Ben Dollinger is serving his first term on the trustee board, and Covid-19 has made it a challenging one, he said, with most work done remotely. “It definitely has been a bit of a challenge to not have tutelage firsthand from the older guys.”
He is on the trustees’ education committee. With his colleagues, “we were able to do a few in-person school visits to the community, but that got squashed pretty quickly” with the pandemic’s arrival. He and his colleagues “are making a push to get into school buildings more frequently, get in front of more classrooms, and get more outreach going. That’s definitely one of the things we’re making a push for after the election, as soon as it’s safe to.”
An East Hampton High School graduate, Mr. Dollinger wants to bolster the trustees’ Rysam Fund, which awards money to local students for college tuition. “It’s been rewarding seeing applicants and their stories, essays, and accomplishments.”
Of the trustees’ accomplishments, “cleaning up Georgica Pond is definitely a big one,” he said. “There are a lot of things we can learn from what we do in that pond to help other bodies of water that are struggling.”
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