Candidates for Southold Town Trustee

Six candidates are competing for three spots on the Southold Town Trustees this November, setting up a competitive race for one of the town’s most critical environmental stewardship roles.

The five-member board administers all activity within 100 feet of Southold’s wetlands and manages more than 2,000 acres of underwater lands, making the Trustees essential guardians of the town’s diverse coastal ecosystems. Each Trustee serves a four-year term.

Democratic incumbents Liz Gillooly and Eric Sepenoski are seeking reelection, while fellow Dem Elizabeth Peeples is not running for another term, leaving her seat open.

On the Democratic line, Shelter Island town engineer Joe Finora joins Ms. Gillooly and Mr. Sepenoski in seeking the three available positions. The Republican ticket features Trustee hopefuls Terri Boyle Romanelli, Nathan Andruski and Pindar Damianos.

The Suffolk Times sat down with each candidate to ask why they deserve your vote.

Nathan Andruski

A lifelong bayman, Mr. Andruski has been up close and personal with the pressing environmental challenges facing Southold’s waters. His connection to the water and the town compelled him to run, he said.

“We had such bountiful waters where nothing lives now,” Mr. Andruski said. “I see a lot of neglect, even from Trustees. A lot of these areas that have been erased or eaten away can be rebuilt.”

Outdated septic systems, the decline in shellfish beds, erosion and harmful chemicals entering the waterways are a few of the factors that drove him to seek a Trustee position. He is interested in utilizing the Cornell Cooperative facility at Cedar Beach to help advance marine conservation.

Mr. Andruski believes that his experience and work ethic would make his voice invaluable. He said that when he does something, he always “gives it 120%.”

“I’m always in this town. I’m a very easy person to find to come talk to, and I like public interaction, one-on-one, with a human being,” he said.

Through talking with community members, Mr. Andruski said the No. 1 complaint he hears is that when someone has an issue, the Trustees are hard to get in touch with. If elected, he said he hopes to change that.

Terri Boyle Romanelli

Ms. Boyle Romanelli has worn a lot of hats. She’s been in real estate since 2006, served on the board of the Long Island Farm Bureau and gotten involved with the North Fork Environmental Council, owned a charter fishing business in Montauk and currently works as a sales manager at DocuSign.

The Stanford graduate vowed to modernize the Trustee position through better communication, efficiency and education.

Ms. Boyle Romanelli feels the town code is fine the way it is now, but that it needs to be more accessible to everybody — or, maybe a little more “understandable.”

“A lot of people are not malicious. They just don’t know,” she said. “They’ll then go, ‘Oh, I got that treatment, I didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to do that.’ And it is really hard to find it on the website.”

She acknowledged that tough decisions need to be made to help preserve the local environment — especially when it comes to pesticides and other chemicals used on properties that can run off into waterways.

“As a community, we might have to take a hard look at some of our regulations here,” she said. “We have to protect our [environment]. If you don’t protect it now, it’s just not going to be there.”

Pindar Damianos

A longtime Southold resident, Mr. Damianos owns Pindar Vineyards — founded by his late father — and is first assistant chief with the Southold Fire Department. He said he knows the importance of conservation as a small business owner and farmer.

“A lot of the Trustees’ position is protecting the environment, and I think I bring that to the table,” he said, “as well as owning a business in this town for 50 years, being one of the first wineries to be out here and establish the industry. I understand what it is like to work with the town.”

Mr. Damianos said that, through knocking on doors and speaking with residents, he has heard that a lot of people have difficulty navigating the permitting process. There’s frustration, he said, and, if elected, he hopes to help alleviate that.

He feels the Trustees’ office is there to protect not only the environment, but also people’s property rights. The difficulties with permits, coupled with some misunderstandings with the code, need to be cleared up, he said.

The Trustees are the ones to help protect the environment, and he’s hoping to aid in that.

“That’s why I’m running; to navigate through all that and to make some improvements in the town,” he said. “To make sure that agriculture is preserved, as well as the environment, for the next generation.”

Joe Finora

As a North Fork native raising a family in Southold, a professional mariner and waterfront engineer of 15 years, commercial diver, USCG-licensed captain and co-founder of the Hampton Oyster Company, Mr. Finora “lives and breathes” the waterfront. 

“I grew up here, and I couldn’t be more invested in this community,” he said. 

Mr. Finora’s professional background and personal stake in the community keep him engaged with the issues the Trustees tackle. He feels development pressure, erosion, climate change and sea-level rise are the greatest issues facing the Trustees. 

“What we do have control over is how those projects are executed and that they’re done through the lens of preserving the culture and characteristics of the community,” Mr. Finora said, “and certainly, in alignment with the wishes of the community.”

The Trustees’ ability to see applications from a “30,000-foot viewpoint” and recognize where code needs to be strengthened or enhanced is an important part of the role, Mr. Finora said. He believes his background in municipal work and engineering would help serve the board.

Liz Gillooly

During her four years as Trustee, Ms. Gillooly said she’s taken a proactive role in updating codes, worked to improve transparency and expanded the Conservation Advisory Council’s mission to address sustainability issues.

Strengthening protections where the board has authority to do so is something she feels is crucial to the Trustees’ ability to fairly process applications.

“If we deny outside of those limits, the town will lose in court, which doesn’t protect the shoreline and ends up costing the taxpayers a lot of money,” she said.

Outside of her role as Trustee, she is a USCG-licensed sailboat captain, serves as North Fork Arts Center’s operations director and runs the women-led boat charter business Layla Sailing in Greenport. 

The greatest challenges she feels the community is facing are development pressure and climate change. 

“Intensified storms and rising seas are reshaping our shoreline, and our job is to make sure that development doesn’t weaken our natural defenses,” Ms. Gillooly said.

To address these issues, she said that buffer requirements, limited structures in vulnerable areas, upgraded septic systems and smart planning could protect both property and the environment. 

Eric Sepenoski

Mr. Sepenoski is a fourth-generation farmer at Sep’s Farm in East Marion and a youth educator, so he is very familiar with the issues Southold residents face, he said.

“We’re really forced to reckon with a generational challenge of how to raise or give Southolders an opportunity to live with these wetlands and these waterfronts,” Mr. Sepenoski said, “as part of the cultural heritage that they experience [and] their parents experienced.”

He sees the Trustees’ mission as not only carrying out the town code, but helping residents understand their responsibilities to this place and its history.

In his four years as Trustee, Mr. Sepenoski said protecting public access to shorelines is an accomplishment he is proud of. He also feels that having covenants and restrictions that run with the land help ensure that the Trustees’ work carries forward to future property owners.

“It’s a long process of getting these things on the books, but they matter,” he said.

His educational pursuits of a doctorate in rhetoric and writing led Mr. Sepenoski to focus his research on community literacy on the North Fork where he dug into land issues. His focus on land claims is something he said has a direct bearing on the Trustees’ role.