Southampton Tire soup kitchen can reopen

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A Southampton Village ordinance inspector speaks with migrant workers, who are holding brown bag lunches, outside of 7-Eleven on Tuesday morning. DANA SHAW

The Sisters of Mercy will be allowed to reopen their makeshift soup kitchen at Southampton Tire Center later this week, according to Southampton Village Mayor Mark Epley.

Mayor Epley said Tuesday morning that Jonathan Foster, the village’s chief building inspector, decided to overturn another building inspector’s decision that had put an end to the free lunch line for day laborers at Southampton Tire.

The soup kitchen was shut down on April 1. Village Building Inspector Christopher Talbot said he called in village ordinance inspectors that day to go to Southampton Tire with him to inform Southampton Tire owners Carol and Albert Whitby that it was a violation of the village zoning code to serve food at their tire store, because it is not an eating establishment. A Southampton Village Police sergeant had accompanied the ordinance inspectors and Mr. Talbot as well.

Mayor Epley said Mr. Foster ruled this week that the soup kitchen, which Ms. Whitby was running with the help of the Sisters of Mercy from Water Mill, falls under a philanthropic/non-profit use in the zoning code, so it was not a violation.

According to the village code, a highway business, such as Southampton Tire, needs a special exception permit to become an eating establishment. But the code also states that a “philanthropic, fraternal, social or educational institutional office or meeting room, nonprofit” is a permitted use of an establishment in the highway business zone.

“I’m happy,” Ms. Whitby said Tuesday afternoon, having just learned of the Building Department’s reversal. “They made us look like we were breaking the law, and we weren’t.”

Ms. Whitby said she has not had time to start thinking about how soon she and the Sisters of Mercy would restart their soup kitchen.

The mayor warned that Mr. Foster’s decision, which he said was made with the counsel of Village Attorney Richard DePetris, does not prevent the Suffolk County Board of Health from enforcing food-handling regulations at Southampton Tire.

At the Southampton Village Board’s monthly meeting on Thursday night, April 9, a small crowd of soup kitchen proponents voiced their support for the Whitbys and Sisters of Mercy.

“I wish I didn’t have to come here tonight, but I felt compelled to,” Dianne Rulnick, a former co-chair of the Southampton Town Anti-Bias Task Force, told the Village Board. She said that critics of the efforts of the Sisters of Mercy are “absolute racists.”

Most, if not all, of the day laborers who the Sisters of Mercy have helped are Latinos, and said to be living in the United States illegally.

“I was always taught that our Lord thought that we should always be our brother’s keeper,” said Lydia Ritchie of Southampton.

“The guys are here—they’re part of the community,” added David D’Agostino, also of Southampton. “We have to get used to it.”

Dr. Bob Zellner of North Sea said he has lectured all over the country about the progress that Southampton Town and Southampton Village have made when it comes to race relations. He said he was embarrassed to learn that the village had shut down the soup kitchen.

“I have a lot of experience with actions of this type, but mostly in the South,” said Dr. Zellner, an activist who played an active role in the civil rights movement of the 1960s and is the author of “The Wrong Side of Murder Creek: A White Southerner in the Freedom Movement.”

Mayor Epley said Monday that, as mayor, he does not have the authority to overturn a building inspector’s decision. He said only the chief building inspector can do that.

“Although I have oversight and the Village Board has oversight over the department, we don’t have the authority to go in and change the decision of a public official like that,” the mayor said.

He added that he would have liked to have known ahead of time that the Building Department was planning to close the soup kitchen. “It should have been brought to everyone’s attention,” the mayor said. “We should have had a discussion with the village attorney on this.”

Even before Mr. Foster rendered his decision, Village Board member Paul Robinson unequivocally said he did not think the Whitbys had broken any law. “Al and Carol Whitby did something very charitable and humanitarian,” he said.

“No matter how you feel about the immigration piece, whether you’re pro or anti, it doesn’t matter,” Mayor Epley agreed. “What matters is what the Sisters were doing there is helping hungry people.”