In the July 21 Southampton Press, Mayor Jesse Warren once again blames prior administrations — this time for Moses Park not being completed [“Southampton Village Moving Ahead With Plans To Add Features To Moses Park,” 27east.com, July 19].
By way of background, a developer had set out to create 56 condos on this 12-plus-acre parcel through a loophole that the Epley administration rebuffed in 2016. Instead, they worked with the Community Preservation Fund to preserve it forever, with a promise to turn it into a park.
The real question was what the park plan would be. The town wanted an active park. Trustee Nancy McGann, working with a good planner, produced an initial rendering in 2018 showing several tennis courts (with pickleball overlays), a bocce court, a bathroom, walking paths, and bird/ butterfly friendly plantings, but the adjacent neighbors had concerns with noise and traffic.
So Trustee McGann went back to the drawing board and was on a good path to find a solution with minimal impacts working with the community. (Feel free to watch the board meetings where the renderings were brought forward, discussed with input from the public and refined.) Funding was earmarked in the trustee account.
Shortly after Mayor Warren was elected in 2019, he was asked, point blank, to continue the work on Moses Park during a meeting with the town, where I and our village attorney were present. Mayor Warren has had three years to continue taking action, but he chose not to do so.
Since then, Mayor Warren has had no problem shifting over $7 million from surplus to a capital reserve fund for water quality projects, two of which have failed miserably. Why did he choose to ignore the park plans until he was reminded over and over again to take action? He even refused a donation of $150,000 toward the park that would have eased the overall cost to the taxpayer.
Our village would be better served if Mayor Warren spent more time focused on the areas that he and his administration have promised to our village residents to deliver — a comprehensive traffic study, new code enforcers, a sewer, bike paths, and on and on …
Kimberly Allan
Southampton Village
Allan is a former Southampton Village trustee — Ed.
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