Skipped Budget Hearing? No Way, Bridgehampton Fire District Says
While Bridgehampton Fire District commissioners say a public hearing on its 2017 budget was held on Oct. 18, as advertised and required by law, some members of the Bridgehampton Fire Department and the public claim they attempted to attend the hearing at the firehouse at the scheduled time, but found the building locked and no district officials in sight.
“They didn’t have a public hearing,” Tim Sieger, the Fire Department's first assistant chief, alleged in an interview last Thursday. He said he, along with Fire Department personnel and a handful of citizens, had arrived at the firehouse by 7 p.m., when the hearing was scheduled to begin. Unable to enter the building, Chief Sieger said, almost everyone left shortly afterward. He said one of the commissioners finally did arrive at the firehouse, but by then it was 7:19 p.m.
In an email to The Star last Thursday, Pam Balserus, the Bridgehampton Fire District secretary, disputed his claim. She said two commissioners were at the firehouse on Oct. 18 “as per our newspaper notice. They were there at 7 p.m. for half an hour and nobody showed up. . . . Any taxpayer had an opportunity to come at 7 p.m. to be heard. No people showed up so it ended at 7:30 as I stated.”
New York State law governing fire districts mandates a public hearing on the annual budget on the third Tuesday of October, but the law does not outline any steps districts must take if a public hearing is not held. Robert Freeman, the executive director of the New York State Committee on Open Government, said there are no formal consequences in such an event unless someone initiates a lawsuit. “Things are left on their own unless a court steps in and says things should not have happened this way.”
The Bridgehampton Fire District commissioners adopted the proposed 2017 budget of approximately $3.32 million on Sept. 14. They discussed the budget again on Sept. 28, but, noting it was possible to adjust it before the Nov. 4 deadline to adopt a final version, left it unchanged and scheduled a public hearing. The commissioners were set to meet again last night. They have until Nov. 7 to file the budget with the Town of Southampton.
Correction: Tim Sieger is the Bridgehampton Fire Department's first assistant chief, not the department chief as stated in an earlier version of this article.