The Mast-Head: Whatchamacallit
There is a political divide in East Hampton but it’s not the one you might think. Instead, on lawn signs and in letters to the editor, local candidates are said to be running for the “town council.” Though the East Hampton Town Board has forever been called “town board,” “East Hampton Town Council” is becoming more common unfortunately, even though it has no basis in law or history.
White colonial government began here in 1649 with a town meeting like those called to order to this very day in Massachusetts, where most of the first Englishmen here came from. Townsmen met roughly once a month to make laws, parcel out land, deal with livestock, and settle disputes. Any freeholder who did not show up was to be fined 12 pence. The phrase “town meeting” lasted until after the American Revolution, when New York State codified a new governing structure for its towns and villages.
Poking around in the East Hampton Library’s digitized documents, I found in “Minutes of Meetings Town Board” from 1903 to 1918, the first entry in the volume, written in slanting script on April 18, 1903: “At a meeting of the Town Board this day . . . Benjamin H. Barnes was elected as Chairman of the Board for the ensuing Term.”
If The Star’s coverage over time can be said to reflect common usage, “town board” wins the popularity contest by a mile; “town council” shows up now and then over the years, but hardly ever and often in other contexts. The earliest mention of a town council here that I have been able to find was in a 1930 wire story about a Brookhaven Town councilman. In the library’s digital archive, the earliest Star reference to a town board was in January 1918 — the collection’s first searchable year — reporting the swearing-in of Justice of the Peace Hand in front of the East Hampton Town Board.
Where this town council thing comes from I don’t know. It could be that when political advisers from out of town see that a candidate is seeking a position as councilman or councilwoman they assume that means the panel itself is the council, tone deaf as that might be.
The idea of a council also implies there is no supervisor. The supervisor is a member of the five-person town board — as precisely set out in New York State law. Or maybe eliminating the supervisor seeks to elevate the position above the rest of the board, making the post a power unto itself in the mold of our current imperial presidency, unchecked by Congress and packing the courts.
Those candidates today whose signs and advertisements state they are seeking a place on the town council clearly have not paid attention to tradition, to put it mildly. I wonder just what else they do not know about East Hampton.