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East Hampton Town’s second hearing on the 2010 budget last Friday drew a crowd of about two dozen people who are unsatisfied with the priorities in the town’s projected $72.1 million spending plan for next year. That plan carries an 11.2-percent tax increase that would come on the heels of an unprecedented 24 percent increase this year.
The budget must be adopted by November 20, and Town Board members say they plan to do little to change the document.
Friday’s crowd pushed more strongly for budget cuts than the more than 100 people who showed up for the first hearing, most of whom decried the cuts to community nonprofit organizations.
After learning this week that the town would receive approximately $108,000 more from Suffolk County’s sales tax revenue next year, the board agreed on Tuesday to add $15,000 for the Project MOST after-school program, $10,000 for the East End Special Players and $25,000 for the East Hampton Day Care Center back into the budget.
Bob Rizzardi gave among the most impassioned of Friday’s speeches, asking the town why it continued to employee a worker who he said had wrecked a town vehicle while he was drunk. He complained that the town had hired many people, including former budget officer Ted Hults, because they were personal friends of Town Board members.
“Town jobs are given to relatives and friends without qualifications,” he said, “including Ted Hults, who owned a beauty shop.”
Mr. Rizzardi added that he believed the town’s marine patrol and police force should be forced to take bigger cuts. He also suggested that the town sell a barge that is docked in Three Mile Harbor that he said was not being used to its full potential.
Bayman Stuart Vorpahl told the board that he was also disappointed at the more than $300,000 in the police budget for night differential payments.
“In my place of employ, 135 miles Southeast of the Montauk Lighthouse, I don’t ever remember my captain giving us night differential,” he said, adding that what the Town Police do at night “doesn’t compare to the work I did. Five day trips, no night pay for Stuie or anybody else, and I worked 21 to 22 hours a day.”
Mr. Vorpahl added that he believed the town had wasted a great deal of money by digging the basements of the new historic Town Hall complex to a depth of 15 feet, which he said accounted for roughly $1 million of the cost of the $6.5 million project.
Members of the Town Board said that the basements were going to be used as office space and that the town was required by the building code to dig them that deep, although Mr. Vorpahl said that office workers could easily use the basement space even if it wasn’t 15 feet deep.
Darryl Glennon told the board that he was also disappointed that the town had not cut the budget further.
“In October I saw TCOs driving around in rainy weather. Sometimes there have to be layoffs,” he said. “I don’t carry the personnel I used to.”
Mr. Glennon added that the Town Building Department had sent him a threatening letter over a building at his farm stand that he had a permit for, and he asked why the town had not hired workers who were competent enough to determine whether he was breaking the law before threatening him.
“It’s like, lookie, I’ve got a town job, I’m good for life,” he said. Mr. Glennon added that the town should try to sell any land it can and should charge Cablevision for parking its trucks on the town’s property. He added that the town’s boat ramp in Napeague needs to be replaced.
“If I fall, it’s going to be a lawsuit,” he said.
Mr. Glennon said that he’d spent some time looking with pride at the pictures of former Town Board members on the wall outside of the town meeting room.
“Don’t bring down the people out there,” he said.
Elaine Jones, the chairwoman of the town’s Independence Party, asked the board to consider returning to Island Group to provide health insurance for town workers, stating that the company would be willing to negotiate a better deal after losing one of its biggest clients when the town switched to the Empire Plan last year.
Martin Drew proposed 60 cuts to the budget that he said could save the town $9 million. He outlined a few of them in his presentation to the board, including $50,000 from the Justice Court, $75,000 from the supervisor’s office, $280,000 from the comptroller’s office and $120,000 from the town’s auditing line. Town officials have maintained that they need to increase spending on financial recordkeeping to avoid more budgeting disasters in the future.
“There’s a lot of pig going on,” he said. “There’s $9 million in fat and we can chop it off this pig. This is not Monopoly money. You can’t keep throwing it around.”
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