Trustee Santino has enjoyed a long and distinguished career in local government.
Elected a village trustee at the age of 22, he went on to serve 8 years on the village board, two of those years as deputy mayor.
He has also served our community at the federal, county and town levels. Elected a member of the Hempstead town board in 1993, Santino remains the longest tenured member of his party to serve in that office.
Rising to the rank of town supervisor, Santino cut town spending and restored millions of dollars to the town's budget surplus. In fact, he is the only town supervisor in modern times to have balanced the town budget without dipping into surplus. Santino reversed the trend of town budget downgrades that were prevalent before he became supervisor and thanks to his strong fiscal management and budget-cutting the town once again earned a bond rating upgrade from Wall Street.
Santino worked diligently to root out waste, fraud and corruption from town government -- even if it meant standing up to powerful political interests. He proposed and enacted the strongest town ethics code in its history.
Among his many other accomplishments as supervisor, Santino built the town's permanent September 11th Memorial in Point Lookout. He also created the town's first dog park, introduced sign language interpretation to town board meetings and used the town's website to publish verbatim minutes of town board meetings.
Santino is a graduate of the Centre Avenue School, East Rockaway High School, and received a B.A. degree summa cum laude from St John's University.
He is a Lector at St. Raymond's Church, a position he has held for the last 45 years. He is also a charter member of the St. Raymond's Knights of Columbus, a member of the East Rockaway Kiwanis Club, the Sons of the American Legion, and the Judge Frank A. Gulotta Lodge of the Order Sons and Daughters of Italy in America; as well as an honorary member of Division 3 of the Ancient Order of Hibernians.
Trustee Santino retired from full-time government service in 2020.
