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An Energy Proposal

An Energy Proposal

The project could produce on the order of 40 megawatts of electricity
By
Editorial

    For those concerned about sustainable energy, the news recently out of East Hampton Town Hall is a nice surprise. Officials and three private companies are racing to put together a proposal to be presented to the state Public Service Electric and Gas Company, PSEG Long Island, for large-scale solar installations at town-owned sites. Taken together, the project could produce on the order of 40 megawatts of electricity, enough to power as many as 8,000 houses. By selling power to the utility, the public-private partnership would be estimated to spin off annual income for the town — as much as $800,000 — through site rentals.

    For PSEG, the successor to the Long Island Power Authority, this kind of arrangement is good business sense. Solar installations stand to provide less-expensive electricity than fossil fuel, nuclear, or other sources. They also provide security through a redundancy of generating stations spread more widely across the grid.

    For East Hampton Town, the plan offers a way to generate income from unexpected and unused sites, such as roofs and portions of former landfills not suitable for much else. Other municipalities, corporations, and educational institutions have entered into similar arrangements with solar power companies with favorable results. Best of all,  these projects generally come with minimal, if any, costs to the property owners.

    For residents, additional town income would help avoid tax increases and cuts in services. East Hampton Town has a very tight budget, and every bit of income helps. Of importance as well would be satisfaction in knowing the community was taking a giant step toward a more responsible and environmentally conscious future.

    We hope this ambitious town undertaking will also help motivate homeowners and businesses to consider solar installations of their own. PSEG Long Island inherited LIPA’s renewable energy programs of rebates and incentives. With federal and state tax credits for installations, a homeowner’s out-of-pocket cost for a 5,000-kilowatt system might be under $9,000, with a payback period of as few as six years.

    Solar may not work in all locations, and the up-front cost may be out of range for many people, but with the town taking such a massive endeavor, residents can be proud that their government is looking to lead the way.

 

Budget Anomalies Were Left Behind

Budget Anomalies Were Left Behind

What is emerging is a picture of a budget that was fudged to make it appear balanced
By
Editorial

    What appear to be alarmingly optimistic projections and unfunded expenses are buried in the 2014 East Hampton Town budget. How the town deals with these stumbling blocks, which were left for the new town board by the previous administration, will be an early test. What is emerging is a picture of a budget that was fudged to make it appear balanced — hardly one that ex-Supervisor Bill Wilkinson would have left for himself had he expected to remain in office.

     One example of unlikely revenue is a probably impossible 21-percent increase in the fines and fees meted out by the Justice Court. No major changes in ordinance enforcement nor new hires have been announced that would support such an increase, and it is difficult to see how the current staff of four inspectors and a director could ramp up efforts enough to meet a projection that shows revenue rising by more than $200,000. Reality, it seems, is taking some of the shine off the Wilkinson financial miracle.  

 

    It is interesting to note, however, an initiative in the Town of Islip to revitalize its code and public safety enforcement, which was reported in Newsday earlier this month. It resulted in a huge jump in fines, swelling town coffers by $900,000. There, as in East Hampton, a substantial proportion of Justice Court cases concerned illegal, multiple housing.

    Part of the rise in fines had to do with a boost in the number of investigators and fire marshals, but part also was motivated by a willingness at the top for a more aggressive approach, including lots of fieldwork and close cooperation with police. Here, where obvious violations go unchecked for months, if not years, restoring faith in government and balancing the books would suggest that this is a tactic the town board should consider.  

 

    Another iffy item is $350,000 from an anticipated sale of a town-owned office suite. It appears on the books even though no contract has been inked.

    The town board has already considered the waste-disposal fees paid by homeowners, which are set to rise sharply in order to make up for what otherwise would be a six-digit shortfall in the sanitation budget.

    Such is the worrying state of finances at the outset of 2014.  These gaps and rosy projections also contribute to concern about the quality of the oversight that was supposed to come from the state comptroller’s office. As a condition of the town’s borrowing to cover McGintee-era deficits, the state was expected to pay more attention than it apparently has.    

