This year’s budget vote and trustee election will be held on Thursday, September 25, 2025, from 2:00 pm to 8:00 pm at the John Jermain Memorial Library.
Unable to vote in person on September 25? Please consider voting by absentee ballot.
Registered voters residing within the Sag Harbor Union Free School District may obtain an application for an absentee ballot beginning August 1, 2025 during school business hours from the Sag Harbor School District Clerk, 200 Jermain Avenue, Sag Harbor, or from the Director of John Jermain Library between the hours of 10:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. Absentee Ballot applications are also available for download here in Spanish and English.
Completed applications must be received by the District Clerk by September 18, 2025 if the ballot is to be mailed to the voter, or by September 24, 2025, if the ballot is to be delivered personally to the voter. Absentee ballots must be received by the District Clerk no later than 5:00 p.m., prevailing time, on Thursday, September 25, 2025.
Budget Information & Candidate Statements:
Registered voters in the Sag Harbor Union Free School District will vote on the proposed 2026 budget as well as elect three trustees to fill three (3) at-large seats, each with a three-year term commencing January 1, 2026, and expiring December 31, 2028.
Proposition:
Shall the Board of Education of the Sag Harbor Union Free School District be authorized to appropriate funds in the amount of THREE MILLION FOUR HUNDRED NINETY-ONE THOUSAND TWO HUNDRED AND SIXTY-TWO and 00/100 ($3,491,262.00) DOLLARS to be raised by a levy of a tax upon the taxable real property within the Sag Harbor Union Free School District’s boundaries.”
And
To elect three trustees, to fill three (3) at-large seats each with a three-year term commencing January 1, 2026 and expiring December 31, 2028.
Our budget statement can be found on pages 2-3 in our Autumn Newsletter or here in English and Spanish.
To learn more about these candidates and the Library’s proposed budget, we encourage you to read their candidate statements below and to attend the budget hearing and a trustee candidate forum on Wednesday, September 17, 2025, from 5:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m.
Four candidates are on the ballot to fill three at-large seats.
Candidate Statements:
(listed alphabetically)
Laurie Gibbs Harris
Laurie has been spending her summers in Sag Harbor for over 65 years. She remembers with fondness riding her bike with her sister to the library as a child and as a teenager. In the spring of 2022, she realized her lifelong dream of living by the sea, when she moved from San Francisco to her home in Sag Harbor.
Laurie spent more than 30 years in the San Francisco Bay Area working in finance. She has extensive experience in commercial real estate lending and portfolio management, affordable housing development and small business lending. Laurie has held roles as a lender and relationship manager in Northwestern Mutual’s Real Estate Investment division, Travelers Insurance Company’s Real Estate Investment department, Equitable Life Insurance Company’s Real Estate Investment department, US Bank’s Commercial Lending division, Community Vision’s REAL People’s Fund and with Community Housing Development Corp., an affordable housing developer.
During her time in San Francisco she served on the board of directors of Working Solutions, a small business micro loan fund for nine years. In this role she actively raised new lending capital, engaged in a broad range of governance issues including succession planning, merger evaluation and program policy implementation. Her favorite part of her engagement with Working Solutions was mentoring entrepreneurs. She served on the board of directors for Yerba Buena Center for the Arts for nine years, where she established Corporate Council to increase funding from and engagement with San Francisco based corporations such as Whole Foods and Charles Schwab. Laurie also severed on the board of directors of NorCal FDIC, the State of California small business loan guarantee program.
Laurie holds a BA in economics from Columbia University and an MBA in finance and real estate from The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.
Since moving to Sag Harbor, Laurie has taken on the role of chairman for her HOA’s hospitality committee and she currently serves on the board of directors for the Horticulture Association of the Hamptons. She is an avid hiker, beach bum, textiles collector and an intrepid traveler. Laurie has traveled throughout Mexico, Europe, Ghana, South Africa, Mozambique, Turkey, Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand and India. She currently participates in three book clubs, is in her second year of sailing classes at Breakwater Sailing Center and is learning Mahjong.
