The blah-blah-blahs are here again, as three candidates for Southampton Village trustee mail you their verbose, intellectually dishonest pleas for your vote on June 17.
All three ignore the elephant in the room: the environmentally disastrous hotel-sized structures in the estate section, and the greedy McMansions — too big, too tall, on our small local streets, and an increasing danger of spreading fire because of ever-stronger wind gusts.
The threesome: Gina Arresta seeking reelection; Kimberly Allan, formerly part of the Michael Irving interregnum; Bill Manger Jr., who cites his decades-old time as trustee, when he removed a fishing platform, immensely popular with dozens of elderly locals. It bothered Bill’s friend, because the locals came too close to his house. So it’s gone.
If you’re in the estate section, vote for Bill Manger, who will provide you with his version of constituency services.
Kimberly Allan was at least honest about her reasons for not stopping the over-development — “Too much money involved” — and then she hooked up with Zach Epley, whose dad, former Mayor Mark Epley, gave us that overdevelopment in the first place.
Gina’s memory has failed her. She and our mayor, Jesse Warren, had promised to stop the overdevelopment, and, in fact, Mayor Jesse scored an unprecedented landslide last election by finally announcing a new Comprehensive Plan, the foundation for a new zoning code. Mayor Jesse was dragged, kicking and screaming, to hire a professional opinion research firm to find out what our village residents wanted their village to be like, to guide the trustees in writing a new zoning code implementing the villagers’ wishes.
Ink hardly dry on that contract, Mayor Jesse undermined the professional researchers by naming a so-called Steering Committee, headed by Bill Manger Jr., whose members, all but one, live in the estate section, not on our little local streets. None was voted into such “steering” by anyone in this village. So much for getting our voices heard.
None of these three candidates has earned my support. If you share my disappointment, ignore these candidates and write in the name of any person of character and honesty in our village. Chose one who has displayed the essential knowledge of the laws broken as give-aways to developers continue. Chose one who has the courage fight corruption. Chose one who can turn our slavish regulatory boards from rubber stamps for developers into the powerful boards they are meant to be.
Who knows? Perhaps such a trustee could start a new era of a local government that is responsible to its local citizens.
Evelyn Konrad
Attorney at Law
Southampton Village
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