The East Hampton Town Trustees, having determined that they should catalog their holdings and related properties in the area of Northwest Harbor, will engage two professionals with extensive experience in title research and historical records to do the job.
Steve Boerner, an archivist at the East Hampton Library’s Long Island Collection and a real-property consultant, and Richard Whalen, a former attorney for the trustees, separately answered a request for proposals issued by the governing body earlier this year. The trustees previously hired Mr. Boerner to investigate ownership of the shoal system and foreshore of Gardiner’s Island; he delivered his conclusions in April.
While Francis Bock, the trustees’ clerk, acknowledged during their meeting on Monday that it was “highly unusual” to issue a request for proposal and then merge the responses, Mr. Boerner and Mr. Whalen expressed full confidence in each other and their ability to work as a team.
Mr. Boerner and Mr. Whalen will consider Northwest Harbor, Northwest Creek, Little Northwest Creek, Barnes Meadow and the adjacent creek, Alewife Brook and Pond, the beaches along Northwest Harbor and marshes along the creeks, and trustee roads that traverse state, town, and county parklands. The scope of their work is to include historical documentation, maps, and deeds to determine ownership rights and the various uses of properties in question.
“Northwest Harbor was the town’s original port of call,” Rick Drew, a trustee, said last month. “Ultimately, Sag Harbor evolved into one of the nation’s foremost ports. The trustees sold some land there to members of Sag Harbor Village and New York State.” Ownership disputes, and resulting litigation, have arisen from time to time, he said, citing “350 years of very complicated history.” A comprehensive catalog with supporting evidence of trustee ownership will serve the trustees well in future litigation, and perhaps in helping them to avoid it.
On Monday, Mr. Drew asked that Mr. Boerner and Mr. Whalen “take a thoughtful, systematic approach to cataloging properties in the area of Northwest Harbor, researching ownership rights going back to the patents and original grants.” Together, they are uniquely qualified to catalog properties and clarify ownership, he said. “It’s important that it be clear where the trustees have ownership rights.” The project will provide the trustees “a full catalog with a depth of research behind it,” he said.
Given that the trustees will hire two professionals when they had sought one, Mr. Boerner and Mr. Whalen both agreed to reduce the compensation they had initially sought by approximately 25 percent.
Mr. Boerner “has a unique skill set and unique background,” Mr. Whalen told the trustees on Monday. “He has things I can’t bring to the table, I think I have things he can’t bring to the table. I think that’s why we do make a good team.”
“If either one of them took it on,” Mr. Drew said, “they’d probably end up hiring someone like the other to do certain aspects of the project anyway.”
The trustees asked that Mr. Boerner and Mr. Whalen produce a progress report by year’s end.