Who They Are: Profiles of Our Elected Officials

This week: Town of Mamaroneck Councilwoman Phyllis Wittner
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Town of Mamaroneck Councilwoman Phyllis Wittner

(November 20, 2002) As she showed a visitor the lovely view of marshland and river outside her living room window, Phyllis Wittner gestured toward the vista and said, "You're looking at the reason I got into government."

Wittner, who was born in Brooklyn and graduated from the University of Vermont with a degree in commerce and economics, had worked in marketing before starting her family and moving to Larchmont. One day, not long after the Wittners had moved to the house on Pheasant Run, Town of Mamaroneck Supervisor Christine Helwig came over to visit. Looking out at the marsh, she told Wittner, "If you love that view, you'll get involved." And so she did, educating herself about local environmental issues while raising two children. "I was a full-time mother and full-time volunteer," she recalled.

Elected to the Town of Mamaroneck Board in 1996, Wittner had been working for years as a community volunteer, first in the schools, with the Boy Scouts, and later with the Coastal Zone Management Commission. She and her husband, a physician specializing in tropical diseases, came to the area when he took a job at Albert Einstein School of Medicine in 1961, living first in a garden apartment in Mamaroneck.

Wittner has worked on many community-wide watershed preservation projects, including Coastal Zone Management Commission, the Westchester County Watershed Advisory Committee, and the Westchester County Committee on Nonpoint Source Pollution in Long Island Sound. She is especially proud of her advisory work with the Pryer Manor Marsh Preservation Association, which was able to acquire the deed to the marsh from the City of New Rochelle in 1995. She is currently President of the Premium River-Pine Brook Preservation Association, a group formed to protect the wetlands and watercourses of the Pine Brook and Premium River areas.

Wittner is very proud of her success in securing the grants that allowed dredging of the Premium River, restoring the tidal marsh to good health.

Her work as a Councilwoman on the Town Board has been "very intense," she said, requiring much contact with other municipalities, including the Village of Larchmont and City of New Rochelle. Early on, she was involved in the effort to protect the Bonnie Briar Country Club property from development as housing, helping to craft the environmental impact statement.

Wittner, who has won two elections to the Board, intends to run again in the 2003-2004 election season. "I still believe I have a great deal to contribute, espeically on environmental issues," she said. "I'm pretty effective at what I do." She is liaison to the Fire Council, Housing Authority and Coastal Zone Management Commission, and wants to help secure more open space for the Town. "Actually, 'the environment' is a very all-encompassing term, including things like air pollution, traffic and land use." She considered the IKEA controversy essentially an environmental issue, and went online to the company's website to find out more about IKEA's professed "green" approach to business. Armed with that information, she wrote to the management of the company about the impact the new store would have on the Larchmont/Mamaroneck area.

Wittner is currently working on a history of the conservation movement in the Town of Mamaroneck, drawing on her own experiences and also using records going back to the 1930's.

For the remainder of her term, Wittner said, "I'd like to see us work seriously with community groups and other municipalities in addressing some of the requirements of the EPA-promulgated Phase II regulations which deal with stormwater quality."

As chair of the Long Island Sound Watershed Intermunicipal Council, Wittner wants to educate citizens and the construction industry on erosion and sediment control. "The Town is ahead of many of our neighbors," Wittner said, "But we need to do a better job of getting the word out."

Even with her busy schedule, Wittner finds time to study Spanish. She and her husband are taking lessons in the language at Mamaroneck High School. He wants to be able to communicate with his Hispanic patients, and she'd like to be able to reach out more fully to Spanish-speaking Town residents. They also enjoy "researching" Westchester's restaurants, visiting museums in the city, and traveling. She might even write a restaurant review for the Gazette, or at least provide some critiques of existing reviews.

We have contacted all of the elected leaders in the Village and the Town, and the profiles will appear in the order in which the interviews were conducted. Check back frequently for more profiles.