There is a thing about public officials embarking on huge projects like East Hampton’s new $32 million senior citizens center that goes like this: They do not feel good about themselves and the job they are doing unless they are building something. This weakness tends to lead to excesses — in part egged on by architects expert not only in design but in manipulating clients’ vanity. We have seen it time and again. When taxpayers’ money is paying for a sparkling new structure, there are few restraints on petty exercises of power. How else to explain the town board’s recent decision to exempt the senior center from the most stringent environmental review?
One thing that politicians often forget is a corollary to the Golden Rule that goes, “Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.” If you have ever wondered how school districts and local governments get away with building projects that would otherwise be restricted by land-use laws, here is how it is done: Stemming from a 1988 New York Court of Appeals decision, Matter of County of Monroe v. City of Rochester, governmental bodies at nearly all levels could declare themselves exempt from local zoning. The appeals court established an expansive, nine-point test that included the extent of the public interest to be served and whether there were alternative locations for the facility in less constrained zoning areas.
Residents who have objected to the plan for the East Hampton senior citizens center say that the near-total clearing of woods on the site should have been enough for officials to scale their ambitions back or seek another building site. Having set their minds on the project, of course the town board was going to decide in its favor and avoid the full treatment of a State Environmental Quality Review Act study, an admittedly slow process. Town Supervisor Kathee Burke-Gonzalez clearly suffered from review fatigue. During a recent hearing, she declared that concluding the project did not need high-detail analysis that had taken a year already. Well, too bad, we say.
In a town where just getting a permit to build a deck can take six months or more, taking time to get things right should be seen as just part of the deal.
One thing is also missing in the process by which the town opted out of the deep environmental review — dissenting voices on the board. With all five board positions filled with more or less like-minded Democratic Party nominees, there is a tendency not to question matters sharply enough. Given that the senior center plan has engendered ample opposition, including over a threatened bat species, it would have been better if authority was not in the hands of such a monolithic bloc. A Republican, Green, or any other party member might have been able to amplify concerns to give them fair consideration, rather than outright dismissal.