    If there ever was a moment for the town’s volunteer budget and finance committee to sharpen its pencils it is now. Wedged between the state 2-percent tax cap and overstated revenue expectations, the East Hampton Town Board may find itself having to ask property owners to swallow tax hikes or to make very deep cuts in services next year. There will be hard work ahead, and leveling with the taxpayers about what is really going on will have to be high on the list of priorities.

State Must Lend a Hand

State Must Lend a Hand

The State of New York, despite a projected budget surplus in the coming fiscal year, appears poised to cut environmental funding
By
Editorial

    There is some good news on the environment for eastern Long Island and some that’s not so good. Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone said recently that water quality was now his administration’s top priority. In East Hampton, Democrats listed groundwater and the areas’s bays and harbors among their key platform planks last year. Yet the State of New York, despite a projected budget surplus in the coming fiscal year, appears poised to cut environmental funding.

    According to the New York League of Conservation Voters, a watchdog group, Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s proposed 2014-15 spending plan would actually reduce spending by the Department of Environmental Conservation and keep essentially flat the amount set aside for a $157 million fund that helps pay for habitat and drinking water protections, historic sites, and saving family farms.

    Environmental organizations have said that this fund, which draws on a dedicated real estate transfer tax, should be strengthened, going to as much as $200 million for the coming year. The League of Conservation Voters has noted that the state’s penury on environmental protection is in sharp contrast to generous increases for what it described as technological upgrades.

    For his part, Mr. Bellone has announced that nitrogen pollution amounts to “public water enemy number one.” This is a very welcome point of view from a top official in a region dependent on healthy waterways and whose drinking water comes solely from the ground beneath our feet. Public support is there for doing something about it. As many as 9,700 county residents listened in on a conference call at the end of January during which Mr. Bellone described his concerns.

    Next will come the hard work of figuring out how to make things better. Roughly two-thirds of Suffolk residences are not connected to a municipal sewer system; instead they dispose of liquid waste in often outdated septic systems. Mr. Bellone has said he is going to work to find solutions. East Hampton Town commissioned a study last year to gauge the scale of the problem here and propose ways to protect water supplies and marine ecosystems. Nitrogen abundance has been linked to massive plankton blooms, such as the devastating “brown tides” of the 1980s that nearly wiped out the scallop — and this may be tied to what we all put in the ground every day.

    We expect the present town board will work long and hard on the issue, but money and manpower from the state will be essential to success. Long Island residents should be worried that Albany is not doing enough to protect these critically important resources and demand more support for local initiatives like Mr. Bellone’s and the plans being developed in East Hampton Town. The environment, particularly drinking water and marine areas, should receive equal attention from Mr. Cuomo and the Legislature.

 

Get Ready Now

Get Ready Now

East Hampton Town should push back — hard
By
Editorial

    East Hampton Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell has begun working with a number of other officials on revising the town’s gatherings law, with an eye toward controlling the burgeoning nightlife scene in Montauk. Meanwhile, a committee asked to study taxicab operations, including rabid price-gouging, has been revitalized. The work is long overdue, and but part of what it will take to make the easternmost hamlet a little less of a no-holds-barred party destination for summer 2014.

    Town Hall faces a considerable obstacle in the form of precedents allowed by the previous administration’s approval of huge outdoor events and the questionable conversion of several old-time motels into swank and far-larger social hubs. Among these was the over-the-top analysis supported by the then-town attorney’s office that the former Ronjo Motel in Montauk’s downtown could not only have a bar, but could operate with hundreds of people on the premises at all hours, far more than its handful of guestrooms could accommodate.

    Now it is rumored that the new owner of at least one other Montauk motel may hope to go the nightclub route, and there are surely others watching closely to see just how far they too could push matters. East Hampton Town should push back — hard. Now is the time for officials and residents alike to shift the balance away from the handful of business owners who put making a buck ahead of community.

    One key area the town board should look into is new rules about outdoor occupancy. Places like Montauk’s Sloppy Tuna, Surf Lodge, Ruschmeyer’s, and the Montauk Beach House, and Cyril’s Fish House on Napeague, are, under current rules, essentially allowed to pack as many people as they can onto their properties. This has prompted season after season of noise complaints from neighbors and litter and congestion problems. Setting limits consistent with each business’s ability to provide off-street parking would be a good starting place.

