Three Candidates, Three Opinions: East Hampton Town Board Hopefuls Disagree on House Size Laws

What to do with the East Hampton Town Board’s recent measures to curb overdevelopment has emerged as a key flashpoint in the three-way race for Town Board.

One of the measures in question, enacted in March, capped maximum house sizes in town at 7 percent of the size of the lot it is built on, plus 1,500 square feet, down from the previous number, which sat at 10 percent of lot area, plus 1,600 square feet. The original suggestion was for 7 percent of lot size, plus 1,300 square feet, but the Town Board ultimately moved forward with the less drastic move.

Prior to that, the Town Board slashed total maximum house size from 20,000 square feet to 10,000 square feet.

Incumbent Democratic Councilwoman Cate Rogers was an architect of the first law, which, to her, helped the town find balance between the needs of development and protecting the natural environment.

Incumbent Democratic Councilman Ian Calder-Piedmonte was the lone “no” vote in lowering the formula for maximum house size based on gross floor area. If reelected, he would be open to revisiting the reduction, but he would not support striking the law outright.

And then there is Republican challenger J.P. Foster, who has built a large portion of his campaign on opposition to the March law — a view based in part on what he thinks was an incomplete process. Others, like Rogers, disagree, citing 22 months of work and 14 public Town Board work session discussions. Foster would support a partial reversion of the changes: 8 percent of lot area, plus 1,600 square feet.

Another key point of contention is the town’s troubles with retaining staff members — which has put Foster on the offensive.

Earlier this year, four department heads left Town Hall suddenly — though the departures were otherwise unrelated. The issue, which has been highly publicized, continued when the bulk of the staff of the Tax Receiver’s office walked out in August. As an application backlog grew in the Building Department, it became apparent that the issue had struck there as well.

Since then, the Town Board has filled the bulk of those vacancies, but questions remain about how the board can limit future turnover.

And to the incumbent Democrats, Calder-Piedmonte and Rogers, turnover is part of the nature of the local economy, where the private sector, too, struggles to keep employees.

But Foster, the Republican challenger, disagrees. Foster has criticized town leadership for not properly undertaking succession planning. Something is broken, he said, and he has seen this from his 10,000-foot flyover as a candidate.

The three candidates are running for two seats on the Town Board. Scott Smith will also appear on the ballot as a Republican, but he is not running an active campaign due to a personal matter that came shortly before filing deadlines. The two candidates with the most votes will take the two seats.

During in-person interviews, other points of disagreement came up, but the candidates largely agreed on the need to address the affordable housing crisis, the importance of working with the state government on alleviating the pine beetle infestation, and, a day after the Town Board inked a 30-year, $27.6 million partnership, ensuring Montauk finds a long-term solution to chronic erosion.

Foster spoke at his house in East Hampton North. Rogers spoke at the East Hampton Library. Calder-Piedmonte spoke at his farm on Long Lane.

Ian Calder-Piedmonte

First appointed to the Town Board in 2024, Calder-Piedmonte has carved out a niche for himself on the Town Board.

That is, at Town Board meetings, he is often the first to advocate for closing loopholes in any proposed pieces of legislation and ensuring legislative processes are rigorous and complete.

Originally from Michigan, Calder-Piedmonte, 45, is a farmer who co-owns Balsam Farms, a 200-acre vegetable, fruit, flower and herb farm in Amagansett. Calder-Piedmonte earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Cornell University in 2002; he moved to East Hampton in 2005.

In 2012, Calder-Piedmonte was appointed to the town Planning Board, though he didn’t know much about planning at the time. He ended up serving a total of 12 years, with two as vice chairmam, before his appointment to the Town Board to fill the vacancy left when Kathee Burke-Gonzalez ascended to supervisor. The councilman then won a special election last year to finish her term.

His time on the Town Board so far has been marked by two key votes — the lone “no” vote on reducing the maximum house size formula, and abstaining from a vote to move forward with the new senior center in December 2024.

Despite this, regarding the former, Calder-Piedmonte said that he does believe overdevelopment is an issue in town. Rogers was right to take the lead on the reduction, he said, and the councilwoman had good intentions, but ultimately, he was not supportive of the details.

“My biggest concern with that bill was the potential unintended — and ‘unintended’ is a very important word — consequences for people who aren’t spec builders, aren’t going to tear a house down and start from scratch and build a maximized lower level, but rather, they have a house in a small lot and just want to do an addition, and they might be up against it,” he said.

Asked if he would support a rollback of the law, Calder-Piedmonte said he would be open to rethinking the law and looking for tweaks, but he would not be in favor of striking it completely.

