Brookhaven Town Clerk Kevin J. LaValle spoke to educational and community stakeholder groups around the town, spending time with Shaun Carlson's Patchogue-Medford High School Civics students and the Bayport Blue Point Community Civic Association meeting at Bayport Blue Point Library.
Clerk LaValle shared the Dongan Patent with students. Governor Thomas Dongan was the first appointed Royal Governor of New York. Born in Ireland, Dongan produced the legal documentation in 1686 to establish the Town of Brookhaven. It called for a local government to appoint seven Trustees and a Clerk.
To this day it is referenced in legal proceedings concerning environmental issues in and around Brookhaven, since the patent references that taxpayers have jurisdiction over the “the tracts and necks of lands, gardens, pastures, woods, trees and marshes, swamps, beaches, harbors and the seafloor.”
The Dongan Patent can be viewed in the lobby of Brookhaven Town Hall.
Brookhaven Clerk LaValle also attended the most recent Bayport Blue Point Community Civic Association meeting.