About the closest thing to a capital plan in Sag Harbor, a village that just approved a $15.3 million annual budget, is that the village puts aside money each year to allow it to replace aging firetrucks on a rotating basis.
Except for a recently adopted sewer master plan and launch of a major, multimillion-dollar expansion of the village’s sewer system, there has been little done to plan for long-term needs or the maintenance of an aging infrastructure.
Village officials say a new Capital Planning Advisory Committee, which was created earlier this month, will change that.
The committee is made up of Mayor Tom Gardella; Trustee Ed Haye; Village Treasurer Charles Bruschi; Grainne Coen, a member of the Village Planning Board and Sag Harbor School Board; Nathiel Egosi, the president and CEO of RRT Design & Construction and owner of the Sag Harbor Inn; Greg Ferraris, an accountant and former village mayor; and Susan Mead, an attorney who is involved in a number of Sag Harbor civic organizations and has an extensive background in zoning and land use.
“We wanted to put a group of people in place that are forward-thinking, looking to solve problems, and looking to address issues in the village,” said Mayor Tom Gardella, who has frequently cited the wide range of expertise that can be found among village residents and his desire to recruit them for village service.
“We have been deferring capital investment in this village by only planning one or two years out,” said Trustee Ed Haye, who has been a major proponent of long-term financial planning since he was appointed to the board by former Mayor Jim Larocca in 2020. “If you are not looking five to 10 years out, you don’t know what’s coming, and you really can’t plan for it financially.”
A first order of business for the committee will be to put together a list of capital needs in the village. That will start with an inventory of buildings and properties such as the Municipal Building, which the village has had on its list for renovation for more than a decade, the Sag Harbor Fire Museum, and the Murray Hill Firehouse.
There are more mundane projects that have to be attended to as well, from repaving village streets to repairing and replacing sidewalks.
Once a list has been compiled, priorities set, and a timeline established for various projects, the committee will turn its attention toward how the village can fund them by applying for grants, selling bonds, or looking for more creative revenue streams.
An example of the kind of creative project that could be undertaken would renovate the Municipal Building to allow the village to use the third and fourth floors, which have been closed for years, and lease out the first floor to stores, whose rent payments would help pay off the cost of the renovation.
Haye said he anticipated the new committee would first focus on simpler problems such as the true cost to the village of the many fundraising events that are held every year. He noted, for instance, that the village may charge a race promoter for the time of one or two police officers during an event when in reality all officers who are on duty at that time might be occupied. “We are looking to appropriately charge fees to people who are causing the village to incur additional costs that are not budgeted for,” he said.
As another example, he cited the recent discussion of the outer mooring field, where the village has frozen the number of moorings at last year’s levels, but instituted a $350 administrative fee for each application. After a workshop on the mooring field, the board realized that fee was too low for the amount of work required by village harbormasters.
“We are going to figure out the real cost to the village and plan for it next year,” Haye said.
Gardella, who has scheduled a number of work sessions on key issues, said the board would also solicit public comment on any proposal to generate revenue proposed by the committee. “There will be public input on everything,” he said.
Mead said that developing a capital plan would also provide transparency by creating a publicly vetted plan for a wide range of public works projects.
“It provides a road map in how to keep everything functioning,” she said of a capital plan. “And it depoliticizes the whole process.”
She said, for instance, if a resident called to complain about the state of the sidewalks in front of their house, the village would be able to tell that person when they could expect them to be replaced. If they were not on the list, it would provide the village with a reason to inspect the property to find out if its schedule needed to be updated.
Coen, who owns Kidd Squid Brewing Company with her husband, Rory McEvoy, but had a long career as a portfolio manager, said she was excited to serve on the committee.
“This is a really fantastic idea,” she said. “It’s crucial to the ongoing planning of the village. To put people together with varied but relevant backgrounds is a good starting point.”
“Every business has a capital plan. Every homeowner has a capital plan, whether to save for retirement or put the kids through college,” Egosi said. He said Sag Harbor’s problem was less about having a plan than having “a group of people whose sole focus is coming up with one.”
Egosi said he saw two major obstacles that have prevented the village from being able to focus on its own long-term projects.
“The first is it has limited resources and doesn’t have the financial wherewithal,” he said. “The second is that every year, there’s a new outsider who has arrived in Sag Harbor and planted their flag,” and occupies the village boards with proposals for projects that don’t necessarily mesh with the village’s character.
He said Sag Harbor has been lucky in the past, with properties like the Cilli Farm being preserved and John Steinbeck Waterfront Park being created, but he said it can’t always count on that.
Egosi said he would like to see the village tackle a pair of waterfront problems. The pumping station that pumps water from the parking lot behind Main Street collects traces of oil, gasoline and other chemicals that is dumped directly into the harbor. Another is the polluted runoff that often makes bathing off limits at Havens Beach, a problem the village has begun to focus on in recent years. “There are serious water problems there,” he said of both locations.
Stephen J. Kotz on Apr 17, 2024