The East Hampton Town Board formally decided Tuesday that a proposed senior citizens center on a seven-acre parcel at 403 Abraham’s Path in Amagansett would have little environmental impact and did not need a lengthy environmental review.
Town Supervisor Kathee Burke-Gonzalez will introduce a bid for tree clearing on the parcel at tonight’s meeting. Bids are due Dec. 5 and work could begin shortly after that.
Before the vote, John Armentano, a lawyer with Farrell Fritz, reviewed the Monroe Doctrine with the board. Usually, the town would need to follow its own laws, zoning and others, when building any project. However, if it determines that the project provides an important community need, it can seek to apply the doctrine and be immune from its own zoning laws, which is what it did in the case of the senior center. The doctrine has been applied in the past when municipalities build libraries, firehouses, and other structures for the public benefit.
Mr. Armentano went through a list of nine factors to determine if the board could apply in this case and determined that it could. He noted that while the board would not be held to the rules, “You will be receiving input from the boards that would usually review this project,” like the planning board and the architectural review board.
“This has not been a rushed process,” he said.
“I mean the SEQRA [State Environmental Quality Review Act] process took a year,” agreed Town Supervisor Kathee Burke-Gonzalez.
Nonetheless, that did not stop Jeff Bragman, a town resident, attorney, and former councilman, from denouncing the action in the public comment portion of the meeting. “You’re clearing 80 percent of the site, the majority of which is roosting and foraging habitat for the northern long-eared bat,” he said. “It’s inconceivable that any private developer could propose this scale of development and impact and get it through any kind of rigorous environmental review,” he said. “Bats are important. The northern long-eared bat is an endangered species. It may go extinct. There has been a 90-percent crash in the bat population,” he said, and they are “site fidelic,” meaning they return to the same place year after year. The report on the bats issued by Nelson Pope and Voorhis, whose “compromised reputation” he criticized, was “predictably flawed,” he said.
“You’re now preparing to ‘neg dec’ it, which means, for anyone who is listening, that this 22,000-square-foot building has no adverse environmental impacts and you’re surely on your way to issue a Monroe exception. This project would require an 88-percent variance in clearing. You have slighted the laws and protections that have preserved East Hampton for more than 40 years in your haste to hurry this thing through.”
“I applaud him for what he had to say,” said Rona Klopman, who called in immediately after to discuss the new plan to light downtown Amagansett.
In another consequential vote, the board adopted the 2025 preliminary budget, which now becomes the adopted budget and takes effect on Jan. 1.
