STUDENTS

The Chauffeur Driving the Antique Cadillac
Village Mayor Turns Around Long Island Seaport Community

THREE THOUSAND MILES AWAY FROM GREENPORT, New York, a seaport community of 2,100 residents on Long Island’s North Fork, headlines in the London Daily Mirror in October 1994 blasted the village’s police force: “The World’s Worst Police.” According to the story in the Mirror, the police force made “the silent cinema’s bungling Keystone Kops look like ‘polished professionals.’”

One police officer had done drugs on duty, another was caught having sex with his girlfriend while on the clock, and it became clear that the police chief was unable to supervise the department. A grand jury called for the abolishment of the nine-member police force and the transfer of those responsibilities to the nearby Southold Police Department, a decision that would free up $400,000 in funds for the village.

Dave Kapell MPA 2003, mayor of Greenport since 1994, was at his niece’s birthday party in Brooklyn when he found out that a BBC reporter was trying to track him down. “I had no idea that story had the potential for resonance,” he says.

Kapell, who had supported the abolishment of the police department, says “I literally walked the village with the London Daily Mirror article. It was a major, major weapon in the success of that fight [to abolish the police force]. As nasty a publication as that is, what was good was it was like holding a mirror up to everybody’s face here from 3,000 miles away.”

It’s hard to understand how Greenport put this incident in its past, but it has. Since the 1994 headlines, Kapell, who calls himself “the chauffeur driving the antique Cadillac” of the village, has helped this square-mile town come into its own. With the abolishment of the police force came a 65 to 70 percent reduction in taxes. And the money Greenport cut out of its budget allowed the village to begin considering spending on repaving streets, repairing sidewalks, and social programs.

What helped inform Kapell, a long-time realtor in the area, about ways to invest in Greenport was a conversation he had with some elementary school students during a program called “Open Schools,” which brought in public- and private-sector professionals from the community to interact with students.

Asked to speak about how the village board passed laws, Kapell saw quickly — if for no other reason than the kids’ eyes glazed over — that this material clearly wasn’t going to fly with these first, second, and third graders, so he took a different tack and asked the kids to tell him what they wanted to happen in the village.

“To the one,” says Kapell, “they wanted an ice skating rink, a bowling alley, an indoor swimming pool, and a park for skating. Those were the four top priorities, and it hit me like a ton of bricks. These are things I had as a kid. These are things that kids deserve.”

Kapell, who prefers to don Panama hats and baseball caps with “Dave” imprinted on the front, continues to keep in mind the needs of children as he builds on past success in his village. Recently re-elected, he has acquired a blighted waterfront property in the central business district for improvement as a park, an antique carousel, a boardwalk, an amphitheater, an ice rink, a camera obscura, and a municipal marina.

Looking back now, Kapell, whose first memories of Harvard Square were as a performer playing bass guitar in Club Passim in the mid-1970s, views the police abolishment as a watershed event. “It showed that the political process in the village can work. It hadn’t been working for a long time. It also demonstrated that the community could come together around a critical issue and use the electoral process to move ahead.” — AC