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In the final days leading up to the November 3 election, Southampton Town Councilwoman Anna Throne-Holst, the Democratic candidate for town supervisor, released a 13-point plan for reforming town government.
Ms. Throne-Holst’s “Municipal Government Reorganization and Service Provision Improvement Plan” outlines steps to reduce the town budget and spending on full-time staff and contractors, and to help the town recover from budget woes, which include multimillion-dollar budget deficits due to faulty accounting practices dating back to 2003, she said.
The plan, spelled out over eight pages, calls for a 15-percent reduction in overall town spending by 2012, from $78 million this year to $66.3 million, and a 20-percent reduction in full-time staff by 2012 via attrition and early retirement incentives. Such a reduction would bring staff levels to about 400 employees in 2012, down from 501 employees anticipated in 2010.
The plan is “comprehensive and, admittedly, very ambitious,” Ms. Throne-Holst said at a press conference she held in Hampton Bays on Monday.
Others at the press conference who voiced support for the plan included New York Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr., an Independence Party member, Democratic Town Board candidates Bridget Fleming and incumbent Councilwoman Sally Pope, and Democratic Trustee candidates Bill Pell and Chris Garvey.
“We are committed to these goals and to seeing them implemented,” Ms. Throne-Holst said.
A leading component of Ms. Throne-Holst’s plan is the formation of new task forces to study various town operations. Ms. Throne-Holst said the groups would examine town operating policy and procedures, and land use projects, among other things, in hopes of finding areas of overlapping services.
“I think that if we reorganize then we can take some of the bloat out,” Ms. Throne-Holst said. “It will give us the opportunity to really look at the level of services that we provide and what level of services the taxpayers want.”
Supervisor Linda Kabot, whom Ms. Throne-Holst is challenging in the election, said this week that she is already doing the work to address the town’s budget crisis. “My platform is the town’s budget,” she said. “I charted a strategic plan ... to move the town forward to a brighter, and more solvent, future.”
The supervisor also skewered her opponent for not coming forward sooner with a plan. “I am glad she finally pulled together some kind of platform and plan,” Ms. Kabot said in an e-mail on Tuesday. “Other than nasty criticism about me and how she has the ability to work more cooperatively with others ... what has Anna Throne-Holst run on this campaign season?”
Ms. Throne-Holst countered in a subsequent e-mail that “separating fact from fiction is not criticism, it is simply setting the record straight. Pointed criticism,” she continued, “cannot be confused with being nasty. Nasty is not permissible in a public servant—and there my track record speaks for itself.”
Southampton Town Councilman Christopher Nuzzi, who is running for reelection to a second term, is holding a preelection rally at Nello Summertime’s in Southampton on Thursday from 6 to 9 p.m. Donations are $75 including an open bar and appetizers.
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