Haye, Kane Will Seek Reelection as a Team in Sag Harbor

Sag Harbor Village Trustees Ed Haye and Jeanne Kane have announced that they will seek reelection while running as a team under the Windmill Party banner.

The pair will be joined by challengers Ron Reed, a member of the Village Planning Board, and Mary Ann Eddy, a member of the Harbor Committee, in seeking a pair of two-year terms on the board in the June 19 election.

Haye, who was appointed to complete the term of Jim Larocca when Larocca was elected mayor in 2020, is seeking his second full term.

Serving as deputy mayor under Mayor Tom Gardella, he has focused most of his attention on affordable housing and establishing the Parks and Open Space Advisory Committee, which, among other duties, is focusing on protecting and improving public access to the waterfront. Most recently, he led the board in the creation of the Capital Planning Advisory Committee, which is charged with establishing a capital plan and exploring financing options to complete targeted long-term projects.

“Investment in infrastructure and the assets of the village is something we can and should do — in a way that is cost-effective to the residents of the village,” he said.

When Larocca and Gardella asked Haye if he would be willing to serve on the board in 2020, he said they told him protecting water quality and providing affordable housing were their chief goals. “Those were two issues I could get behind,” he said.

Although the board’s first effort at promoting affordable housing was overturned by a court challenge, Haye continues to work on the issue and said the board is pursuing a number of options, including zoning tools, that would allow it protect the remaining multifamily homes in the village.

“This is not a big bang,” he said of the process. “It’s putting the mechanisms in place both from the legal perspective and the financial perspective that allow them to succeed.”

Kane served as chairwoman of first the Board of Historic Preservation and Architectural Review and later the Zoning Board of Appeals before Gardella asked her to complete the second year of his term after his election as mayor last year.

Kane said the current board works well together and has launched a number of initiatives that are in their formative stages. “These things take time,” she said. “It’s a very exciting time in the village. We have a lot of projects in the beginning stages.”

Kane said the village continues to work on affordable housing in conjunction with Southampton and East Hampton towns. “We’re not trying to do everything ourselves,” she said. “That wouldn’t be wise.”

Although Kane said she was not a Sag Harbor local, she said husband Paul Zaykowski’s family had lived in the village for three-plus generations. “I have a lot of love for the village,” she said. “I want to preserve its historic character and appeal, and in order for the village to thrive we have to plan for the future.”

Kane has focused on docks and the harbor as well as the Building Department in her first year on the board.

This year, she led a village effort to reorganize the outer mooring field by inventorying the moorings, requiring that they be placed in an organized fashion, encouraging applicants to use modern equipment that causes less environmental damage, and imposing an administrative fee to help defray the village’s costs.

After observing the new rules in action this season, the village and other stakeholders will revisit them this fall to tweak them for the longer term, she said.

Kane, who has had a career managing sales forces on Wall Street, said in her past life, she was called in “to fix the things that were broken. But what’s so exciting here is I don’t think it’s broken. And that allows me to work on solutions instead of being the critic.”