I congratulate the small groups of people who fought for the local law limiting house-to-lot size. Well done. I hope that we will be on the same side some day on issues of mutual concern.
You may gather I believe this is a truly terrible piece of legislation, the most likely impact of which will be an increase in the suffering and economic hardship of working families in East Hampton. The timing of passage of this unstudied restrictive housing bill could not be more unfortunate, with a national mortgage crisis and housing depression looming over all but the most privileged and retired. The negative budgetary impact will be felt for years to come through higher taxes, lower revenues and fewer services (wait until they take away the leaf pick-up).
The social difficulties may last longer as we lose locals to carpetbaggers, whose incomes originate outside the town and whose interests are limited to their scenic views. The “let them eat cake” attitude of the Town Board toward the common folk is especially unfortunate. Only the retirees seemed to have had a controlling voice. They have no children in school, no leaves in the yard, no need for a working, growing community, only more visual preservation.
The supervisor and the board rely on a so-called master plan as the basis for the legislation, but that document does not instruct a deliberate corruption of the legislative process, nor does not instruct us to intentionally lower property values across the town.
As if we need additional proof that the process was corrupted by authoritarian politics and a government apparatus that shuns truth and honest debate, one need only honestly recount the hidden meetings of the self-selected secret advisory group—a group whose members were at the very edge of governmental intrigue (you must recall the airport advertising scheme), the hurriedly organized quorums of the Town Board to modify the terms of the legislation and the failure of an attempt to study the economic impacts of alternative proposals, any of which would have preserved the value of property, and now value lost for thousands of working families in town.
The final product was a result more of political larceny, sloth and ignorance than genuine community benevolence. Its proponents were allowed to hide the true purpose and predictable negative economic impacts of the proposal by an understaffed press, relying on a diverted public, to permit a dishonest process to reign over good public policy. As I have said, the board, through obdurate sanctimony, managed to take a legitimate issue—home sizes and community continuity— and corrupt it with a process so lazy and sanctimonious that no real work went into exploring a solution—no work at all—only a cut and paste legislative process bent on copying from singularly elitist summertime communities, rather than leading the whole community in a creative venture.
Only the working class of East Hampton will be harmed. What happens when school tax rates soar in Springs as property values decline? And they will. What will be done when the foreclosures start to roll across the town? This legislation will accelerate economic hardship.
Will the jeweled retirees cast them off as so many pieces of cake, a cheap price for living under the illusion of environmental protection?
DOMINICK STANZIONEAmagansett
on Jul 16, 2008