    As to the beaches, officials should give serious consideration to banning alcohol consumption where and when lifeguards are present. And they should prohibit unenclosed bonfires within several hundred feet of road ends and along the entire downtown Montauk beach. There are simply too many people here in season, making too much noise and leaving too much of a mess behind. The sooner Town Hall updates the code to accommodate the new reality the better off we all will be.

 

No to Amagansett Rezone Request

No to Amagansett Rezone Request

East Hampton Town’s comprehensive plan, adopted in 2005, flat-out says no to rezoning any parcels in Amagansett for new commercial development.
By
Editorial

    The nice old house and outbuildings at 208 Montauk Highway in Amagansett had been for sale for quite a while with no buyer emerging when the owner approached East Hampton Town Hall for help. The result is a hearing at East Hampton Town Hall tonight on a zone change that just might hasten a closing. But the request, to go from a residential designation with a limited-business overlay within the Amagansett Historic District to full-on commercial, should be rejected.

    Formerly Balasses House Antiques, the site had been occupied more recently by an ambitious and fascinating gallery, one that enjoyed a strong following for its many events. But the asking price of $2.6 million is apparently on the high side for the economics of the office, salon, gallery, or antiques shop uses allowed under current zoning, or at least that is what the lack of a buyer suggests. A second-floor apartment in the main building is an increasingly rare commodity, though not quite income-producing enough either.

    So sometime last year the unidentified owner approached the former town board majority, seeking to have the roughly half-acre property rezoned to central business, a more or less anything-goes designation, rather than chop the price to something more reasonable. In an L.B.O., as the limited business zone is known, you have to figure a $2.6 million sale isn’t going to happen; in central business, well, ka-ching, ka-ching. And that was the tune to which the former town board majority danced. Only a technical error delayed a hearing and probable yes vote before the end of their term. 

    East Hampton Town’s comprehensive plan, adopted in 2005, flat-out says no to rezoning any parcels in Amagansett for new commercial development. The current town board need look no further for justification in denying the request. Moreover, the town should tread very lightly when it comes to properties in any of its critically important historic districts.

    The Balasses House request should be a test for Supervisor Larry Cantwell and the rest of the newly constituted board in putting community interests first and respecting the work of those who came before them. In the end, property owners’ problems in inking a deal at a price of their own choosing is not enough to justify changing zoning, overriding the comprehensive plan, or undermining historic preservation goals.

 

Diversity Needed On Appointed Boards

Diversity Needed On Appointed Boards

The prime examples are the planning, zoning, and architectural review boards
By
Editorial

    Supervisor-elect Larry Cantwell announced the names of the new East Hampton Town attorney’s office staff this week. While judgment must be reserved until the public gets to know Elizabeth Vail and the members of her team, their résumés appear to be strong. Next comes the task of sorting out the town’s appointed boards, in particular deciding who should lead them.

    The prime examples are the planning, zoning, and architectural review boards. It is difficult to overstate just how important these boards are. They are the main line of defense against ill-thought projects and overbuilding. It is important to note that with so much of the town already subdivided, it is often the seemingly small decisions, when aggregated, that can cause major changes. The fight for East Hampton has, in effect, moved to our backyards.

    Builders, business owners, and some homeowners have lamented that the process takes too long. To them, we point out that, indeed, complicated projects will require detailed review, as will those in environmentally sensitive areas. Conversely, work for which zoning variances or site plan studies are not needed will get building permits speedily. The complainers should get over it.

    One thing that must be considered is whether a distinct tilt toward the appointment of people in real estate, building, architecture, and related fields should be countered. Roughly half the 17 people who make up the planning and zoning boards and the A.R.B. are either in these professions or in a closely allied industry. Residents should also be troubled that there are only four women among the total. As bad is that there is not a single African-American and only one Latino among the town’s key appointed boards.

    As Mr. Cantwell and the rest of the town board look over candidates for 10 open positions — and the chairmanships — they should keep in mind that diversity of backgrounds and between the sexes is more than warranted.

