An attorney who had threatened to sue the Town of East Hampton over its allowing the East Hampton Library’s Authors Night benefit to be held on an Amagansett field purchased with community preservation fund money, said yesterday that he has reached an agreement with the town, under which officials will adopt a “suitable” management plan for the 19-acre site, popularly known as 555 Montauk Highway, by the end of this year.
Consequently, said Dan Mongan, a year-round resident of Amagansett, he will not take legal action to prevent the library’s annual fund-raiser and children’s fair from being held there on Aug. 10 and 11.
Town Councilman David Lys, however, disputed the commitment to meet the year-end deadline and lamented that Mr. Mongan had wielded “the specter of legal action” in discussions with the board.
Authors Night and the children’s fair were held at the 555 Montauk Highway site for the first time last year, angering some of the hamlet’s residents, who complained about a crush of traffic on a busy summer weekend. They were angered again in April, when the town board authorized special-event permits to hold the events there again this year.
Mr. Mongan was among those who complained to the board about the use of the property, which the town purchased in 2014 for approximately $10.5 million. Holding Authors Night and the children’s fair on the property, they said, did not comport with proper C.P.F. usage: preservation of open space for agriculture, recreation, or historical preservation.
“There has been discussion between me and the town, ongoing for about two months,” Mr. Mongan said yesterday. “I had sent them a letter recently, when a resolution was not happening,” asserting that Authors Night and the children’s fair constitute inappropriate use of the site. “The discussion headed to what appeared to be an impasse,” he said. “I said, ‘I’m going to take you to court unless I hear from you by Friday.’ ” Ultimately, he said, the sides reached an agreement on Tuesday.
“I’m not going to pursue an injunction against the event,” Mr. Mongan said. “I’m relieved, but also very interested in getting a long-term solution.”
In a statement issued yesterday, Mr. Mongan, who is a trustee of the Amagansett Library, said that the 555 property “is classified as ‘farmland’ in the town’s overall 2019 Management and Stewardship Plan. The property currently lacks a legally required specific management plan.” Parking, he said, will be its primary use during the fund-raiser, estimating that more than half of the 19 acres will be covered with vehicles. “Parking isn’t agriculture. It isn’t open space. And it isn’t recreation,” he said. “Limited ancillary parking on the periphery or adjoining C.P.F. land may be permissible, but never parking as a primary use.”
Mr. Mongan concluded that the events are not legally permissible, and said so to the town board and its lawyers. Though board members argued that reading was a form of “recreation” and the event promotes literacy, “In fact, Authors Night is a hundred-dollar-a-head fund-raiser,” he said, “a cocktail party where guests can mingle with notable authors and purchase books.”
Mr. Lys said yesterday that a management plan has been publicly discussed at meetings of the Amagansett Citizens Advisory Committee, at a town board work session, and by the town’s nature preserve committee — all “without the specter of legal action.” It is, in fact, in the town board’s “queue to do,” he said, “and will probably be started in the fall, after we finish what’s on the agenda now.” However, Mr. Lys sounded dubious about the year-end deadline. “I don’t know if I can put a hard deadline on it,” he said.
“The nature preserve committee drafts the plans,” Scott Wilson, the town’s director of land acquisition and management, said yesterday, “and I believe they’re just starting. How long it takes to get something adopted is partially dependent on how fast they can move and how fast the town board can get it in front of a work session and subsequently a public hearing.” The committee meets once a month, he noted, and any revisions and modifications to the plan would prolong the process and postpone its adoption.
The site has hosted the annual Soldier Ride, a fund-raiser for the Wounded Warrior Project, for several years, including this year’s event on July 20, but apart from storage of modular housing units has otherwise not been used since the town’s purchase.
Authors Night had previously been held in a field at 4 Maidstone Lane in East Hampton Village, private property that is no longer available for the library’s use. The town board’s decision to hold it at the 555 site was “a slap in the face to Amagansett residents,” Jim MacMillan, chairman of the hamlet’s citizens advisory committee, told the board when it authorized the special-event permits again this year. Mr. MacMillan complained of 2,000 additional cars coming into the hamlet on a high-summer weekend.
Councilman Jeff Bragman was the lone town board member to side with the Amagansett residents, saying in April that “an elegant cocktail party for the library” was inconsistent with the purpose of the town’s purchase of the property.
But few sites in the town can accommodate an event of the scale of Authors Night, Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc said at that time, adding that there was “no better purpose” for such a site than an event to promote libraries and literacy. For 362 days per year there is no activity at 555, he said, but the board is charged with balancing the various interests and demands of the entire community.
Councilwoman Sylvia Overby noted in April that the East Hampton Library is a tax-supported institution and a pillar of the community’s character. Moreover, she said, she had attended Authors Night last year and saw neither disruption nor increased traffic on back roads, as some residents had maintained.