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Longtime ZBA member Kevin Guidera in his Southampton Village home. DANA SHAW
The Southampton Village Board voted unanimously on Thursday, July 8, to approve Mayor Jesse Warren’s appointment of Joyce Giuffra to the Zoning Board of Appeals, replacing Kevin Guidera, a 36-year ZBA member.
If it was up to Mr. Guidera, he would still be on the ZBA. He only learned that his time was up the day after the vote took place. He said that Mr. Warren asked him to come into his office on Friday, and that’s when he was informed. He told the mayor of his desire to remain on the board, he said, but understands the mayor is going to appoint his own people.
“To the victor goes the spoils,” Mr. Guidera said on Saturday.
He noted that he was first appointed by then-Mayor Bill Hattrick in 1985 and was reappointed by a host of mayors since then. “If I didn’t enjoy it, I would have left long ago,” he said.
There remains one vacancy on the five-member board: Long-time member Dan Guzewicz sold his house in the village last month and resigned with two years left in his five-year term.
Mr. Guzewicz said on Friday that the village now has a “young ZBA” with no longtime members to learn from. “The longer you’re on it, the more experience you have, the better you are at it,” he said.
He was a member for about a quarter century.
“For 25 years, it was a good board,” he said. “Right now, I think the board has gotten weaker because of lack of experience.”
Regarding Mr. Guidera and his ability to serve, Mr. Guzewicz said: “Kevin’s really sharp. He knows his business.”
Mr. Guidera, who turned 87 years old on Tuesday, is also a former ZBA chairman. He held the chairmanship from 2006 to 2018. His last appointment to the board was in 2019, when Mr. Warren appointed him to serve out the last two years of an unexpired term rather than giving him a full five-year term.
Mr. Warren said Monday that he thanks Mr. Guidera for his more than three and a half decades of service. As for filling Mr. Guzewicz’s unexpired term, he said the Village Board is still interviewing applicants.
The mayor said he chose Ms. Giuffra for her history of public service. “She has a strong resume,” he said.
Ms. Giuffra was the press secretary for Bob Dole when he was the U.S. Senate majority leader, and she was the director of media affairs on his 1996 presidential campaign. After that campaign, she continued to work for his private office and was the director of communications for the World War II Memorial Campaign, which Mr. Dole chaired. She said Monday that she helped usher the memorial through the approval process before the National Capital Planning Commission and the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts.
Ms. Giuffra is originally from Kansas and has been a New York State resident for 23 years. She and her husband, attorney Robert Giuffra, have had a home in Southampton for 11 years and also have a home in New York City. She said she looks forward to the opportunity to be of service in Southampton Village and that she will bring an open-minded perspective and an attitude of civility to the process. “That’s something that every resident of the village is entitled to,” she said.
The Giuffras sued the ZBA in 2018 over the board’s approval of a wetlands permit for the renovation and expansion of Mocomanto, an 1882 Victorian estate fronting Lake Agawam. Ultimately, the homeowner agreed to reduce the size of the planned expansion.
According to the New York State Board of Elections, in March, Ms. Giuffra donated $4,400, the legal maximum, to Mr. Warren’s 2021 mayoral campaign committee, One Community for Southampton. Mr. Giuffra donated $4,400 in January 2020.
The identities of Mr. Warren’s donors and the dollar amounts are available on the Board of Elections campaign finance website since he has voluntarily disclosed the information to the state — something village candidates are not required to do.
