Bridget Fleming Touts Accomplishments In Reelection Bid

November is a particularly significant month for Democratic Southampton Town Councilwoman Bridget Fleming: She will hit the 10-year mark of her residency on the East End. She’s also vying for a chance to return to the Town Board for the next four years.

Touting a list of legislative achievements in her approximately 19 months on the Town Board—she won a special election for the seat vacated by Supervisor Anna Throne-Holst in March 2010—Ms. Fleming, 51, of Noyac, said she’s still got more work to do. For that reason, she’s hoping to be reelected and see her running mate, Independence Party member Brad Bender, elected to the board on Election Day, this Tuesday, November 8. The pair are running against Republican challengers Christine Preston Scalera and Bill Hughes.

Ms. Fleming, who has also been endorsed by the Working Families Party, is seeking her first full four-year term on the board, which comes with an annual salary of $60,000.

Last week, Ms. Fleming offered her opinions and ideas on some of the key issues facing Southampton Town, including how to improve the area’s water quality and stimulate the local economy, while also taking a balanced approach to reducing staffing levels at Town Hall.

“I think that I have been really effective in responding to community concerns and bringing forward a good government agenda,” Ms. Fleming said, explaining why she is running for a second term. “But I feel as though there’s a lot more to accomplish. I also really love the job.”

In her time on the Town Board, Ms. Fleming said she has accomplished a lot. One of her crowning achievements, she said, was spearheading the Farm Fresh Food Market in Flanders. The weekly farmers market has provided much-needed access to fresh food for residents of Flanders, Riverside and Northampton. “That was a very successful example of neighbor helping neighbor in very tough times,” she said.

She also said she’s proud of instituting a thorough vetting process for hiring employees at Town Hall, particularly with Christine Fetten, the head of the town’s Municipal Works Department. It was a job search that included publicly interviewing candidates for the position. The search was led by both Ms. Fleming and Republican Town Councilman Chris Nuzzi. She said some of her colleagues, whom she declined to identify, were suggesting the search should be rushed, but she said she stood her ground.

“It takes a certain amount of strength to kind of do what you think is right even if you hear people on the inside say otherwise,” she said. “So I’m very proud of that.”

A balanced approach to reducing staffing levels at Town Hall is necessary, Ms. Fleming said. The councilwoman has long voiced concern over the bare-bones staffing levels in some departments at Town Hall, particularly in the town comptroller’s office and in the Code Enforcement Department. Nevertheless, she said she supports Ms. Throne-Holst’s $80.2 million budget, which calls for 29 staff reductions, a combination of layoffs and retirements, and depends on the forced retirement of six senior police officers.

“I think that it depends on where you’re looking,” Ms. Fleming said. “But I think there’s a lot of room in our current government to look, without regard to political affiliation, at the staffing and reorganization and introduce efficiencies in a way that Anna, I think, has done well.”

With regard to the forced retirements in the Town Police Department, Ms. Fleming said she and Town Police Chief William Wilson Jr. support them. “I support the approach of the chief of police to reduce the administrative staff in favor of cops in cars,” she said. “At the same time, though, I would love for the unions to come forward with concessions that would keep us from having to ask people to involuntarily leave the service.”

The issue of water quality has gained heightened prominence in recent years, especially in Southampton Town, where outdated septic systems have been blamed for polluting the region’s waterways. Ms. Fleming said she and members the town’s Sustainable Southampton Green Advisory Committee are working on pushing the Suffolk County Department of Health to approve new septic technologies—systems that she said builders and homeowners are ready to use but haven’t yet been ratified by the county. “We are a water-based community and there is a lot of good technology out there that we’ve got to be able to take advantage of,” she said.

Ms. Fleming also said she’s revived the effort to execute the town’s Waterfront Protection Program, which will eventually produce a list of recommendations to improve impaired waterways. Also, Ms. Fleming said she and Town Councilwoman Nancy Graboski are working together on reforming the town’s planning regulations by creating watershed protection overlay districts, a zoning designation which will help delineate which parts of town have an impact on water quality. The next step would be to determine what uses should be allowed there, she said.

Ms. Fleming, an attorney with a practice in Sag Harbor, lives in Noyac with her husband, Bob Agoglia, and her 9-year-old son, Jai.