Incumbents Arresta, McLoughlin Are On Ballot, Along With Former Trustees Allan, Manger, In Southampton Village

Residents of Southampton Village will be asked to choose two candidates for two seats on the Village Board from among four in the running when they head to the polls on Friday, June 17.

Incumbent Deputy Mayor Gina Arresta and incumbent board member Joe McLoughlin are on the ballot, along with challengers Kimberly Allan and William Manger Jr., both of whom have previously served as village trustees.

Arresta has touted how, during her term, the village had lowered taxes for residents, reduced waste, cleaned up the environment and worked to preserve the historic character of the village.

The deputy mayor is the liaison to the department of public works, and in that capacity helped create a downtown crew to keep the village business area clean, facilitated paving the parking lot behind Citarella as well as other roads, helped open Moses Park, and expanded outdoor dining. She has also been involved in several environment initiatives in the village.

Arresta had lived in the village for more than 30 years.

McLoughlin is a lifelong Southampton Village resident and Southampton High School graduate. He graduated from Iona College in 2013. Serving as a trustee is a family tradition, as his father served as a trustee from 1999 to 2003 under Mayor Joseph Romanosky.

During his first term, McLoughlin served as liaison to the police department and fire department and reviewed building department operations.

McLoughlin is frequently the lone dissenting voice on a wide range of issues when it comes to village politics. He and Arresta ran together on the same ticket the first time around, but are not this time. Instead, Arresta and Manger have aligned their campaigns, while Allan and McLoughlin are running independently.

Allan, who describes herself as a “truly independent voice,” was appointed by then-Mayor Michael Irving to fill a board vacancy in 2017 and elected in 2018 to a two-year term. Current Mayor Jesse Warren was in his first year as mayor in Allan’s final year. She lost a bid for reelection in 2020.

Allan moved to the village when she was a teenager, but worked predominantly in New York for most of her career, as a senior vice president and executive at three Fortune 500 companies, with a specialty in financial services. Her focus is on quality of life issues — she helped usher in the first gas-powered leafblower restrictions during her previous term as trustee — and has advocated for more transparency when it comes to budgeting and finances.

Manger was first elected as a village trustee in 1997, under the Doug Murtha administration, and he was reelected in 1999, when Romanosky was mayor. He did not run again in 2001, going to work for the Transportation Department in Washington, D.C.

Manger returned to Southampton Village last year after running the Paycheck Protection Program, which helped small businesses and nonprofits affected by the pandemic.

He was appointed as the chair for the Steering Committee to update the village’s Comprehensive Master Plan, which was last updated in 2000, also under his guidance. He said ensuring that the recommendations are implemented once the plan is complete was a big motivating factor in running for trustee again.

The vote is set for Friday, June 17, from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. at the Southampton Cultural Center on Pond Lane.