Robyn Obler:
Robyn Obler grew up in Brooklyn and received her BA from Brooklyn College in anthropology. In between college and graduate school, she pursued a career in dance and performed in various theaters and studio in NYC. She received an M.A. in anthropology from CUNY Graduate School and taught at several colleges in the CUNY system as well as the United Nations School. Thirty-three years ago, Robyn and her family moved to Sag Harbor where her children attended the local schools and she served as Vice President for the PTA. She taught several courses at Southampton College, worked at a local bookstore and taught Pilates in a local Sag Harbor studio. More recently Robyn worked as a researcher for several Native American groups, traversing the country numerous times to do research at various archives, universities, libraries, government and religious organizations. The data collected was used by Robyn and her associate to write reports for the Native tribes to address issues of tribal identity and recognition, membership and historical connections to specific pieces of land. Robyn and her family have had close ties with the John Jermain Library over the years. Robyn has been in an ongoing book club for over ten years at the library, she has spent many hours with her grandson at library programs and her daughter worked at the library before leaving for graduate school in library science. During Robyn’s first year as a Board of Trustee for the John Jermain library she served as secretary. Currently Robyn is also a volunteer at the local Food Pantry.
Elliott Sroka
JJML’s current President is now completing his first term as a Trustee, having served as Treasurer in 2023 and 2024. Throughout his tenure, Elliott has taken an active role in overseeing the Library’s finances, with particular focus on asset management and investment strategy. Strong growth in the Library’s reserves has helped to secure a balanced annual budget and expanded programming. They have allowed Executive Director Kelly Harris to take on significant capital improvements, including the dramatic, well-received redesign of the Children’s and Teen spaces—at a cost of more than half a million dollars—without impacting the Library’s bottom line. Most critically, they have made it feasible for the Library to self-fund the replacement of its HVAC system this fall (at a cost approaching $2M) without seeking additional tax levies.
Increasingly, in face of new challenges to libraries nationally, Elliott has shifted his focus towards fundraising and advocacy. In a second term, he would work closely with the Executive Director and fellow Trustees to protect freedom of expression and access to information for writers and readers alike, and to grow the Library’s reserve fund to meet future needs.
Elliott and his wife Karen are active JJML patrons, especially since their retirement in 2015. A Stanford PhD in Drama and Humanities, Elliott had a distinguished career in education and non-profit arts and culture, serving 29 years as Executive Director of Tilles Center, Long Island’s premier arts presenter on the LIU/CW Post Campus. He brought a wealth of leadership experience and skills to the Library, and hopes to continue to serve its patrons and the Sag Harbor taxpayers in a second term.
Paula Wagner
Paula has owned a house in Sag Harbor for 26 years, living here full-time for the past nine years. Before then she lived in Brooklyn, Paraguay, California and Boston. Each location she lived in presented different opportunities for personal and career development. One thread that is a constant throughout her life, though, has been the mantra “Give back to your community”, which she has done with energy and gratitude.
Paula graduated from University of California, Berkeley with a degree in Anthropology. While at the University, she pursued her skills and interest in photography working at scientific photography and museum photography on the campus. After graduating Paula worked as a project manager at Levi Strauss & Company for a few years. Not finding corporate life interesting or fulfilling, she applied for a volunteer in the Peace Corps and was sent to a small compania (rural farming community) in Paraguay, South America. There she worked with the Health and Sanitation Department and the local population promoting vegetable gardens, latrines, safe well protection, and construction of lorena stoves. Paula believes that she learned more from the people she encountered than what she was sent there to teach!
Upon returning to the United States, the experience in Paraguay prompted Paula to apply to Teachers’ College at Columbia University to pursue the field of teaching. She received a Masters Degree in Social Science Education and worked for fifteen years in the New York City public school system teaching American history, World history and other social sciences. While teaching, Paula returned to academia and earned a certificate in Archives and Public History at New York University. She has been working and volunteering her skills and time as an archivist to various individuals and non-profits for the past 12 years.
Paula’s volunteer efforts have spanned from starting, with a small group, a ‘free university’ for blue collar workers in the Boston area; to planting trees and serving as an appointee on the Berkeley Energy Commission in California; to membership on the Coop Board where she lived in Brooklyn.
In Sag Harbor Paula volunteered at the Eastville Community Historical Society and was a member of the Sag Harbor Historical Society Board of Trustees applying her archive background to those organizations. She is currently a Board member of the Bridgehampton Association and volunteer at their Book Bay bookstore. Paula has a long time connection with the library personally and through her family. Her parents Paul and Jeanette Wagner generously donated funds and guidance for the renovation of the John Jermain Library and sponsor writing workshops for Teen writers. Books, learning, libraries, community are all important themes in Paula’s life.