Southampton Village Trustees, Mayor Tussle Over Who Can Direct Employees; Arts and Culture District Approved

The Southampton Village Board approved a resolution, by a 4-1 vote, directing each village employee — with the exception of police department employees — to accept work assignments or tasks only from that employee’s immediate supervisor at its meeting on Thursday, April 13.

Mayor Jesse Warren, who cast the lone dissenting vote on the resolution, said it was, in effect, an attempt “to transfer power from the mayor to the trustees,” and he added that the resolution “likely does not hold water.”

Trustee Roy Stevenson, who put the resolution to the agenda, said the measure was simply an attempt to codify the “chain of command” set out in state law that says only the village attorney and police department employees are required to report directly to the mayor. All other employees are supposed to report to their direct department heads, and not the mayor, he said.

State law dictates that village mayors are responsible for the supervision of “police and other subordinate officers of the village.” The law defines village offers as the mayor, trustees, treasurer, clerk, village justice, assessor, deputy clerk and deputy treasurer as well as “such other officers” as a board of trustees shall determine.

Deputy Mayor Gina Arresta, who serves as the liaison to the Department of Public Works, said that “many times” the mayor has “called employees and given instructions that are different than what their supervisor has instructed them to do,” accusing the mayor of giving directives to DPW employees directly on several occasions without going through or including the interim DPW department head, Steve Phillips, in those directives.

“What’s happening is that employees are confused, and you’re putting them in a bad position by doing that,” Arresta said at the meeting, addressing Warren. “The staff is very upset. It’s become a problem. It’s important that people understand where they get their direction from.”

Both Arresta and Stevenson said the resolution was an attempt to show support to village employees.

But Warren characterized the resolution as an attempt to “diminish the power of the mayor,” and said that, according to the New York Conference of Mayors, trustees who seek to curtail the power of the mayor must do so not via resolution but by having a public hearing and adopting a local law, which would be subject to a mandatory referendum.

At the meeting, Warren pointed to the fact that the passage of such a resolution is “highly unusual and unorthodox” and said the trustees were essentially overstepping their bounds in putting the resolution forth.

“This is not why the trustees are elected,” he said. “Their job, according to state law, is to work on the budget, and to create or amend local laws, work on contracts.”

Warren added that in instances where he has given directives without going through department heads, he has done so in the interest of efficiency, and said he is “allowed” to give those directives in certain instances, such as calling on the supervisor of the Highway Department to fill a pothole.

Arresta cited several instances in which she said directives from the mayor to village employees, without the inclusion of department heads, have included expenditures of taxpayer money, and those operational decisions should go through the proper chain of command, she said.

“At many times, he’s put the village employees in peril for not following the chain of command for village operations,” she said. “This needs to be followed. It’s the law. It’s not something the trustees have made up. Why wouldn’t the mayor want to follow the chain of command?

“We did this for the employees,” Arresta continued. “Because this isn’t normal.”

The board unanimously approved the creation of an Arts and Culture Overlay District in a portion of the village that includes parts of Jobs Lane and Hill Street. The creation of the overlay district represented one of the first recommendations to be implemented from the village’s comprehensive master plan, which was adopted last year, updated for the first time since 2000.

The creation of the district will ensure that the zoning code is supportive of arts and cultural uses, galleries and art stores, and community-oriented spaces and offices, as well as artist studios and residences. The district will also provide some flexibility for property owners to make sure ground-floor uses stay active and do not remain vacant.

Any buildings in the district that exceed 6,000 square feet at the ground level — such as the Southampton movie theater, the Southampton Arts Center, and the Peter Marino Art Foundation building — will be restricted to arts and cultural uses, meaning those buildings are now essentially protected, by zoning, from ever being turned into a big-box store, condos, or other uses that do not fall into the category of arts and cultural uses. The creation of the district also allows for special permitting for landlords who want to create “live/work” spaces for artists on upper floors.

The Village Board unanimously approved the 2023-24 budget. It includes several increases in services, such as adding a new full-time public safety dispatcher, and a department for operations for the new Southampton Village Ocean Rescue Squad, which was recently certified by the state. Room was also created in the budget to add a seasonal code enforcement officer. The $33,748,523 budget includes 1.7 percent year-over-year increase. The tax levy increase stays under the state-mandated cap by $970,641.

After rising steadily from 2006 to 2020, the tax rate per $100 of assessed valuation has been relatively flat the last few years, going from $20.32 in 2021, to $20.07 in 2022 and 2023, to $20.15 in 2024. The unassigned fund balance and water quality reserves are projected to be the same at the end of 2023 as they were at the end of 2022, with $12.8 million and $3.6 million, respectively.

A full breakdown of the budget can be found on the Southampton Village website, southamptonvillage.org.

The board adjourned to its next meeting a public hearing on potentially repealing a local law that automatically allows homeowners on waterfront property to construct accessory buildings or structures — such as pools or tennis courts — in the front yard of the lot, provided proper street setbacks are maintained.

If the law is repealed, homeowners on waterfront property who want to put in a pool or tennis court or other structure on their front yards would need to go through the Zoning Board of Appeals.

The intent of the proposed code change is to close a loophole in a prior revision of the law that had permitted accessory structures in the front yard of waterfront properties, where the term “waterfront” was not clearly defined, Village Attorney Andrew Preston explained at the start of the public hearing.

Lawyer John Bennett, who spoke at the meeting on behalf of oceanfront homeowners, said the better way to close that loophole would be to make the definition of what “waterfront” means more clear, rather than making all waterfront homeowners need to go before the ZBA if they want to construct an accessory structure in their front yard.

The board adjourned the hearing to the next meeting in the hope of hearing more public input on the matter.

After another public hearing, the board unanimously approved a law updating building permit and renewal fees. The intent of the code change is to require proof of progress when seeking permit renewals, and after a fourth renewal, reapplication for a new permit will be required. It will be left to the discretion of the building inspector to see how far any particular project has moved along.

Also at the meeting, the trustees unanimously agreed to an hour of training, annually, on Open Meetings Law, training that members of the village’s land-use boards will undergo as well. That resolution was added to the agenda by Warren.

The mayor made a motion to officially deny a request from the Bravo television series “Summer House” to use the village seal in its show, but the motion was not seconded by a trustee, so it did not proceed to a vote.

According to Warren, the board previously decided against allowing the show to use the seal, but that vote was taken during executive session. Warren said he added the resolution to the public agenda because he was advised by the Committee for Open Government to “rediscuss what we had discussed in executive session.”

“This was just a best practice,” he said.

By not taking a vote on the matter in public session, Warren said the board was leaving itself open to the possibility of the show using the seal and then denying the request had ever been expressly voted down.