Letters

If you have any doubts that the Southampton Town Board is only interested in promoting the dense residential build-out of downtown Hampton Bays in keeping with its allied developer’s vision, rather than listening to the input of Hampton Bays residents as to what they want in their downtown, just read the scope of work in the contract between the town and Nelson, Pope & Voorhis LLC.

The contract, signed by Jay Schneiderman on August 8, 2022, states:

“Task 1 Community Outreach: … As we go through the process of meeting with the community and the various stakeholders, we will be able to further clarify any of the opposition’s hot-button issues. We will seek to neutralize this by having them appear as traditional NIMBYs who consistently present misinformation to promote their own limited agendas and present a positive message through community leaders.”

Is this the role of our town government? To not only ignore the viewpoints of its constituents but to go further and actively malign and defame them?

Enough is enough! Vote this Town Board out of office.

The members don’t care what we think. All they care about is their own agenda, which aligns with their deep-pocket developer allies and solves their housing problem by turning Hampton Bays into a bedroom community that services the rest of the East End.

We choose not to be a service center for the rest of Southampton. We choose to be a hamlet with deep historical roots and a population that cherishes the beach community we now have. We don’t want to become Riverhead, Patchogue or Sag Harbor. We are just fine with who we are.

We are not against development — we are against overdevelopment. We are not against a revitalized downtown. We want the one that was first presented to us — the one with a second Main Street and more intersections to allow pedestrian traffic to patronize suitable small businesses, such as restaurants, antique stores, bike shops, coffee shops.

We don’t want a residential neighborhood in our downtown. We don’t want a huge sewage treatment plant that requires variances from the Suffolk County Department of Health, because it is squeezed in between Good Ground Cemetery and Good Ground Park, with insufficient setbacks from both areas. We don’t want a Town Board that thinks so little of our environment that it repeatedly applies for variances from the very regulations implemented by the Department of Health to protect our waters.

We are against a town government that cynically dismisses our opinions and is willing to spend $25,000 of our tax dollars to conduct a public relations smear campaign against us.

Remember this in November.

Elizabeth I. Hook

Hampton Bays