Meet Our Candidate

Abigail Field

Candidate for Southold Town Clerk

Email: abigail@southoldforward.com

Why I am Running

As Town Clerk, I can make it easier for residents and businesses to find the information they need, proactively keep the public informed about what’s happening in Town Hall, and support everyone else in Town hall with well-organized and accessible information.

The Job

The Town Clerk's Office is responsible for keeping the records of the Town:  what Town government has done, is doing, and plans to do; all vital records; and generally, the documents, forms, and information Southold residents need.

The Town Clerk’s office is often the public’s first point of contact with Town government, and has a key role to play in making the government accessible, transparent, and efficient.

My Qualifications

As a part-time attorney for over 20 years, I understand recordkeeping—how to do it, why to do it, when to do it. As Recording Secretary for the Mattituck Park District, I learned about municipal recordkeeping. As a consultant to the Mattituck Park District, I improved municipal recordkeeping. Ask me about the Resolution Index.

My consulting work for the District also involved the monthly newsletter that began last January. The newsletter reflects the District’s (and my) commitment to ensuring taxpayers know what their government is doing. As Southold Town Clerk, I am confident I will find ways to express that commitment, making Southold government more transparent.

Check me out on LinkedIn.  You’ll see my years analyzing state election law for the Voting Rights Lab, and my years persuading the New Jersey government to do good policy.  Like my law practice, these jobs involve effectively organizing and communicating information, critical skills for the Southold Town Clerk.

You’ll also see my work for the North Fork Promotion Council nearly a decade ago, which gave me a deep understanding of some of the many ways Southold is a special, healthy community: good, well-cared for land and waters; vibrant art and history institutions; and small business-supporting Chambers of Commerce and the Greenport BID.

Over time I’ve also learned to value other markers of our community’s health: the Civics, Lions, Rotary, CAST and the VFW; our schools, libraries, and volunteer fire departments; and our effective environmental organizations.

Helping the Southold Town Clerk’s office be as healthy as our community, and supporting our community’s health through the Clerk’s office, is another way of expressing why I want to serve Southold as Its Clerk.

I’ve always participated in our democracy. A few examples from before I came to Southold: I marched in the NAACP’s powerful Silent March; did political satire with Billionaires for Bush, and co-edited the viral 13 Myths About War in Iraq.

Since moving to Cutchogue to start our children in school, I’ve participated in Town Board hearings and meetings and written many letters to the editor (most recently Chaotic Firings and Defending the Constitution). I’ve also moderated two political debates, one for the League of Women Voters on Shelter Island before I moved here, and one at the Jamesport Meeting House last Spring.

For the past five years I’ve worked the polls at Cutchogue East, co-running the place with Bob Bittner for the last two or three. Like poll working (and my Park District work) the Southold Town Clerk job is not a policy-making job; it is an operational job, and how well it is done matters to the public’s experience of government. It’s a true public service position.

If you elect me in November, I will bring a strong work ethic and civic commitment to the Clerk’s office. I will find opportunities to make it easier for residents and businesses to find information and access government. I’ll also proactively inform you about what is happening in Town Hall.

Vote FIELD for Southold Town Clerk this November.

My deepest local roots are on Shelter Island; I was a summer person starting with my first birthday, and I married a Shelter Islander. My Greenport roots are deep too. The Greenport July 4th Carnival was my summer fun, not the Strawberry Festival.

The rest of Southold I really got to know after we moved to Cutchogue from Shelter Island, to send our children to school and plant new roots. (We’d moved to the island shortly after our daughter was born.) She graduates Mattituck this spring, and heads to Hunter this fall; our son will be a Mattituck sophomore then.

I live on Main Road, across from the Cutchogue Village Green. If you see me out front tending my roses in my amateur way, please walk up and say hi. (Don’t honk, I won’t realize you mean me and won’t see you.)