Trustees’ Conundrum
A homeowner sees her house threatened by erosion, and public officials do what they can to help. Not the newest story, but the most recent example of this narrative comes with an interesting twist.
As it turns out, a rapidly shrinking lot on Shore Road at Lazy Point belongs to the East Hampton Town Trustees, while the house on it belongs to someone who leases the site for a modest fee. This arrangement, while unusual elsewhere in town, is the norm at Lazy Point, where an occasional near-million-dollar purchase takes place on what is actually leased public land.
At a recent meeting the trustees all but committed to helping Susan Knobel save her house by allowing her to move it to a vacant parcel nearby. This is a feel-good story, for sure, but it is doubtful that it is sound policy or even legal.
It seems almost impossible to believe that the trustees could give valuable assets, in this case land leases, to individuals of their choosing. Public agencies, a class to which the trustees certainly belong, must follow certain proscribed procedures when handling real estate and any other disbursements. For a transaction like this to be fair, it would have to be open to public, competitive bidding, as we understand it. For example, East Hampton Village officials not too long ago realized this in connection with the Sea Spray Cottages and instituted a system for prospective tenants in keeping with state rules.
Further, at a time when the trustees should be concerned about water pollution and moving lease-holders away from fragile areas, they appear ready to give Ms. Knobel another waterfront lot. This, as one trustee pointed out, makes little sense. Are there other trustee plots in less endangered areas? It didn’t come up. Heck, there are plenty of other taxpayers and business owners facing severe erosion in East Hampton Town; you do not see other government agencies falling all over themselves to provide them with new sites.
Though there have been previous instances of a trustee lessee swapping one lot for another, that does not make this plan right — or in the community’s best interest. In their rush to do good for a neighbor, the trustees might be violating the law and are certainly moving in the wrong direction on habitat protection and coastal retreat.
Whether they see it or not, the trustees have before them now a not-insignificant opportunity to lead by example. Erosion exacerbated by sea level rise brought on by human-driven climate change is a fact of life for East Hampton and much of the rest of the globe, and the truestees should be, as stewards of the beaches and of most town waterways, at the forefront of a reasoned response. What is called for now is their dispassionate decision-making that responds to real-world conditions, not personal sympathies and gauzy notions of tradition. Responding to a shifting shoreline does not mean swapping one threatened site for one that will likely be in danger in the not-too-distant future.
An immediate reconsideration is warranted.