Letters

The current proposal to incorporate the Village of East Quogue has its roots, among other things, in the pathetic and dysfunctional governance of our Southampton Town Board in the handling of The Hills application for a public golf course with its ancillary housing.

It was a responsible plan that the developer submitted with generous benefits for the East Quogue community. It was not an abuse of the process of approval or the land on which it would be built. But there are always the hysterics that either can’t stand change, or someone else enjoying it, so there were months of heated rhetoric and testimony and letters to this page decrying the sacrilege of building a beautiful golf course, with all the bells and whistles of today’s groundskeeping technology to protect our groundwater and treatment of the human waste associated with its housing component.

The circus that the Town Board became was an embarrassment.

When the question of the safety of the groundwater was no longer a scientific issue, there should have been no reason for this application to not be acceptable. But this wasn’t the case. Two members of our board chose to put themselves ahead of the interests of the residents of East Quogue.

After claiming to abide by the opinions of expert witnesses, they contradicted themselves by ignoring the factual testimony and let their personal views against this development supersede their responsibility to govern with sensibility.

John Bouvier is one of the board members who needs to find another job. He and Julie Lofstadt, with their grandstanding votes, set in motion years of wasted time and money to say nothing of the embarrassing conduct of our town government as it handed this hot potato from committee to official back to committee. Bouvier must go. By running again, he clearly still accepts no responsibility for this paralysis of government.

Remember this when you vote. No wonder residents of East Quogue are fed up with the leadership out of Southampton Town.

Ed Surgan

Westhampton