Letters

Last June, Citizens for the Preservation of Wainscott proposed incorporation as a village to block the Beach Lane cable route. It also proposed broad limitations on development. Its bare-bones budget, which minimizes taxes, doesn’t pay for any of what CPW promised. Ironically, it creates the possibility that the village will need to sell out to developers to survive.

Nothing is budgeted to stop the cable. CPW is now suggesting that the fight is almost over, for which there doesn’t seem to be any basis other than CPW’s desire to avoid having to account for the likely expense.

As for CPW’s land-use restrictions, Sagaponack is SPW’s model. The problem with that is that Wainscott is not Sagaponack. Wainscott has a commercial strip and a substantial amount of undeveloped land, including an industrially zoned sand pit slated for development, and an airport at an inflexion point, both as to air traffic and possible alternative uses.

On the airport, the CPW asserts that “zoning codes and other village ordinances … would allow the village to restrict how the town uses its land … and ensure that any uses … were in alignment with village taxpayers’ priorities.”

CPW also has promised restrictive zoning to control school taxes by preventing multifamily housing, and zoning to protect farmers and to preserve farmland. Finally, it has promised to impose green energy rules.

The cost of drafting Wainscott’s promised codes will be many times what codification cost Sagaponack in 2005. And codification is just the beginning.

It is naive — really, fraudulent — to posit, as the budget does, that CPW’s land use rules will go unchallenged by the owner of the sand pit, by the businesses along the Route 27 strip, or by the town with respect to the airport. And one should not assume that ultra-wealthy owners of residential properties near the beach will accept CPW’s green new deal. The amount budgeted for code enforcement, based on the experience of Sagaponack and other well-established villages, is likely to be just a drop in the bucket for a new village having as much on its plate as Wainscott.

Some of the expenses will be one-time, other loaded into the early years after incorporation, and yet others continuing throughout the life of the village. Taxpayers will have to fund those expenses. Non-tax revenue sources are very limited and unlikely ever to exceed $450,000. Every dollar of expense over that will have to come from taxes.

So, Wainscott, beware of CPW, for the gifts it bears are not free. Either its budget is false, or its promises are false. In either case, Wainscott stands to be the loser.

John H. Hall

Wainscott