Seasonal Thinking
The Star carried a meaningful statistic in a front-page story last winter that bears repeating as another summer ends: Fifty-two percent of the houses in the Town of East Hampton now are second homes. That represents a combined year-round and second-home population of 25,000. A 1996 update of the Southampton Comprehensive Plan estimated the year-round and second-home population of that town at exactly 50-50, representing a population of 90,000.
Second-home owners, not to be confused with the rest of the seasonal population (vacationers at motels and bed-and-breakfasts, house guests, and day-trippers), now have at least as big a stake in what happens on the South Fork as year-rounders.
Land preservation perhaps tops the list. East Hampton and Southampton Towns have said and done a lot in the last year to bolster the preservation of open lands. Bond acts have been approved in each town to raise $5 million for acquisitions. In Southampton, a special tax was approved that is estimated to raise another $18 to $20 million over the next 20 years.
In East Hampton, the town and a coalition of interested organizations hope to see a "transfer tax" law on the November ballot that would put 2 percent of the sales of improved properties over $250,000 (and vacant land sales over $100,000) into a dedicated fund for open space.
All this is to the good, but it is far from adequate.
As many voices and as many dollars as possible will have to be raised if the South Fork is to meet the challenges of explosive growth without falling from grace. Those voices and dollars have to found in the political arena.
For example, at press time it was still unclear whether Governor Pataki was going to sign the legislation allowing the East Hampton transfer tax to go to referendum. Under pressure from powerful lobbies elsewhere, it seemed possible that he would act against this town's best interest, even though a strong coalition which includes representatives of the real estate industry here has fought for the measure.
On Martha's Vineyard, conservation groups recently called for the rate of preservation there to be doubled. Unless another 5,400 acres can be saved from development through a variety of means in the next decade, they say, there will be losses "to the Vineyard's character, additional pressures on open space, declining quality of water and shellfish, and tax increases to support municipal services."
The cost of such preservation? An estimated $270 million, or $20,000 an acre. That's a fairly low average price per acre for coveted parcels on the South Fork.
Three weeks ago in The Star, the former Assemblyman Arthur J. Kremer - a savvy politician - explained why he chooses to vote in Bridgehampton rather than Manhattan, where he also lives.
"A vote counts more here than in any other place," he told us. "Elections are decided by a handful of votes, and I don't want mine to be swallowed up."
Mr. Kremer may have been thinking about the effect of a single vote on state and national elections, while we are particularly concerned with the influence second-home voters are apt to have at home.
Although it may be heresy in some quarters, it is our belief that those who have made a commitment to the South Fork by building or buying a second home here must become active participants in local decision-making, that is, in the democratic process, if we are to save the goose that laid the golden egg.
The way to start is by registering to vote. The deadline is Oct. 10.