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Robby Stein
Village Trustee.
With nearly three terms on the Sag Harbor Village Board under his belt, and a firm grasp of many issues, Dr. Robby Stein says he believes he has what it takes to lead the waterfront village as mayor.
Dr. Stein, who will face off against Deputy Mayor Sandra Schroeder in Tuesday’s vote, said the rapid pace of development over the last year has plagued Sag Harbor to a point where it has threatened its character. He said as mayor he would work to revise the zoning code to better protect historic homes and make it harder to replace them with oversized mini-mansions.
Just this week, village officials began discussing the possibility of imposing a three-month building moratorium while they can make changes to the code. The moratorium would halt construction of new homes of more than 3,000 square feet, along with renovations that would expand a house by more than 50 percent.
Dr. Stein said he strongly supports a moratorium. He noted that an opportunity to change the code came up five years ago, at the beginning of his tenure on the Village Board, but that officials never followed through.
“Right now, we’re paying the price for it,” he said. “The most immediate thing we have to do is address the over-building.”
He said the authority of regulatory boards, such as the Board of Historic Preservation and Architectural Review and the Zoning Board of Appeals, also needs to be strengthened. Mr. Stein said members of the boards, who serve as volunteers, need to learn more about such matters such as historic preservation, that a historic preservationist should be retained by the village to attend ARB and ZBA meetings, and that those meetings should be videotaped and televised.
Creating some kind of affordable housing in the village also would be on Dr. Stein’s agenda. He pointed out that Sag Harbor once was considered a place for working-class citizens to live in the Hamptons. “There’s no affordable housing. That reflects back in other areas. It all folds in,” he said. “Affordable housing and enabling people to remain in their homes without skyrocketing taxes need to be addressed in a way that makes sense. We need to figure out how to do that.”
The candidate listed water quality as another issue close to his heart. Citing the recent bunker die-off near the Peconic River and Flanders Bay, which is suspected to be linked to excessive nitrogen levels, Dr. Stein said funds from the village’s partnership with the Peconic Estuary Program could help tackle nitrogen levels in Sag Harbor’s waterways. That would also mean monitoring how nitrogen ends up in the water in the first place.
Dr. Stein also said he would work to ensure that not all of Sag Harbor’s waterfront property succumbs to development. Creating a waterfront park would be a top priority for Dr. Stein, who envisions it going on a portion of land under the Lance Corporal Jordan C. Haerter Veterans Memorial Bridge.
“This is a maritime harbor,” he said, noting that the Local Waterfront Revitalization Plan calls for such uses as a park. “We need to make sure it’s abided by,” he said.
Dr. Stein also said he would make tweaks to how the village is run day to day, including how it shares information with the community. He would like to see revisions to the website and meeting schedule, and he added that it would be productive for the Village Board to hold a work session at least once a month.
Dr. Stein said he would make sure that village operations are reorganized and restructured to run more smoothly.
“It’s going to be fast and furious hard work in the first year,” he said. “We have to stop the patchworking and have a whole picture.”
A child psychologist with a practice on Bridge Street, Dr. Stein lives on Princeton Road with his wife, Alexandra McNear. He has a stepdaughter, Vesna Bozic.
He is running for mayor as a member of the Windmill Party and will be joined on Tuesday’s ballot by Trustees Ed Deyermond and Ken O’Donnell, whose terms expire this year. They are both running unopposed for additional two-year terms.
Alyssa Melillo on Jun 9, 2015