Voters in East Hampton Town should vote "No" on Proposition 3, which they can find on the reverse side of the ballot. If approved, the proposition would allow town officials to take protected status away from a wooded, 2.4-acre triangle at the confluence of Three Mile Harbor and Springs-Fireplace Roads on North Main Street in East Hampton. With a designation as a preserve no longer a limiting factor, the town would cede the site to the county for a road project that might or might not include a massive roundabout, about which opinions vary.
Officials should never be trusted with taxpayer assets without a clear plan for how the assets, be they money, land, or something else, will be used. To do otherwise would be like leaving toddlers with a 12-pack of Mountain Dew without an adult around to keep an eye on what happens next.
The town has had a poor record in recent years of protecting public land from development. The most egregious example was the deliberately low-profile elimination of two ball fields off Pantigo Place to house a new hospital emergency facility; under state law, the town was supposed to acquire equivalent parkland to offset the loss. It did not. It went ahead with improvements at an existing town ball-field site off Stephen Hand's Path, which were widely praised, but that was beside the point. Places like these were placed in the public trust with the understanding that they would be set aside for wildlife or recreation.
Voters should not condone town officials taking supposedly safe land out of parks or preservation status for one project or another — and absolutely never in a case where there is not a firm plan for how the site would be used. Open spaces are not part of a piggy bank that town officials can crack open any time they think it's a good idea. Yes, government must be flexible when conditions change — and in the end, a roundabout might be a solution — but right now, this broad-daylight heist of valued green space cannot be sanctioned.