“It’s not: Are you for development or against development? I think we need to be very precise with our regulations, so that we’re preventing things that we really don’t want, but not accidentally capturing types of things that we would be okay with,” he said.

On his decision to abstain from the senior center vote, he said he saw the preliminary designs as a member of the Planning Board. As a councilman, Calder-Piedmonte opposed the new senior center, though he said he wasn’t dead-set against it. One of the main complaints he’d heard from the public was that it should serve more people.

And now, following the Town Board’s decision to shift its focus from senior center to community center, it will.

“It’s hard to say too much because I don’t want to get in front of the planning here, but what I would envision is some sort of community center that involves recreation, a senior center, probably even child care, and something to serve the greater community,” he said.

Out of all the issues in town, Calder-Piedmonte, as the liaison to the Housing Department, has likely worked on housing the most, he said.

“I don’t think we’re ever going to solve the problem 100 percent, I think, but we have to use every tool in our toolbox,” he said.

Calder-Piedmonte cited Councilman Tom Flight’s initiative to loosen accessory dwelling unit restrictions, which could work in tandem with loans for accessory dwelling unit construction — a program that Calder-Piedmonte is spearheading.

He also mentioned a code change that recently went to public hearing, which would essentially allow affordable housing on smaller parcels.

As for affordable housing plans he would advocate for going into his next term, he said he would like to see legislation to address employee housing. This would create mechanisms for businesses to house their own workers.

With the town government looking to rebuild some of its critical departments, such as the Building Department, Calder-Piedmonte offered some ideas to boost retention, pointing in part to the Town Board’s record.

“The Town Board has been escalating the pay scale quite a bit recently,” he said. “If you go back five years or so and look at how salaries have increased, it’s significant. Beyond that, I think, and perhaps most importantly, in my job as a Town Board member, I just want to be personally supportive.”

For those who have left, Calder-Piedmonte said he has been part of exit interviews, but citing privacy, he couldn’t divulge what he had learned.

J.P. Foster

After retiring last month, Foster launched fully into his political campaign, which has focused in no small part on the maximum house size reduction enacted earlier this year.

Foster, 54, is from a family that dates back 350-plus years on the East End. After graduating from Pierson High School, Foster took a job as a dispatcher with East Hampton Village when he was 19. He stayed for 35 years, eventually rising to become a supervisor in the dispatch room.

Outside that, he has served as the president of the East Hampton School Board for the past 11 years, and over the summer, he became board president of LTV Studios.

Foster was a registered Republican from the time he first registered to vote until about two years ago, when he switched his registration. When he realized there would be few opportunities to run as a Democrat locally, he switched his registration back to Republican.

“My generation may be the last that lives in East Hampton,” Foster said.

For instance, he said, his daughter is a teacher, and if she had housing, she might have stayed nearby. In reality, her choice was to live with her parents or spend her whole paycheck on rent, while working a second or third job.

Staffing the town government has become a key issue in Foster’s campaign, and in an interview, he highlighted promoting from within. And when that’s not feasible, there has to be a backup plan, he said.

Foster cited a weekly meeting with the mayor that took place on Monday mornings that he used to take part in when he worked for the village government.

“I know what’s going on as the communications guy,” he said. “I knew what was going on at the Highway Department. I knew what was going on at the Building Department. I knew what was going on at the Fire Department — EMS, PD, everybody, we all talked it out.”

Foster then took aim at the town’s current leadership.

“Something’s broken. I’m not there, so I don’t know what it is, but if you look, give it the 10,000-foot flyover, it’s broken,” he said. “It’s not operating properly. I didn’t really want to go there, but I think the word is toxic, a bit. I think the environment is toxic, and that needs to change.”

Foster brought up his record with the East Hampton School Board. The district, he said, employs more full-time staff members — 375 total — than the town, and many consider it a desirable place to work.

“I can’t take the full credit for it, but since if it were bad, it would be my fault, I get to take a little bit of credit for it,” Foster said.

A few months back, as part of a set of proposed changes to the town’s accessory dwelling unit code, members of the Town Board pitched an idea to exempt ADUs from the maximum house size formula. Amid disagreement, the Town Board ultimately axed the idea.

But Foster suggested revisiting it.

“We have to attack housing on every front,” he said. “And I think that just sent the ADU code backwards a little bit.”

On the maximum house size formula, Foster suggested a middle ground between the previous formula and the newly-adopted one, citing 8 percent of lot area and 1,600 square feet as a formula he would support.

