John Aldred, an incumbent who lives in East Hampton, is running for a second term as East Hampton Town trustee. A former director of the town shellfish hatchery, he has worked much of the past 45 years on and around the water, including as a lifeguard. He was a research assistant in the ichthyology department at the New York Ocean Science Lab in Montauk in 1974, and then a fisheries biologist at Multi-Aquaculture Systems, the fish farm at Promised Land, Amagansett. He was an environmental analyst with the town’s Natural Resources Department, and founded the shellfish hatchery in 1989, working as the director of the program until he retired in 2010.
“One reason I decided to run is that I could see that the board had taken a different direction than I had known the trustees to take since the time I had known the trustees,” he said of his decision to run two years ago. He said the trustees have engaged the community, the town, and other agencies in ways it had not in the past. “The trustees in the past had felt they predated everything and could make their own decisions without engaging with other entities.” By being more communicative, the board has gained more relevance, he said.
Mr. Aldred said he has enjoyed working with the State Department of Environmental Conservation on water quality testing and trying to get parts of Accabonac and Three Mile Harbors opened to shellfishing; they had been closed in the past. He has also worked with Natural Resources and Suffolk County’s vector control division on mosquito control, and the Cornell Cooperative Extension on a horseshoe crab monitoring program. He feels that his work experience and familiarity with those agencies is useful to the trustees. “I don’t really have an agenda,” he said, adding that he believes he has a balanced view on various issues.
He decided to seek re-election to continue his work, especially in the midst of the South Fork Wind Farm project. He feels he would be “shortchanging the public” to leave, and for someone new to have to “figure it out all over again.”
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