Letters

At the Southampton Village Board’s July 7 organizational meeting, Mayor Bill Manger announced his choices for all the members to serve on the various village committees. No input from the trustees, no input from residents.

When a trustee questioned the appointment process, Manger arrogantly — and incorrectly — claimed he had sole authority to appoint committee members, and that trustees could only ratify them.

That’s false. While Village Law § 4-400 allows the mayor to appoint village employees (excluding police) and members of regulatory boards, like the Zoning Board and Planning Board, state law is silent on appointments to advisory committees. Since various committees are created by the Board of Trustees, the board retains the authority to determine how appointments are made. The mayor does not have unilateral power, unless explicitly granted by the board. In this case, he stated otherwise, publicly and wrongly.

This is exactly the kind of insider politics that the nonpartisan 501(c)(4) Concerned Citizens of Southampton warned about during the election: unchecked spending, no oversight, no transparency. Voters responded. Rob Coburn defeated a member of Manger’s supermajority. And Manger himself narrowly held on to his seat by just 112 votes, after a flood of absentee ballots arrived from outside the village.

Of particular concern is the appointment of three members of the Budget and Finance Committee to the new Board of Assessment Review. The budget and Finance Committee delivered a Manger-directed, politically motivated budget that produced no efficiencies and increased taxes. The mayor lied about the tax increase in the debates and in his campaign materials. These are not the members you want on the assessment review committee.

The most important characteristics of the members of the Board of Assessment Review is that they practice transparency, honesty, respect and fairness. In the past two years, with the mayor and his bobblehead trustees as members of the Board of Assessment, grievance filers have received no transparency, no honesty, no respect and especially no fairness. The board met in secret to deliver decisions motivated by vindictiveness and self-interest. Remember, with this board and their interaction with grievance filers, there is no discussion, no negotiations, no appeal — “if you don’t like it, sue us.”

We need to reopen the committee selection process to find principled committee members who will serve the community and not solely do the bidding of the mayor.

David Rung

Southampton Village