East Hampton Hosts First Town Code Workshop For Latino Community

East Hampton Town’s newly created Latino-community advisory committee drew a large crowd for its first organized meeting, a March 15 workshop with town officials on the town’s rental registry law.

Several dozen attendees filled the Town Hall meeting room to standing-room-only, and peppered town officials—sometimes through a Spanish language interpreter—with questions about the registry and town rental housing codes in general.

Questions focused on thresholds for requiring a house to be included in the rental registry, in particular with regard to homeowners renting rooms in their houses, how many people may live in a given room, how many cars may legally be parked at a property and whether a house occupied by multiple members of the same extended family must be registered.

Tenants of rental houses asked who must pay to install mandatory smoke and carbon monoxide detectors, a tenant or landlord, and whether there would be a limit on the number of children allowed to live in a home. “No, don’t throw any of your kids out,” Town Attorney Michael Sendlenski joked in response, drawing laughter from the audience.

Town Ordinance Enforcement head Betsy Bambrick explained to those with questions about the town’s codes that the rules were not intended as a curb on families living together, but as safety precautions.

“These laws exist out of tragedy,” she said. “Fire and carbon monoxide do not discriminate. The rental registry is there to make a homeowner responsible for keeping their tenants safe.”

Town Board and Latino committee members said they were encouraged by the popularity of the meeting and plan to organize such workshops on other areas of the town code, and on services provided by the town and the use of town facilities, in the near future and on a regular basis.

“I thought the turnout was terrific and the people who attended were very engaged in the discussion, asked a lot of good questions,” Supervisor Larry Cantwell said of the workshop.

When it was formed last month, town officials and members of the advisory committee said they hoped the committee will foment a better exchange of information between the town and one of the largest but also most isolated segments of the community, both about the rules the town expects all residents to abide by and about the concerns and needs of Latino residents.

Committee member Ben Zigua said that in light of the success of the first meeting, he would like to see the committee, and the town, turn their sights next on a discussion of recreational facilities and activities in the town.