Civic-minded sisters fixtures at Hempstead meetings

It's the start of another Town of North Hempstead night board meeting and the "M&M sisters" - as Marianna Wohlgemuth and Marietta Di Camillo are known around town hall - have assumed their usual seats, side-by-side in the front row.

The room fills up and then the crowd dwindles down as community members take to the podium to tell the board what's on their mind and then leave. By the end of the night, Wohlgemuth and Di Camillo are two of only three left.

Town supervisors and council members have come and gone over the years but Wohlgemuth and Di Camillo have been fixtures at the meetings since the early 1990s, at times earning the ire of town officials for being tenacious citizens but also garnering their respect as civic-minded residents.

They take to the microphone to question anything that has to do with New Hyde Park, where they live six blocks apart, and any issue that piques their interest. They scour agendas, paying particular attention to "added starters," items that are tacked on at the last minute. "Those you really gotta watch," Wohlgemuth, 60, said. "And budget hearings - that's the highlight of our year."

The sisters acknowledge that they may get on town officials' nerves. "They may cringe when they see us," Di Camillo, 55, said. "But they respect us."

May Newburger, North Hempstead supervisor from 1994 to 2003, recalled that when she saw the sisters in the audience, she braced for a heated discussion. "They gave us grief. Even if it was difficult to listen to sometimes, you had to admire their ability to present their views in an intelligent way," she said.

"The community should thank them," Newburger added. "They really spoke for the community."

Newburger's praise comes as a surprise to Wohlgemuth, who said Newburger's the politician they've probably annoyed the most. Wohlgemuth still feels bad about offending Newburger by likening her to a "potted plant" to a Newsday reporter in 1999.

While board members nicknamed the duo the "Terrible Twins," Newburger said she respected them for how well they researched their topics.

The sisters say their zeal for confronting officialdom started with an outrageous water bill in 1990.

"When I opened the bill, I almost passed out," recalled Marietta Di Camillo.

The bill was $280 for three months. They gathered thousands of signatures, met with politicians in Albany and eventually managed to drive water rates down. Their efforts were instrumental in forming the Water Authority of Western Nassau County, which took over Jamaica Water.

The sisters say they've become calmer as they've aged, but that their determination hasn't eased, even with families and careers - Wohlgemuth runs a home day-care and Di Camillo is chief financial officer for the Major League Baseball Players Association.

They credit their late mother, Lillian Di Camillo, for their civic activism. The sisters were young girls when their mother's bus stop in Jackson Heights, Queens, was moved to the bottom of a hill. Their mother organized a letter-writing campaign and got the city to move the stop back.

They took turns at the microphone throughout Tuesday night's board meeting, questioning topics including a parking lot in Port Washington, the moving of a cell tower in New Hyde Park and donations to the town's animal shelter.

"Exactly what are you voting on?" Di Camillo stood to ask just as the board was set to quickly approve holding a future hearing about the parking issue. When she sat down, she seemed to have more to say and interjected from her seat.

Councilman Fred Pollack reminded her that she needed to make comments at the podium. "You've been here longer than I have," he said with a laugh.