year member of the Mattituck Fire Department.
With his extensive experience in municipal operations, fire safety, zoning and code enforcement, Mr. Talbot hopes to provide efficient and effective governance if elected.
“One of the main things is preserving common sense, conserving tax dollars, that’s a big thing for me,” Mr. Talbot said. “I will continue with the land preservation, as we have, but part of that is also preserving the community; as far as housing goes, looking at the Community Preservation Fund, have we done enough on that — I’ve got some ideas that I will be bringing up during the campaign.”
Mr. Planamento is an associate real estate broker for Town and Country Real Estate in Mattituck and has family ties to the Southold community that date back to the 1920s. He has been involved in a variety of town government roles for over 20 years, including serving on the Southold Zoning Board, Architectural Review Board and Board of Assessment Review Committee and as the town liaison to the Suffolk County Planning Commission.
As a property rights advocate, Mr. Planamento said he believes residents who have made an investment in Southold need to have their voices heard. He hopes to bring balance to town government and, if elected, would find consensus with his colleagues “across the political divide.”
Supporting local businesses, boosting Southold employment, and keeping young people in Southold are also important issues Mr. Planamento supports. When it comes to the housing crisis, he said as a town councilman, he would investigate ways to create more housing units for young people. He also believes it would be a benefit for Southold to tap more into tourism and how it drives the North Fork economy.
Additionally, Mr. Planamento said preserving Southold’s unique heritage is an important issue, which includes land and water quality.
“I was not born in town, but I have family history in town — not that that is the end all, be all. Certainly anyone that moves to town, whether they’re here from the original settlers or a more modern transplant, we all have a vote, and it is our community,” Mr. Planamento said. “I’m really a preservationist, I want to keep things as similar to what we know, without large scale development.”
