An interesting and pertinent subject came up at a meeting of Amagansett’s citizens advisory committee Monday, when members heard from a representative of the Devon Yacht Club, which is seeking permits to rebuild its clubhouse on the shore of Gardiner’s Bay. After an hour-ish-long presentation, during which the committee seemed to generally nod and favor the plan, the question arose for them of what would happen next.
Well, not all that much, came the answer.
The committee chairwoman, Rona Klopman, reminded the group that citizen advisory committees are just that — advisory — and report only to the East Hampton Town Board. They cannot send opinions to the zoning boards or architectural review boards. They are on the outside of an ostensible firewall designed to limit the degree to which elected officials can lobby the land-use boards in favor of or against one project or another.
But this stalemate raised a rather existential question: Why then, as one committee member asked, did the citizens advisory committee agree to hear Devon’s presentation at all?
It’s a good question.
The several hamlets’ citizens committees were initially created by the town board as a way to take the citizenry’s pulse on issues at the neighborhood level. From time to time, some committees have stepped beyond that limited role, writing directly to another government agency, acting as if they were some sort of voice of authority. In most cases, these improper attempts to influence official proceedings were rightly slapped back. Yet a real-world problem remains in that the carefully considered views of a group of highly interested and well-informed citizens are by definition excluded.
It has long been our view that the citizens advisory committees would play a bigger and better role in town affairs by breaking away from their ineffectual semi-official status to become independent watchdogs. This might strip members of the dubious gloss that their current status, appointment by town board, confers. It would also be of broader benefit if the committees were free to state their positions.
Looked at through a cynical lens, the creation of these citizens advisory committees as agents of the town board could be seen not as a way to return power to the citizens but as a mechanism to actually blunt their voice. By muting the most-involved residents, Town Hall may have in fact silenced the voices that would tell it inconvenient truths.
It may be in everyone’s best interest to free the C.A.C.s over the long haul.