Islandia no longer allows email complaints from residents, a move some see as restrictive

Islandia residents can no longer make community complaints electronically, a policy change the mayor said was necessitated by the village becoming “inundated” by “false” email complaints sapping village resources.

Islandia’s board of trustees unanimously approved the change in October. It states complaints must be submitted in person at Village Hall and prevents the village's more than 3,500 residents from reporting issues through the village’s online portal, over the phone or by email, all of which have historically been options.

Municipal experts said state law doesn't prohibit the policy but called the change an overreaction that could burden residents and intimidate them from filing legitimate complaints. 

Weeks after officials adopted the policy at a meeting Oct. 21, and following inquiries from Newsday, village spokesman John Zaher wrote Islandia also will accept resident complaints sent via certified or registered mail. But he did not address whether officials will amend the resolution, which explicitly requires in-person complaints.

That approach to complaints will remain Islandia's official policy unless village officials amend the rules once again, according to Paul Sabatino, a municipal attorney and a former Suffolk chief deputy county executive. 

“If the resolution is not amended to make the changes that you talked about, then the ... statement has no legal effect or value because [it] can’t trump legislation,” said Sabatino, who sued to overturn Islandia’s approval of Jake’s 58 Casino in 2016.

Mayor Allan Dorman declined to quantify the email surge that drove the in-person-only complaint policy, but Newsday has been copied on more than 100 emails sent to the village since April from a single anonymous account. A second anonymous account has copied Newsday on several emails to the village, as well. The emails included complaints ranging in topic from political signs to construction debris. The owner of the email account did not respond to a request for comment on the new policy.

“It’s just harassment,” Dorman said at the Oct. 21 meeting, adding that village staff investigated the complaints. “Every time you check out the complaint, it doesn’t pan out. So, you’re just wasting the resources in the village office [and] taking people away from their jobs.”

'Orchestrated campaign'

Zaher called it "an orchestrated campaign of receiving bogus complaints from anonymous email addresses" at the start of this year. 

In response to a question about why Islandia couldn't just block problematic email accounts, Zaher told Newsday that as fake emails were received, the accounts "were blocked, but new addresses were created."

Islandia's decision earlier this year to ban email code enforcement complaints and launch a new online complaint portal also did not solve the issue. The system "became the subject of spam form submissions" that included "real street addresses within the Village but fake emails, numbers and names," Zaher wrote in an email to Newsday. 

Dorman declined multiple interview requests to discuss the issue and policy change. Village code enforcement supervisor Kimberly Davis also declined to speak with Newsday.

Under the Oct. 21 policy, residents will now have to go to Village Hall between 8:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. on weekdays, excluding Wednesday, in order to file a complaint about issues like potholes. Zaher wrote in an email that residents "can do so without providing their contact information. They will then be provided a control number to follow up their complaint anonymously."

Multiple current and former local officials called Islandia’s in-person-only complaint policy overkill, describing it as an archaic and restrictive approach that will make it harder for residents to get help. They said the simple solution is to ban anonymous complaints.

“That’s using a thermonuclear weapon to kill an ant,” Sabatino said about the Oct. 21 policy. 

He told Newsday "there's no statutory prohibition" against requiring village complaints to be made in-person, but "I think there's a strong constitutional argument under the First Amendment" that the policy would exclude certain people being able to petition their government over legitimate grievances.

Sabatino added his concerns would be eliminated if Islandia does amend its policy to allow complaints via certified or registered mail, however. 

"If they change it to allow for people to submit in writing, then they basically reversed themselves," he said, adding that the current resolution is "defective" because it does not mention that mail-in option. 

Other municipalities' approaches

Patchogue recently changed its policy to allow only in-person complaints or those submitted through registered or certified mail, according to Village Attorney Brian Egan. That village made the decision for different reasons than the ones stated by Islandia, however.

Egan said Patchogue was reacting to a state Court of Appeals decision last year, which allowed villages to be sued if they don’t fix infrastructure problems in a “reasonable” amount of time after being notified of them electronically. Fewer avenues for complaints reduces the potential for overlooking an issue, he explained.

Brightwaters Mayor John Valdini said his village accepts email complaints because he doesn’t want residents “to take time off to complain about a tree limb.” He added that Brightwaters just ignores the bulk of anonymous complaints and described Islandia’s policy, as adopted Oct. 21, as restrictive.

“It’s taking anonymous complaints a little too far,” Valdini said, adding he would feel the same way even if Islandia expands the policy to include mail-in complaints.

"We're villages. We're supposed to be receptive to the people," Valdini said. "How [Islandia officials] want to run it is up to them and they have to answer to their residents."

Southampton Village Deputy Mayor Leonard Zinnanti would not comment on Islandia's policy, but said "we have the opposite approach here." His village uses a complaint app, which also encountered an issue with phony complaints, but “when we suspected some foul play, we just dealt with it.”

“We said you couldn’t report anonymously and that stopped it,” he explained, adding the village later reinstated anonymous reporting to mitigate potential conflicts between neighbors.

CORRECTION: Michael Zaleski is no longer the Islandia director of public safety. An earlier version of this story reported that he did not return a voicemail or an email requesting comment.