Letters

What was once a charming park, alive with birds, butterflies and bunnies, is now a dust bowl of holes, trash and construction debris. The bird feeders at Moses Park are flat on the ground, flies have replaced the wildlife, and village trucks sit idle there all weekend long, as if they’re on permanent display.

The new “playground” is another head-scratcher: flimsy, uneven and destined to make personal-injury lawyers very happy. And, of course, the village sends in weekend crews on overtime pay to fix the mess they created. The result? Taxpayers are paying more for less, a trademark of Mayor Bill Manger at this point.

On my last visit, I saw holes everywhere, trash flying, and, yes, a village employee asleep in his truck. I genuinely respect our Parks Department workers, but when they’re that disengaged, it says something deeper, mostly about their lack of faith in leadership. Remember, they’re the same CSEA employees who protested outside Village Hall.

Moses Park now stands as a symbol of this administration: Southampton Press-enabled photo ops with no follow-through. The same playbook runs throughout: the half-baked solar awning, a scaffolding eyesore at the First Presbyterian Church on South Main Street, the crumbling World War I monument, and the half-paved Pond Lane.

Today, Moses Park isn’t a park at all. It’s a patchwork of potholes and diesel fumes. Under this administration, “Beautiful Southampton” has become “Broken Southampton.”

Jessica McNerney

Southampton