Town May Seek Parking From Fire District

It would be hard to say who was happier or more surprised when Monday night’s meeting of the Amagansett Citizens Advisory Committee ended almost before it began — the 20 or so members and onlookers in attendance, the new chairwoman at the front of the room, who wasn’t even a member of the committee two weeks ago, the East Hampton Town Board’s liaison to the group, Supervisor Larry Cantwell, whose busy schedule affords few such open windows, or a visitor who arrived at 7, thinking she’d made it right on the dot for the Pledge of Allegiance, only to discover that the meeting time had been changed to 6:30.

The committee’s new chairwoman, taking over from the three-term chairman, Kieran Brew, is Vicki Littman, who is well known not only as the owner of the Vicki’s Veggies farm stand in the hamlet but as chairwoman of the East Hampton Food Pantry and vice president of the Amagansett School PTA.  With her youngest child graduating from the school any day now, Ms. Littman, whose family lives on the same property that her Dellapolla grandfather bought in 1904, said she was ready to take on a new challenge.

The first half-hour of the brief meeting was reportedly devoted to a discussion of the town parking lot behind Amagansett’s Main Street, which gets predictably mobbed in season. At the group’s May meeting, Mr. Cantwell promised that a door-to-door survey would be made to determine how many spaces might be taken up by employees of the nearby businesses. There are 160 spaces in the lot, and it turns out that there are 110 employees at peak times.

Even assuming that not all of them have cars, the number is thought-provoking, a longstanding problem in search of a solution. It was agreed that Carl Hamilton, a committee member and an Amagansett Fire District commissioner, will ask his colleagues whether the town might lease part of the big empty lot next to the firehouse for five years for overflow parking. That lot was formerly part of the Pacific East restaurant property; the Fire District acquired it several years ago after a public referendum.

Also at the meeting, Jim McMullen was elected vice chairman of the committee, Susan Bratton and Rona Klopman were elected co-secretaries, and members welcomed a new member, Francine Lane, who works at the Amagansett Library.

When, at 7:10 p.m., the room fell quiet, Ms. Littman asked, tentatively at first and then with assurance, for a motion to adjourn. It was made and quickly seconded. Everyone applauded, congratulated her, and headed happily home.