Larsen, Minardi, Melendez Unchallenged for East Hampton Village Election

East Hampton Village Mayor Jerry Larsen and Trustees Christopher Minardi and Sandra Melenedez will be unchallenged in their first reelection bid next month.

No other candidates submitted nominating petitions for any of the three seats up for election in the June 21 village election by Tuesday’s deadline, giving the mayor’s NewTown Party candidates an easy path to new four-year terms on the Village Board.

“We did a lot of work in our first term so I’m happy that the residents are obviously happy with the job we’ve done,” Larsen said on Tuesday evening after the last opportunity for a challenger to step up passed. “We have a lot left to do in the next four years.”

The mayor spotlighted three years of tax cuts for residents, the hiring of more police officers, major upgrades to Herrick Park and the village’s fleet of aging firetrucks and maintenance vehicles and the creation of a mental health screening program for officers in the East Hampton Village Police Department as his proudest accomplishments. The building department was relocated to Newtown Lane for easier access, and the bases of all the trees that line downtown sidewalks given new Belgian block frames,

He said the paid parking program in the Ruetershan parking lot that he instituted early in his first year in office has been a major success and will propose expanding it this summer to Main Street and Newtown Lane — which would remain free for one hour under his plan, he said, but would allow visitors to the downtown to pay for a second hour if needed.

Larsen also touted the village’s takeover of what is now the former East Hampton Village Volunteer Ambulance by the village’s newly created Department of Emergency Medical Services — which sparked an exodus of volunteers and more than a year of infighting and legal struggles with some.

“I think it has made that a much better and more professional organization,” he said.

The village is also going to look at creating its own justice court in the near future, the mayor said.

His marquee issue from the pandemic-delayed 2020 campaign, the creation of a sewage treatment system serving the downtown business district, has still not come to fruition, but Larsen said the board is committed to advancing that project in the coming years.

“We have done a lot of work on it and basically now we know what we can’t do,” he said. “We have exhausted every possible site in the village. We thought we had a perfect plan, to put it underneath the longterm parking lot, but the county said no and that took a year-and-a-half. So now we’re going to move on the plan to put it at our DPW property, which is in the town, and will have to work with them on that.”

The installation of a septic system is seen as a key component to hopes for revitalizing the downtown by making more room for restaurants, in particular, apartments and other food service uses. The village has already given two property owners easements over village property to allow new food businesses to open on the Reutershan lot.

“We’ve allowed these properties to utilize village property for new septics systems so that they can qualify for retail food shops with 16 seats through the health department,” Larsen said. “That’s been a big one already and we have more coming in this year.”