East Hampton Trustees Want Longer Terms And Smaller Slates

The East Hampton Town Trustees plan to propose changing the board member’s terms from two years to four this year, which would allow them to stagger elections so that all nine Trustees don’t have to run for election every two years.

The Trustees hope to have a ballot measure on the 2021 town election ballot that would allow East Hampton’s voters to give the Trustees a thumbs up or down on extending the terms.

Finding a way to stagger the Trustee elections to reduce the number of candidates in each election cycle has been discussed off and on for years, but trying to find a way to do so without making drastic changes to trustees’ terms in office — proposals to change terms, especially from shorter to longer, have proven very hard to find support for from voters — has been slow going.

“I proposed it in 2005-ish when I first came on the board, but it got dropped immediately because the majority back then didn’t even want to discuss it,” current Trustee Clerk Francis Bock said this week.

Splitting the elections into even groups of three Trustees would require six-year terms, a length that board members thought was too long.

In discussions this past year, the board members finally reached the conclusion that the best way to break up the vote would be to shift to four-year terms and break the election cycles into two groups, one of four Trustees the other of five, one of whom would be up for reelection every two years.

In the first year of the new arrangement, if it is approved by voters, all nine Trustees would again be on the ballot, but the top four vote-getters would win four-year terms while the other five would get only two year terms and would then be up for reelection to a four-year term in the next cycle.

Ms. Bock said that the board is still working out how to get the proposal on the fall ballot and whether the new terms could be applied to the winners of the election in the same year as the ballot measure is approved, or if the terms would have to wait until the next cycle to take effect.

The Trustee elections, which have regularly had 18 candidates, have been seen as unwieldy and unhelpful to voters trying to understand more about the candidates they are being asked to vote for.

Along with all nine Trustees, Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc, Councilman Jeff Bragman, Councilwoman Kathee Burke-Gonzalez, Town Clerk Carole Brennan, Justice Steven Tekulsky, Tax Receiver Eugene di Pasquale and Highway Superintendent Steve Lynch will be up for reelection this year.