Taking Aim at Deer

Taking Aim at Deer

A spike in deer populations in the eastern United States has come at the same time as sharp increases in the type and number of disease-carrying ticks
By
Editorial

    Online petitions and a well-funded legal challenge aside, South Fork local officials who are moving toward large-scale killing of deer, politely called culling, have a difficult time ahead. Leadership is never easy when policy gets mixed up in emotion, and wildlife management is one of the most emotional aspects of government. Few other issues draw as much attention and heat from the public, making the job of deciding how to proceed fraught with tension from the start. But rational, dispassionate policy-making must be foremost in such instances. The key for officials is studying precedents in other communities and what science says.

    The problems are well understood. A spike in deer populations in the eastern United States has come at the same time as sharp increases in the type and number of disease-carrying ticks. Deer cause huge and nearly unmeasurable damage to landscaping and crops. Those struck by vehicles often meet terrible, painful deaths, which are heart-wrenching for us. Deer have radically altered the forest understory in many places, leading to habitat loss for other native species, such as songbirds and small mammals, and threatening biodiversity.

    Deer are not the only large animals for which aggressive control measures are being taken. Black bears as nearby as suburban New Jersey have adapted to life close to people and are being targeted by wildlife managers. Time magazine featured a cover story this month about what it called America’s “pest problem.” Expanded hunting and professional harvests have been pursued from Florida to California. Closer to home, Block Island officials recently voted to hire sharpshooters to reduce the deer herd from 800 to 100 individuals, according to low estimates. The target there is to maintain the deer population at 10 to 15 per square mile.

    No one knows for sure precisely how many deer there are on the South Fork, and their distribution is not in even numbers across the island. The Town of East Hampton’s two surveys came in with widely disparate numbers — 877 in a March aerial study and 3,293 in a 2006 roadside count. Estimates of the density in East Hampton Town are all over the map, but could be as high as 100 per square mile. Though a clearer total should be known before a long-term program is undertaken, by all appearances there are just too many deer. There are few residents who have not at one time or another struck a deer on the road or had someone in the family touched by tick-borne illness. And now there is a rising count of people with a serious and life-threatening allergy to red meat caused by the bite of the lone star tick.

    Those opposed to hunting claim there is no valid link between deer and ticks, but scientific studies say otherwise. Large, warm-blooded hosts such as deer have been clearly implicated in this regard — one must not overlook that it is the deer tick that carries Lyme disease as well as babesiosis, ehrlichia, and borrelia. True, the rodents that larval ticks first feed on are believed to be the reservoirs for the illness-causing spirochetes, but it is undisputable that concentrations of all tick varieties have soared along with the deer’s numbers.

    A public health crisis is under way, with deer clearly implicated. Research has demonstrated that maintaining deer at 8 to 12 per square mile essentially eliminates ticks and the diseases in humans. Deer birth control has not proven to be an adequate alternative to hunting. Nor does applying pesticides at feeding stations solve the problems of habitat devastation and deer-vehicle collisions. It is also not acceptable for residents to have to avoid the woods and wild places for fear of ticks in other than the coldest months.

    Those passionately opposed to the planned killing appear to overlook the fact that the present environment is one in which nature’s balance has been overturned by centuries of human presence. In the case of deer and other highly adaptable wildlife, there still is no substitute for lethal management.

 

Open Meetings, Open Agendas

Open Meetings, Open Agendas

Mr. Cantwell has said he will see that agendas are circulated at least two days before each meeting and work session
By
Editorial

    A practice that East Hampton Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell described at the first meeting of his tenure would be a simple fix to a fundamental problem of the previous administration, which frequently added resolutions on both routine and controversial matters to meeting agendas at the last minute and without public notice.

    Some of the more notable instances of this were several airport matters, scheduling a hearing for zoning changes at the behest of the Amagansett 555 developers, selling town land to a Montauk motel owner, and an apparently punitive audit of the town’s Human Resources Department.

    Also troublesome was the previous town leadership’s withholding of meeting agendas entirely — with the unfortunate exception of a private email sent to key sympathizers — until moments before meetings were to convene. Mr. Cantwell has said he will see that agendas are circulated at least two days before each meeting and work session.

    State open meetings law requires only that meetings be announced in advance so that members of the public can attend if they so choose. The law is also specific about what constitutes a meeting and what records must be kept, but it has little to say on the subject of agendas. It is clear, however, that prior distribution of a list of subjects to be covered is both standard practice and good government. A two-day rule, such as Mr. Cantwell has proposed, would keep interested parties — and minority party members — in the loop. This shift toward a more open Town Hall is to be commended.

