Appeals court: Saltaire can hold meetings outside village

The Village of Saltaire can once again hold public board meetings in Manhattan - some 60 miles away from its Village Hall on Fire Island - or anywhere else, a state appellate court has ruled.

The decision overturns a ruling by State Supreme Court Judge Peter Fox Cohalan, who last year rebuked village officials for holding meetings in a conference room of a Manhattan law firm where former Mayor Scott Rosenblum is a partner. The village offered a teleconference link to a Saltaire meeting room.

The Appellate Division of the State Supreme Court, noting that Saltaire is inaccessible by car and has limited winter ferry service, found that while state law once required villages to hold official meetings within their borders, that requirement was removed when the State Legislature revised the law in 1972.

The court also noted that state law now permits public meetings to be held through videoconferencing.

"The appellate court made the right decision and supported the attempts of the village to maximize the participation of village residents in village meetings," Saltaire Mayor Robert Cox III said Friday in a phone interview from his Garden City home. "We certainly will explore holding meetings outside the village when circumstances warrant."

Last year, Victoria Petersen and her husband, Noel Feustel, who own homes in Bayport and Saltaire, sued the village.

Petersen, who is registered to vote in Saltaire, said when she attended a Saltaire board meeting at the law firm at 1177 Avenue of the Americas, she felt intimidated by the building's private security guards, who she said asked her to present identification and sign a registration sheet, then escorted her to the meeting.

Feustel said Friday he would encourage state legislators to "close the loophole" allowing meetings outside the village.

"I think this is just a mistake in the law when they rewrote it," he said. "They never imagined that a community would have the chutzpah to meet 60 miles away."

Saltaire is a seasonal community with about 400 homes and 43 year-round residents, according to the 2000 Census.