Voters in Southampton Town have a three-way race for supervisor ahead, with Greg Robins, a Republican, and Alex Gregor, the town highway superintendent, who is running on the Independence and Libertarian lines, vying for Jay Schneiderman's job. Mr. Schneiderman, who is finishing his second term, has the backing of the Democratic, Conservative, and Working Families parties.
At a League of Women Voters debate last Thursday, Mr. Schneiderman pointed to his long political career. He was a two-term East Hampton Town supervisor and a Suffolk County Legislator for 12 years before moving to Southampton and becoming its supervisor. "I want to keep Southampton Town moving in the right direction," he told the audience at the Rogers Memorial Library.
He pointed to a 47-percent reduction in the crime rate, an AAA bond rating, the construction of 66 affordable rental housing units, and helping to create the South Fork Commuter Connection, as some of his accomplishments over the last four years, and noted that this was the fourth year in a row that he cut property taxes.
The question of property taxes is what compelled Mr. Robins, a North Sea fire commissioner and retired teacher, to run against Mr. Schneiderman. He had taken issue with the town's property assessment program, in which, he maintains, residents "pay huge amounts in assessments and then are told taxes are low."
Indeed, Southampton’s overall tax assessment rose by 10 percent in 2019 after a full reassessment, which is done every four years. It went up 5 percent in both 2017 and 2018. That does not mean that all tax bills automatically went up, but some neighborhoods were hit harder than others.
In May, the town board approved a two-year freeze on property assessments while a newly appointed committee reviews the town's longstanding policy to adjust assessments based on market trends. Southampton Town remains one of two Long Island towns that assess based on 100-percent full valuation, and reassess every four years.
Mr. Robins said he is concerned residents are being "priced out of their homes" because of rising assessments and rising taxes. He lives in North Sea, which he said has become an "extremely fashionable" place to live. A neighborhood once noted for small cottages like his is now full of McMansions, he said.
He wants to see the town's assessment program be more in line with the rest of the state and that of neighboring East Hampton Town, with properties assessed only when a homeowner sells or does major renovations, instead of "punishing people" for living in neighborhoods where properties are selling at higher and higher prices.
Mr. Gregor, too, complained about reassessments. His corner lot in Hampton Bays, on less than a half an acre, is assessed for more than he and his wife can sell it for, he said, calling the assessment "an imaginary number." He agreed with Mr. Robins that an increase in value should only happen on new construction and major renovations. "The freeze doesn't go into effect until next year. You are already seeing your tax bills now," he said. "I don't know if we can go backward in the assessment, a lot has to do with school taxes."
Mr. Schneiderman said East Hampton Town should not be a model for assessment. There are homes there that have never been reassessed, he said, and it is easy to find a $10 million house that pays less taxes than a $1 million one. "This town was brave,” he said of Southampton, “and politicians paid the price in 2004 for saying we want an equitable system . . . the less the property is worth, the less it should pay."
"It is true that some areas are going up faster than others . . . Mr. Robins happens to live in one of the places," Mr. Schneiderman added. The town board, he said, has chosen "rather than throw the baby out with the bathwater," to put together a team of experts to review the assessment process. Some ideas are already surfacing, he said, including a homestead exemption, which would put a cap on how much an assessment can go up in a given year if the homeowner lives here year-round. "I think we can fix our system. We are working on fixing the system," he said.
"The supervisor seems to like to punish me that my father was smart enough to buy in North Sea," Mr. Robins said, as he took Mr. Schneiderman to task for using an overall increase in the tax roll -- $55.7 billion in 2015 to $73.5 billion in 2020 -- for the decrease in taxes. "That's the pot of gold that Jay uses to lower our taxes."
Mr. Schneiderman laughed that he was being criticized for the increase in the tax roll. "I didn't create this assessment system," he said. "There are some good things about it." Looking at it over time, he added, higher-valued properties are going up a faster rate, and taxes in Southampton remain the lowest on Long Island.
Traffic was also a major topic of debate. Mr. Schneiderman was involved as county legislator in the project to add a lane to County Road 39. "The county road project was no Band-Aid,” he said. “Can you imagine today if we didn't have that extra lane?" He said there was "no silver bullet" to alleviate traffic congestion, but pointed to public transportation, such as the South Fork Commuter Connection, which has added both morning and afternoon trains.
Mr. Gregor said he was more concerned about safety. "County Road 39, you take your life on it," he said, citing drivers who take advantage of sparse traffic to speed. He said police have no way to pull drivers over due to the lack of a shoulder, and suggested that speed cameras might be a solution.
Mr. Robins, who said he held the distinction of perhaps being the only one in the room who had stood on the highway during a holiday weekend directing traffic as a member of the North Sea Fire Department, said he would like to see the middle turning lane utilized as an extra traffic lane during peak hours. He does not want highway businesses impacted, he said, but suggested there might be a compromise at certain hours.
Mr. Schneiderman shot down that idea, and also said the town is not permitted to set up speed cameras on the county road. Perhaps, he said, the traffic light on Montauk Highway at Station Road in Water Mill could become into a blinking light instead, at least from 6 to 8 a.m.
Mr. Gregor, who has been the town’s highway superintendent since 2010, began the evening by talking about his department’s employees, whom he called "unsung heroes" who worked to clean up after last week’s windstorm. He took aim at the supervisor for being largely concerned, he said, with the washover on Dune Road in Hampton Bays, which he called a minor impact on property and not a life safety issue.
Mr. Schneiderman, who helped mobilize 200 county truckloads of sand in a few hours to restore a 750-foot stretch of dune damaged in the storm, had declared a state of emergency, the second such order in a week. He said the move was not just about property, but about protecting the Shinnecock Commercial Fishing Dock there.
An emergency county beach-replenishment project that will dredge 90,000 cubic yards of sand to rebuild the beach and dune line is expected to begin in two to four weeks. Mr. Gregor said the town has not managed that project well, and also pointed to the Ponquogue Beach Pavilion project in Hampton Bays as being $1 million over budget. The historic Hopping House in Bridgehampton is still not finished, he added.
Mr. Schneiderman's running mates for town board are John Bouvier, a Democrat and former NASA engineer who is finishing his first term on the board, and Craig Catalanotto, a Speonk resident. Rick Martel, a business owner, and Charles McArdle, a former police officer, both of whom live in Hampton Bays, are running on the Republican lines. Hannah Pell will be on the Independence line, as will Mr. Bouvier.