    A corollary is that the board should decline to hear requests for mass gathering permits that do not meet the required application time frame. Those planning large events, which have in some cases proved controversial, should be expected to provide materials in a timely manner; they should be aware that they can no longer be the beneficiaries of limited scrutiny by town officials and the public, which occurred when late requests were considered. If there is time to plan a big party, there is time to get an early okay.

 

Long-Term Options Re: Sea Level Rise

Long-Term Options Re: Sea Level Rise

The waters have come up about a foot every 100 years and are coming faster
By
Editorial

    The good news in a recent New York Times Science section story about sea level rise is that Montauk’s tide records lag behind those in places along the eastern United States coastline that are becoming inundated the fastest. The bad news is that the advantage is not by much. According to the numbers, the waters have come up about a foot every 100 years and are coming faster, with the greatest increases in the mid-Atlantic states. This means that the landward migration of the shoreline will continue unabated here, and even get faster. Property owners and local officials who ignore this are simply kidding themselves.

    In December, the Eastern Long Island Chapter of the Surfrider Foundation, an environmental group, issued a statement supporting major changes along the Montauk oceanfront. It called for one of the Army Corps of Engineers options: rebuilding protective dunes after removing several motels and residences that are now in harm’s way. This echoed a view expressed on this page earlier in 2013 to the effect that think-big solutions were the best choice.

    Pumping sand in front of exposed properties at this late stage would be a temporary solution at best and a waste of both money and precious time before a better one is at hand. Rather than outright property condemnation, however, town and federal officials should consider more creative redevelopment of the seaward edge of downtown Montauk, perhaps granting motel owners air rights over existing retail parcels or the use of nearby lots that are vacant or underutilized.

    Meanwhile, away from the most obvious at-risk spots, shoreline restoration projects continue. These, too, must be re-evaluated and incentives found to coax property owners into long-term decisions. East Hampton Town needs to rethink fast how it interacts with the waters that surround us. The sea will not wait while policymakers wonder what to do.

Flood Insurance Reform Needs Further Reform

Flood Insurance Reform Needs Further Reform

An increasing number of property owners here and around the country have become aware of steep increases in their premiums, the result of the Biggert-Waters Flood Insurance Reform Act of 2012
By
Editorial

    New York Senators Charles E. Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand and Representative Tim Bishop are among a bipartisan group of Washington lawmakers pushing for a second round of reform of the recently reformed National Flood Insurance Program. Their call for action comes as an increasing number of property owners here and around the country have become aware of steep increases in their premiums, the result of the Biggert-Waters Flood Insurance Reform Act of 2012, which sought to answer the program’s longstanding deficit. Debate in the Senate on a new Homeowner Flood Insurance Affordability Act is expected this week. From the perspective of many on the East End of Long Island, change is necessary.

    The intention of the authors of the earlier reform of federal flood insurance was good: Since Hurricane Katrina, the program had accumulated a deficit as large as $25 billion. Biggert-Waters was supposed to address that by phasing in premium hikes to reflect actual risks and reduce the subsidy from American taxpayers at large, which kept premiums low. In the new math, the safer a property from flood damage, the lower the cost. The reverse was applied to the most at-risk properties, as set out on federal maps.

    As things unfolded, however, the increases soared beyond belief — as much as 1,000 percent in some cases; in isolated examples rates were said to be leaping from $4,000 a year to more than $40,000. As a result, real estate deals have been jeopardized or called off. Outrage is mounting.

    There is a hidden risk to the federal program if prices rise to the point that some property owners decide to drop coverage. In that scenario, Congress might well be inclined to spend billions following the next major flood or hurricane to pay for uninsured losses. It is interesting to note that the $50 billion Hurricane Sandy relief package is just about double the accumulated deficit of the entire program over its nearly four decades of existence.

    Reducing taxpayer subsidies for flood insurance is necessary and reasonable. Doing so without destroying real estate markets or pricing some people out of their homes is reasonable too. The measures outlined in the proposed affordability act attempt to strike that balance and deserve swift passage.