Plumb Announces He Will Run for Sag Harbor Mayor

The political season came early to Sag Harbor, where this week Trustee Bob Plumb announced that he will run for mayor.

Presumably, he would challenge incumbent Mayor Jim Larocca, but Larocca has not announced whether he will seek a second two-year term.

In throwing his hat into the ring, Plumb would forfeit the opportunity to run for a third term as trustee.

The election will be held on June 20; April 4 is the first day candidates can ask voters to sign their nominating petitions.

Plumb, 70, cited what he called an atmosphere of “angst and ill will” in the village that he said was made worse by Larocca’s adversarial approach to people with whom he disagrees, and the mayor’s tight grip on the flow of information to his fellow board members.

“I was hearing a lot of exasperated people asking, ‘Who’s going to step forward?’ I heard it from enough people that I decided, ‘You know what? I’ll step forward,’” he said.

Plumb said he told Larocca of his plans at a party at the Sag Harbor Cinema on Friday that served as the kickoff for HarborFrost, and they had a polite exchange.

Larocca confirmed that. “Bob and I ran into each other over the weekend, and he shared the news with me,” he said. “I thanked him for his courtesy.”

However, he would not comment on Plumb’s announcement, other than to say, “I assumed people would run for mayor.”

There has been much speculation about whether Larocca himself would seek a second term. He said he would announce his intentions by early April.

Plumb said if he were elected, one of the first things he would do is revisit Local Law 12, a zoning code amendment the board approved last summer, making it easier to build affordable apartment buildings in the office district. The organization Save Sag Harbor and several residents have sued the village, seeking to overturn the measure, which they say paved the way for the developer Adam Potter to propose a major 79-unit affordable apartment and commercial complex on little more than an acre of property off Bridge and Rose streets in the heart of the village.

Plumb stressed that he was not singling out the Potter development, and would not necessarily seek to scrap the law outright. But he said he was concerned that the law had “unintended consequences” that make it too easy for large projects to move forward.

Another early step, he said, would be to hold a public forum to solicit ideas for a village comprehensive plan. He said Larocca had criticized former Mayor Kathleen Mulcahy over her failure to move forward with a master plan, but then failed to follow through himself.

“For three board sessions in a row, when it comes to my turn, I’ve said I’m hoping to schedule a forum — and I’ve said it to him five times in private — but he refuses to set a date,” said Plumb, whom the mayor assigned as liaison to the planning process at last July’s organizational meeting.

Plumb said he had shared his decision with fellow trustees, Aidan Corish, Tom Gardella and Ed Haye.

Corish, who like Plumb has at times clashed publicly with Larocca, was quick to offer his endorsement. “I think he’ll be a great mayor,” Corish said. “He’s principled, courageous and a great listener.”

Corish added that Plumb was the only member of the Zoning Board of Appeals to vote against the three widely derided waterfront condos being constructed by Jay Bialsky, a position, he said, that showed his willingness to stand up for what he thought was right.

“I think Bob will be a great consensus-building mayor,” he added. “And that is something the village really needs.”

In 2020, Larocca edged incumbent Kathleen Mulcahy in a bitter campaign that centered on Mulcahy’s effort to implement a waterfront overlay district in the central village and her perceived favoritism toward Bay Street Theater, which had announced plans to build a new theater in the Water Street Shops building next to John Steinbeck Waterfront Park.

Both Corish and Plumb backed Mulcahy in that race, and it appeared that Larocca tried to freeze Plumb out at his initial organizational meeting by not appointing him to any of the liaison assignments typically given to board members. He later assigned Plumb to work with Haye on affordable housing before asking him to work on planning goals for the current year. But in both cases, Plumb said the mayor ignored his input.

Plumb, who has lived in the village for 40 years, is a retired contractor who continues to work part time as liaison between owners, architects and builders in residential construction projects.