At Debate, Differing Views On Housing Woes

Incumbents and candidates for East Hampton’s supervisor and town board attempted to contrast their positions on a range of issues, including code enforcement, aircraft noise, and affordable housing, in a debate held on Saturday at the Emergency Services Building in East Hampton Village.

The debate, co-hosted by The Star and the East Hampton Group for Good Government, included Supervisor Larry Cantwell, Councilwoman Sylvia Overby, and Councilman Peter Van Scoyoc, who are incumbent Democrats, Tom Knobel, Republican candidate for supervisor, and Margaret Turner and Lisa Mulhern-Larsen, Republican candidates for town board.

While the candidates often agreed with one another on problems and solutions alike, some distinctions came into view when the community preservation fund, and potential alternative uses of it, were raised.

All agreed that the lack of affordable housing is an acute and far-reaching problem. “This has become an even bigger issue every single year as property values skyrocket,” Mr. Van Scoyoc said, adding that 90 percent of the town’s teachers could live here 25 years ago, versus just 10 percent today. “This is not just about the working poor,” he said. “This is about our middle class and the pressures that have been brought upon us.”

The board has adopted a townwide housing plan and is working to implement it, he said, including expanding the use of apartments above commercial buildings in limited business overlay districts.

Ms. Overby pointed to the Manor Houses, a condominium complex proposed for Accabonac Road in East Hampton that she said is at present awaiting approval from the Suffolk County Department of Health Services, as evidence of the town board’s progress.

But Ms. Turner criticized the lengthy delay in its construction. “For it to take 10 years to come to this point, there’s something radically wrong with the process,” she said. The town’s effort to create affordable housing, she said, “is not working.”

Mr. Knobel proposed that the town lobby the State Legislature to increase the amount of an improved property’s cost that is exempt from the 2-percent real estate transfer tax — the source of the community preservation fund —from $250,000 to $500,000. “Why we don’t enable people to obtain their own house, when it’s an easily achieved fix, is a question, and we should resolve it,” he said.

Ms. Mulhern-Larsen proposed bolstering police, code enforcement, and fire marshal personnel with full and part-time officers. It would probably be unpopular, she said, but “I would look into reducing the C.P.F. by a percentage, and take a part of that percentage and use it for the people of the town.”

The current town board has both increased code enforcement’s personnel and upgraded integrated training of enforcement departments, Ms. Overby and Mr. Van Scoyoc said. Further, Mr. Van Scoyoc said, the C.P.F. “was created to protect open space, water quality, recreation, and historic aspects of our town. . . . You can’t raid C.P.F. to use for other things.”

Mr. Cantwell pointed to code enforcement officers’ use of field computers as a sign of improved ability and efficiency. “In addition, we set up an online complaint form, which now makes it easier for people to make a complaint.”

Ms. Mulhern-Larsen then clarified her statement on the C.P.F., proposing legislation to create a separate fund “that would help the people and programs of this community,” citing as an example the need for a new senior citizens center.

Mr. Cantwell responded with a continued defense of the C.P.F., citing more than $200 million raised in East Hampton. “Many of the problems we have in this community still result from overdevelopment and overcrowding,” he said. “One of the ways to get a handle on that is through preservation of open space. . . . We’ve acquired over 150 properties and protected important wetlands, harbors and bays, farmlands, woodland, water recharge overlay districts. That should not be raided and used for some other purpose like code enforcement.”

The incumbents defended their implementation of curfews at East Hampton Airport. Mr. Van Scoyoc said that the only path to controlling air traffic and its attendant noise was to refuse Federal Aviation Administration funding, instead maintaining the airport through direct user fees as it is now. Legal challenges to the curfews imposed by the town are the work of “out-of-state commercial interests interested in their own profits, and not the quality of life of our citizens,” he said.

Mr. Cantwell asserted that the airport could remain self-sustaining without F.A.A. funding. The town’s airport fund can support needed safety improvements and a legal defense of the recently imposed restrictions, he said, “and we will fight as hard as we can to maintain the restrictions in place . . . as long as we can to provide relief to people being negatively impacted by noise.”

Mr. Knobel disagreed. “When the town goes for bonding, it is noted that the town is involved in litigation, and it is a factor that bond counsel looks at to determine the cost of financing,” he said. At the same time, “we have to try and lessen the noise out of the airport by making any operations that deviate from what we believe is acceptable be excessively costly.”

All six candidates supported the United States Army Corps of Engineers’ beach stabilization project for downtown Montauk, slated to begin next month. While many called the project to protect the hamlet’s commercial district imperfect, the plan is essential, they agreed, at least as an interim step to a permanent solution.

Only Ms. Overby, who is the town board’s liaison to its energy sustainability advisory committee, spoke of the plan in a larger context. “This is a global issue that we have to consider,” she said. “Sea level rise is happening. We’re losing glaciers by an amount 10 times what we thought we would lose them by at this point in time. . . . This isn’t going to stop just because we put an artificial dune there.”

She spoke of the energy sustainability committee’s advocacy of photovoltaic panel arrays and microgrids in the town as a means of reducing fossil-fuel consumption. “That won’t make a global difference,” she said, “but if every community on the planet started to do this, we would be able to stop what’s going to happen.”