Last week, Mathieu Eugène made history by becoming the first Haitian-born elected to the New York City Council. This is a milestone long coming, and we congratulate Eugène and the people who work assiduously to help him reach the Council.

This is something that had bedeviled New York Haitians as we watched other enclaves around the country, like South Florida and Boston, flex their political muscles and elect Haitians to office.

But Eugène and the community’s giddiness did not last too long as the councilman-elect finds himself mired in a legal dispute because he doesn’t live in the 40th Council District, where he was elected. We are quite sure that Eugène is not the first person elected in a district where he doesn’t live.

Hopefully, the residency issue can be resolved quickly and can get to work for the people who elected him. This sort of faux pas is the kind of thing that the ad hoc group, the Haitian American Steering Committee, was set up to avoid. But that process was scuttled so that we could make history. We certainly are proud of the outcome.

But the ends don’t justify the means. The Committee’s process was ridiculed and labeled unfair because Eugène was not selected.

The situation go so nasty that Ferdinand Zizi, who was chosen, bowed out after being subjugated to a nasty smear campaign by people who don’t even know him.

Now the table has turned, and Eugène will be under a microscope and every word he utters will be dissected and probably misinterpreted.

We hope that he is ready for such scrutiny. Already the New York Times , which did not endorse him, has not been too flattering about Eugène.

That tone is likely to be picked up by the mainstream press and define Eugene’s tenuous victory. The seat is up for reelection in July.

So we urge those who worked so hard to help elect Eugène to continue to school him in the inner workings of the City Council so that he can be an effective councilman and not a puppet of the special interests who doled out resources for his successful campaign.

Sometimes being the first can be a beast of burden. Let’s hope that Eugène’s shoulders are broad enough to carry the load that he’s about to embark on.