Female Majority In East Hampton, Roaming Meetings In The Fall

The East Hampton Village Board will be taking its show on the road starting late this summer with a new plan to hold monthly “work session” meetings at various historic buildings around the village.

Mayor Jerry Larsen said last week that the village will hold its September work session at Village Hall — itself a former home built in the 1800s — and subsequent work sessions at other historic sites like the Mulford Farm and the village’s various historic museums.

“A lot of people don’t know about a lot of these historic sites,” the mayor said in a conversation last week. “It will be a good way to educate the public about some of these wonderful places we have in the village.”

The mayor said he has asked the village’s historian, Hugh King, to prepare presentations on the history of each site for the meetings and said that LTV is working on ways to broadcast the meetings live, as they do the board’s meetings held at the Emergency Services Building.

September will mark the return of the village’s work sessions, which the mayor had largely discontinued over the last year — over criticism from now former trustees Rose Brown and Arthur Graham, who groused about village policy and legislation not being discussed in public before votes were held.

The Village Board held its organizational meeting on July 6, at which new village trustees Sarah Amaden and Carrie Doyle were sworn in to their first terms on the board.

The mayor noted that Doyle and Amaden joining Trustee Sandra Melendez on the Village Board marks the first time in its 100-year history that the Village Board will have a female majority.

King, who is both the village and town historian, noted that now both the village and Town Board have majority women members — among other milestones.

“For the first time, there’s been a woman’s name attached to a building — when you are going to be putting Katie Babcock’s name on one of the buildings down at Georgica Beach,” King said. “We’ve had our first Juneteenth ceremony. In the town, I think for the first time, there’s been an African American’s name put on a location: Lee Hayes, the great Tuskegee Airman. We had the first gay pride parade. And now, for the first time in the 375-[year] history of the town and the 100-year history of the village, we have more women on the town and village boards than men.”

He added, “When that really shows progress is when we don’t have to mention it again.”