Letters

It has been an honor, an education and one of the great pleasures of my life to serve the people of Sag Harbor for the past four years. We share a unique and beautiful home in one of the oldest and most authentically preserved villages in the United States. I look forward to serving a third and final term, should the good people of the village see fit to reelect me.

This is a very pivotal time for Sag Harbor — we are, without doubt, under siege by some very monied interests. Having served almost four years on the Village Board, I have the knowledge, experience and fortitude to help defend the village from this onslaught.

Responding will be a marathon, not a sprint, and requires recognition that Bay Street Theater is important to the fabric and prosperity of our village. However, we need to be a village with a theater, and not the opposite.

If reelected, I hope to retain the liaison oversight of village grant funding and the sewage treatment plant. We have some significant projects on the horizon: a new firehouse and ambulance barn, expanding the sewer service areas, developing John Steinbeck Waterfront Park and developing a village master plan.

Over the past four years, as liaison to village grant writing, I have overseen grant applications that have resulted in the award of almost $2 million to the village, with a further $500,000 in the pipeline.

I would like to complete the task of sewering the two most polluting neighborhoods in the village. We have almost completed the Sag Harbor sewer master plan. Areas of immediate concern have been identified and I am applying for grant funding to execute the engineering drawings and details to have a genuine shovel ready project by the end of 2021.

As I transition the execution of the sewer master plan to the hands of the professionals, I want to pivot to Havens Beach. Over the years, Dr. Christopher Gobler’s testing has demonstrated that after heavy rains the bacteria count in the outflow from the “dreen” at Havens is seriously elevated. The current installation of filtering sponges brings some relief but is not a holistic solution. We need to reduce the amount of water that reaches Havens in the first place and, through the reintroduction of wetlands, better treat the water that does. I don’t expect this to be easy or quick. But nothing worthwhile ever is. Remember, as the water goes so goes our village.

Thank you for the past four years, I hope that you will vote for me one more time, because, as I like to say, everything is important.

Aidan Corish

Sag Harbor