Letters

And so, too, must our village be woven together as it faces the ever-present and mounting forces that popularity imposes in rising real estate prices, increased tourism and a local community not immune to the dramatic changes being imposed by the digital age.

These forces of change are not novel to Sag Harbor, and, in truth, the village has migrated its own path to today having materially changed the fabric of its composition numerous times: from the whaling period of 1825 to 1850, the industrial period of 1880 to 1930, or, most recent, the military complex period of 1940 to 1970.

The village is well into this current phase of change and obviously frustrated in the difficulty over controlling the direction, acceleration and, ultimately, its outcome. While some might look to the past for comfort, that is not reality either, as someone said to me just last week: “My mother wouldn’t let us drive to Sag Harbor at night from East Hampton, it was not a safe place for teenagers.”

Instead, let it be affirmed at every turn that the planning process be inclusive of every constituency, transparent as glass, and cognizant to the fact that we are all mere stewards of our property and the village in the bigger realm called time. Even more, let us not devolve into labeling or minimizing, which sow the seeds of divisiveness and distract from achieving any end.

For we are all drawn to Sag Harbor for the same reasons — it’s natural beauty, history and sense of community that instills pride and a desire for those attributes to be the rushes and reeds of our own life’s woven mat.

Plan we must, so the community literally doesn’t lose sight of its own harbor, and we watch its identity swept away.

Larry HaagSag Harbor