Letters

I was disappointed to read Rob Calvert’s letter last week [“Deliberate and Improve,” The Sag Harbor Express, November 17], which showed a fundamental misunderstanding of the Article 78 legal challenge to one of the affordable housing laws, Local Law 12, passed by the Sag Harbor Village Board in June.

I am one of the concerned citizens who, after serious deliberation, participated in that legal challenge.

Contrary to what Calvert writes, we are not challenging all the affordable housing laws. The long overdue law permitting rental of accessory dwellings in the residential district is not being challenged. Our filing targets the controversial law that would enable the massive shopping/housing complex proposed by Adam Potter and Conifer Realty.

Calvert writes that he wants to see an “open and deliberative process,” which is certainly what I want. The challenge to the law was necessary precisely because the process followed by the Village Board was neither open nor deliberative.

Passage of Local Law 12 dramatically changed the codes of the office district, facilitating the Potter/Conifer proposal for large-scale construction in a contaminated flood zone. Despite the area’s many environmental problems, those codes were passed without the thorough environmental review mandated by New York law.

The village’s normal parking requirements were waived for the area and restrictions on store size were lifted. The protection for buildings that contribute to Sag Harbor’s National Historic District doesn’t seem to have been considered. For these and many other reasons, it appears the Board of Trustees didn’t fulfill its obligations to carefully weigh the consequences of passing Local Law 12.

It is particularly disturbing that the “public hearings” for this important law comprised two barely publicized discussions at regular monthly board meetings with, according to the official minutes, no discussion at the meeting that passed the law.

I wonder how many of your readers were aware of these major changes when they passed, and how many are aware of them even now? In months of conversations with people immediately surrounding the proposed Conifer project, whose lives would be fundamentally affected by it, I have found very few who understand what the new law allows.

However, it is not too late to revisit this flawed process. I continue to hope the majority of the Board of Trustees, instead of spending taxpayers’ money fighting our legal challenge, will vote to annul Local Law 12, and initiate the rigorous environmental process and open public discussion that should have occurred in the first place.

Surely any major new law that will have a profound impact on our village for decades to come should be thoroughly discussed and vetted. That “open and deliberative” process has served this community well in the past. If we return to it, I believe it will again.

Kathryn Levy

Sag Harbor