Letters

Your front-page article “Letter From Critics Lands Hard” [November 21] was simply another unnecessary attack on our duly elected mayor, who has now had to endure three weeks of character assassination in The Southampton Press. Why was it necessary to publish this article, revisiting a letter from the week before, and continuing the negative and patronizing comments in regard to the mayor? When was the last time that The Press printed a front-page article about a letter to the editor from a previous edition?

Mayor Jesse Warren has inherited a mess of a village, which was once one of the finest places to live in America. Under the previous watch of many of our elected officials and “representatives” — with the support and endorsements of The Southampton Press — Southampton Village has become an embarrassment, despite its massive tax revenue.

In the past 20 years, we have lost the Parrish Art Museum, the Rogers Memorial Library, Saks Fifth Avenue and many other staples from the heart of our main shopping area. Our village parking lots are impassable, our roads are clogged with through traffic, our lakes are the most polluted in New York State, power lines crisscross our beautiful streets and Jobs Lane, we have no central sewerage system, crime is on the rise, and landmarks like 40 Gin Lane and 1280 Meadow Lane have been permitted to be torn down.

The beach parking lots are full by 11 a.m. every July and August weekend, and enormous houses that are out of scale with our neighborhoods, with habitable basements and “pool houses,” are being built on every available small lot. The massive Bishop’s Pond development was not only approved just a few years ago but the town line was changed to accommodate it, as if this was something that is ever done in any other municipality.

The Board of Architectural Review and Historic Preservation and the Zoning Board of Appeals, which are supposed to represent the interests of those of us who live here, have often made decisions that have helped to further erode our quality of life.

The fact that Mayor Jesse Warren is rightly and legally trying to bring in new attorneys and voices, and to set Southampton back on the right course, should be supported and celebrated by our local paper, and our former mayors, as his success will benefit us all.

I stand with Jesse, as do most of my neighbors and friends, and I am grateful for all that he is doing, despite the powerful and entrenched forces that are working hard to take him down.

Walter Deane

Southampton Village