It was on Jan. 13 that East Hampton Village Mayor Jerry Larsen first suspected he had contracted the coronavirus. "I woke up with the worst headache I've ever had in my life, and then my symptoms just got worse; I couldn't taste, couldn't smell, had shortening of breath, the whole bit," he said. "I tried to quarantine and fight it myself, but then I went to my doctor, and he admitted me to the hospital on the 22nd."
He spent nine days there.
He had taken five Covid-19 tests, and they all had come back negative, so the hospital initially treated him for pneumonia and sent him home, he said. That's when his wife, Lisa Mulhern-Larsen, stepped up. "My wife was really persistent, and my doctor, Ralph Gibson, was able to get me readmitted."
"Once they figured out the treatment they got it under control pretty quick," Mr. Larsen said on Monday, two days after being released from Stony Brook Southampton Hospital. He was put on remdesivir, an antiviral drug, and steroids, and, within two days, his health started to improve. His senses of taste and smell have since returned, "but I get waves of tiredness and I still have a cough. I'll be on the steroids for another five days, but I feel great comparatively. It's scary stuff. To be honest with you, I don't know if I'd be here if it weren't for my wife."
After having recently introduced a proposal to charge for parking in the Reutershan and Schenck lots, he was eager to get back to work, and lay out some recent changes to the plan in an effort to clear up confusion and to quiet critics who have been sniping on social media, he said.
On Monday he discussed the status of proposals for paid parking and the construction of a wastewater treatment plant, the recent increase in fees for beach parking and several other permits, the tensions that have arisen at village board meetings, and more.
The village had previously proposed allowing residents to park for free and charging East Hampton Town residents and other visitors $2 per hour for up to three hours between May 15 and Sept 15. At a Jan. 15 board meeting, Rose Brown, a trustee, said she was not in favor of charging town residents immediately upon entering the lots, and worried that it might negatively impact the village's businesses. She recommended revisiting an earlier proposal to offer two free hours of parking in the lots and charging for additional hours.
"Paid parking has been all over the map. I realize that," Mr. Larsen said. The latest, and likely final plan, he said, calls for allowing three hours of free parking for village residents with beach permits, while town residents with town beach permits will be allowed two hours of free parking with an option to pay $2 for a third. The village will ask the town for the license plate numbers of residents with beach permits, so the Village Police Department's license plate reader can properly enforce the parking regulations, he said. "We're going to talk about it at Thursday's work session," Mr. Larsen said of the new proposal, "but feel free to print it because I've already talked to the majority of the board, and we have the majority for what I just told you."
The revenue received from paid parking will be used to finance a bond that will be issued to pay for the construction of a wastewater treatment plant and sewer system, which would help protect water quality and allow more restaurants and other food businesses, known as "wet uses," to open in the village. "The sewer system is obviously the priority to help us get more wet uses like Sag Harbor," he said.
The recent announcements that Khanh's Sports and Wallace Gallery will be closing because of rent increases makes the need for the system more urgent, he said. "We're losing a lot of our businesses, and with the pandemic it's amplified more. We need to bring life back to the village, and the only way to get that life back is to have the sewer system in place." The village has hired the Nelson, Pope, and Voorhis engineering firm to develop a plan for the sewer system. "We're being told it will take four to five years from concept to full construction," said Mr. Larsen, who is hoping to use money from the Community Preservation Fund to help finance the project. "If we could get a good chunk of money from the C.P.F. to get this program going, then that will give us a summer to see how much money we make from the paid parking," he said.
The village board has recently approved large increases in the cost of several permit fees. The cost of nonresident beach parking permits was raised in October from $400 to $500, and in November, among other increases, the fees to receive a demolition permit from the Building Department went from $100 to $1,000, and the cost to request a variance from the zoning board of appeals went up from $750 to $1,000.
"There's a lot of complaints on social media that we're making a money grab, but I think our fees are fair, and this is all money that we need to really get this village under control to make it better for the future," Mr. Larsen said. "There's a group of people in the village that don't want us to sell any village beach permits to nonresidents, but that's a huge amount of income for us." Permits for the 2021 season went on sale online at 12 a.m. on Monday, and of the 3,100 available, 1,700 had been sold by 11 a.m. that day, he said.
For the fee increases approved in November, a proposal to "amend" the fees was on the meeting's agenda, and the board passed it in a unanimous vote without discussion. It was only at Ms. Brown's urging that the details of the increases were ultimately disclosed at the meeting. "Did we want to discuss what those permit fees are, and the increases just for the public's sake?" she asked Mr. Larsen.
At the Jan. 15 board meeting, a proposal to increase locker fees at Main Beach was on the agenda, and Ms. Brown and Arthur Graham, her colleague, who is known as Tiger, both members of the Fish Hooks Party, said neither they nor the public had been informed about the fee increases until a notice had been sent to residents. "I would have liked to have had the opportunity to discuss these fee increases at a work session," said Mr. Graham, and Ms. Brown noted, "Going forward these kinds of things . . . should be discussed publicly beforehand."
Other proposals, including one to form a committee to explore the impacts of short-term vacation rentals and one to create a central garage department to oversee the repair of the village's vehicles, have also been approved without public discussion.
Mr. Larsen acknowledged the oversight with the locker fees, but over all, he said, "when something comes up on the agenda, I think we do a thorough job of explaining it." Much of what makes it on the agendas, he said, emanates from meetings he holds on Mondays with the village's department heads, Chris Minardi, the deputy mayor, and Marcos Baladron, the village administrator.
Part of the reason the locker fees hadn't been discussed at the board meeting, he said, is "We were discussing that on Monday morning, so it's already been discussed. And you see how long our agendas are, right? It's crazy."
The lack of public discussion led to a heated exchange at the Jan. 15 meeting. The increase had been discussed privately, Mr. Larsen told Mr. Graham and Ms. Brown, and acknowledged that they "should have been brought into the loop." The issue hadn't been added to the agenda for discussion because "we had the majority who already agreed on this," he said, referring to Mr. Minardi, and Sandra Melendez, a trustee, both members of the mayor's NewTown Party.
When Mr. Graham and Ms. Brown continued to criticize how the proposal had been handled, Mr. Larsen said their comments were purely for "theater."
"That's not making theater that's good governance," said Ms. Brown on Tuesday. "Since when is transparency, encouraging feedback and input and public participation, a bad thing? An effective leader works through differences, seeks input and feedback, collaborates with colleagues, builds consensus, and moves on initiatives and policies."
Mr. Larsen said that the minutes from his Monday meetings have been provided to Mr. Graham and Ms. Brown, so they should not have been unaware of the locker fees and other agenda items. "We're moving at the speed of light, and Tiger and Rose want everything handed to them on a silver platter," he said. "They want an email every day explaining what everyone's doing."
"It's not so much that they're not telling me what they're doing, but I'm totally out of the loop in terms of input," said Mr. Graham. "I may as well be a potted plant as far as the mayor is concerned." He does not consider himself an "adversary" of the mayor's, he said. "I'm happy to work with anybody. If he does something right, I'll give him credit for it, and if he does something wrong I'll call him on it."
"He does not seem to value my input, but I have good ideas too," Mr. Graham said. "Good ideas are good ideas, and good ideas become better with discussion." Plus, he said, a public debate is necessary to keep residents informed about the governing of the village. "If we don't get any public input on this stuff, what have we got, we've got nothing," he said.
