Letters

I was glad to see Michael Wright’s coverage of the Wainscott Citizens Advisory Committee meeting and Wainscott School Board President David Eagan’s continued—in my view—misguided campaign against any new affordable housing opportunities in the school district [“Wainscott CAC Warned Of Overcrowding,” East Hampton Press, May 9].It was good to hear Councilman Jeff Bragman and CAC member Michael Hansen present a somewhat more balanced view.

As someone who spent the summers of my first 18 years in a family cottage on Sayre’s Path in Wainscott, I also see Wainscott as a very special place, perhaps for some of the same reasons as Mr. Eagan.

My experience of Wainscott was one of a child’s summer paradise, with no school work, strawberry, corn and potato fields, fresh milk delivered in bottles, the ocean beach, friends who could ride their bikes to my house and my brother and I to theirs, and the Wainscott General Store, where we could ride to get some Hostess cupcakes and drinks under the watchful eye of owner/manager Carrie Osborn D’Andrea.

My experience of Wainscott, however, also included racial and economic diversity: the descendants of English settlers who still farmed the land, and the Polish farm families who came after them and established themselves; resident and migrant farm workers; the elite summer community in the Georgica Association; year-round and summer middle-class families, whose breadwinners worked for the telephone company, drove trucks, fixed cars, worked in the landscaping, construction and food service industries, for government, and as schoolteachers.

The town and the Peconic Land Trust have done a terrific job, with the assistance of landowners and wealthy seasonal residents, to protect Wainscott’s prime agricultural lands and open spaces. And water quality is getting much needed attention from the town, Suffolk County, the state and the Friends of Georgica Pond.

But the most significant economic and social threat to the town (and Wainscott hamlet) in 2019 is the cost of living here for year-round and seasonal workers, residents, and retirees who are not wealthy. Without government-supported housing opportunities, people of modest means cannot compete with second-home buyers for our limited number of places to live. The absence of a year-round, resident, working community will diminish our community in many important ways.

East Hampton has the potential to be a national leader in the smart, healthy and attractive design and construction of housing opportunities for working people, including nurses, teachers, town employees, and local retail and service businesses. There is no good reason some of those opportunities should not be located in the Wainscott School District.

To me, the argument that the quaint school building that has students from kindergarten through third grade cannot handle any more students is a weak and unpersuasive argument against new housing opportunities, for a number of reasons:

1. Children from new housing, which would almost certainly be created north of Montauk Highway, would be closer to East Hampton and Sag Harbor schools, where they can be sent on a tuition basis, while still keeping Wainscott’s school taxes the lowest of all school taxes in town.

2. Children from new housing could be better served in East Hampton or Sag Harbor, where they could continue their education through 12th grade if they wish without changing schools and friends and communities.

3. New housing can and would be designed in an attractive, energy-efficient and environmentally compatible way.

Those who support affordable housing opportunities in all areas of East Hampton need to speak up and debate Mr. Eagan and his sympathizers.

Mr. Eagan was elected School Board president in 2017 with only 29 votes in an unopposed race. Why should his point of view be given so much weight?

Was it proper for the Wainscott School District to pay for districtwide mailings urging taxpayers to oppose affordable housing opportunities in the school district, as they did two years ago, when a potential small-scale apartment development was proposed north of the highway?

The community can and should create new, model housing for its year-round and seasonal workers, families, and resident retirees who are not wealthy. And some of that housing should be in the Wainscott School District, which runs all the way from Route 114 to the Atlantic, and from Sag Harbor Village to East Hampton Village.

Randall Parsons is a land planner and conservationist, and a member of the East Hampton Town Planning Board—Ed.