Letters

The future of small agricultural reserves in Southampton Town is a substantive and recognized planning concern not just for nearby neighbors but for all who seek to protect the visual beauty and traditional agricultural economy that has characterized the town for centuries.

The Butter Lane agricultural preserve and its eventual use are part of this challenge, and the decisions regarding its future use will have real-world consequences for the future of the town’s longstanding farmland preservation goals, not just this one parcel.

It is also important to recognize that concerns raised by neighbors and the town’s Agricultural Advisory Committee exist not because they randomly seek to (nor do they) personally attack the property owner but because the landowner and his counsel have been incredibly vague about his intentions, and because the owner has already violated the town’s building and development regulations by illegally constructing buildings on the property and fostering an antagonistic relationship with his neighbors. In short, this behavior is simply not a good way to build trust.

Butter Lane Agricultural Reserve has a strictly worded easement. This easement is in place to uphold the preservation of farmland and open space. It was not constructed to see how wealthy landowners could violate it. It is up to the town, its attorneys and its boards to uphold these easements.

Moreover, in Southampton Town, the experience of wealthy landowners spending the time and money it takes to overcome and outrun the town’s land use rules is very real. It shapes perspective, and the public is right to be concerned about this behavior wherever it occurs.

For these reasons, it’s critically important that local reporting provides a balanced perspective and that local reporters understand the context of both history and current public experience when covering any community development issue.

Accuracy and transparency are what neighbors are asking for, and it’s what the town has been asking for — and it really doesn’t seem like that much to ask.

Michele Green

Bridgehampton