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Riverhead Town Board meeting with coordinator candidates

NEWS-REVIEW FILE PHOTO | Riverhead Town Hall on Howell Avenue.
NEWS-REVIEW FILE PHOTO | Riverhead Town Hall on Howell Avenue.

The Riverhead Town Board is meeting in a closed-door executive session today to interview candidates seeking to fill the vacant Town Board coordinator position, officials said.

And apparently, there is a lot of people seeking the job.

“We’re interviewing at least 10 applicants on Thursday and I’m hoping we can come up with a person this week and we can appoint someone next week,” said Councilman George Gabrielsen.

The board is hoping to hire a Riverhead Town resident for the job, Mr. Gabrielsen said.

He declined to give any names of people seeking the job.

The board has gone through three Town Board coordinators in the past three years, and the latest, Tracey Densieski, resigned as March 29 because a side-business she has selling a product called Qivana had taken off. She wanted to devote more time to that business.

Ms. Densieski was hired in December, shortly after the Town Board fired her predecessor, Linda Hulse, in a heated 3-2 vote in which Supervisor Sean Walter backed Ms. Hulse and complained that the firing came without any board discussion.

Ms. Hulse got the job in 2011 when her predecessor, Donna Zlatniski, left after she had a baby, and she later filed a $1 million lawsuit claiming she was coerced to resign after being accused of doing political work for Councilman Jim Wooten, which she and Mr. Wooten have denied.

The board’s regularly scheduled public Thursday work session has been cancelled.

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