And on the issue of creating affordable housing, Foster said he sees it as a multifaceted attack. Transportation, he said, will wind up being a key piece — something he learned in his work at the village and through his position on the School Board. Like town staff, many school employees rely on the South Fork Commuter Connection — a train program run by the Metropolitan Transit Authority.

“We all recognize that housing is very important,” he said. “I think we’ve all come to the realization we’re not going to be able to build our way out of it.”

Which brought Foster to another angle. A young person or a young family might want to live in an apartment, he said, but “when you outgrow the apartment, where do you go?”

One solution he has considered is priority housing for first responders. This would see volunteers move to the top of the existing lists for affordable housing — a policy that he said several other towns in Suffolk County have adopted.

“I think first responder housing is something that is twofold because not only are you keeping local families here and local people here, but you’re also building your volunteer base,” he said.

Cate Rogers

Rogers sees the issues of affordable housing and overdevelopment as interconnected.

The thinking goes that keeping house sizes in check will clear the way for the town to put additional density into affordable housing.

Having grown up in Massapequa, Rogers, 68, went to Dowling College, where she received a degree in humanities, with a concentration in philosophy. She worked at the Long Island Arena in Commack, which was her family’s business, for much of her life.

In 2002, Rogers moved to East Hampton, and two years later, she was appointed to the Zoning Board of Appeals. Ultimately, she became the board’s vice chair, before being elected to the Town Board in 2021.

Since then, Rogers worked extensively on the effort to limit maximum house size, which gathered overwhelming support — as well as vocal, and emotional, opposition.

“Our resources, it’s like a pie,” she said. “There’s only so many slices you can take out of the pie.”

Another important factor in curbing maximum house size that went overlooked, Rogers said, was taking the luxury home use and redirecting it toward affordable housing development.

“When we talk about increasing density for affordable housing, I’m all for that,” Rogers said. “I think that’s where our density should be placed right now. But if we didn’t pull back on the luxury home size, which we weren’t, we would be having higher strains on our water resources, lack of natural resources, more traffic.”

If reelected, Rogers said she would not push for additional reductions to the maximum house size formula.

“I don’t think there’s any further need for any further reduction,” she said. “I think we balanced out the needs of development with the needs of retaining our community character and environment. I don’t see any further restrictions at all.”

Rogers also brought up her record on affordable housing, saying she has voted for 100 percent of the town’s housing measures during her time on the Town Board.

“I view the working people and the environment as the backbone of our economy,” she said. “If you lose the working people, and if you lose the environment, you don’t have a place where anybody wants to come. We don’t have an economy.”

On housing, Rogers said the Town Board should continue down the road it is currently headed. She mentioned the Community Housing Fund, saying she supports opening that up for ADU loans, as Calder-Piedmonte has suggested.

Rogers connected housing affordability to the town’s employee retention issues.

“I do think that retention in today’s world is an issue, and I know that it is in the businesses as well out here,” she said. “It really is connected to housing affordability and our traffic issues here, but the Town Board has consistently worked to make sure that people understand that it’s a great place to work with incredible health benefits, particularly in today’s world where you couldn’t get anything else.”

To combat the issue, Rogers said the Town Board has instituted new policies, including for maternity leave, remote work and flex time. Transportation is another piece of the puzzle, and Rogers said the Town Board is highly promoting the Metropolitan Transit Authority’s South Fork Commuter Connection.

Contrary to what Foster claimed, Rogers said she looked at the school district’s numbers for retirements and resignations, and she found they weren’t any different than the town government’s. Thus, Rogers doesn’t see it as a leadership issue.

“I think that we are becoming more geographically isolated in terms of affordability,” Rogers said. “I think that’s a big issue.”

And on the issue of succession planning, which Foster said he would prioritize, Rogers said town leadership has gone in that direction, particularly in the Planning Department, where Tina LaGarenne stepped up to become head of that department.

As the Building Department makes headlines with an application backlog and staff shortages, Rogers spoke on how that plays into the larger picture of town processes, specifically after delays struck the Planning Department last year.

“The Planning Department was in the news last year, and we were successfully able to restore the process back to the original five to eight month process,” she said. “However, we’re looking to shorten that process. Now, in the Building Department, we get to take a look at the entire process. When you lose a department head, you get to really go in and take a deep dive.”

Rogers said she was thrilled with the decision to change the new senior center into a community center. This change in use came on the heels of a lawsuit between the two architectural firms working on the project.

“When I came on board, of course, this had already been in the works, but I was on the board when we hired the architects and reviewed the latest plan,” she said. “I don’t want to make it sound like I wasn’t. For me, I was always focused on the services that are provided at the senior center and the work that the Human Services Department does.”