As if on cue, the lights suddenly went out at the Amagansett School gym on Monday night.
The Amagansett Citizens Advisory Committee was having its monthly meeting in the gym, and the major topic of discussion was its ongoing efforts to get East Hampton Town on board with a proposal to add new streetlights to the hamlet’s commercial district.
Then the lights flickered and went out, to bemused chuckles from the dozen or so people who’d come out in the cold for Monday’s meeting. They came back on quickly, but the same cannot be said for what has become a drawn-out effort to improve the Main Street lighting situation.
The hope is to add new and better lighting from Indian Wells Highway to Atlantic Avenue. It was initiated, according to Rona Klopman, chairwoman of the committee, following two pedestrian deaths in recent years, and further motivated by a successful public-private campaign in Montauk, which now boasts a long string of wrought-iron lampposts along its Main Street.
“We’re asking for ‘historic lighting,’ “ said Ms. Klopman. “The nice poles with the nice lights.”
It’s a pricey proposition, and one that the town board has yet to endorse. New lampposts are said to cost between $10,000 and $15,000 each, along with costs associated with excavation and installation.
Town Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc, the board’s liaison to the committee, could not attend the meeting, but was invoked in absentia, by Ms. Klopman and others, for engaging in what they said was “inconsistent” messaging from the town about how, or if, to proceed.
In essence, the debate boils down to whether the town should first approve and pay for a feasibility and engineering study, or whether A.C.A.C. must first demonstrate a groundswell of community support for the plan. (The committee also wants to know if the board would pay for a mailed survey to get those responses.)
“It’s not the cost per se,” said Ms. Klopman, “it’s getting the town to commit.” Mr. Van Scoyoc has said he’d bring the matter to the board, she said, but has yet to do so. Meanwhile, she said, “the lighting is terrible.”
The supervisor pushed back on Tuesday against the suggestion that he was flip-flopping on the question of the lights, emphasizing that the board needs to hear from the larger community, not just A.C.A.C. The question of a feasibility study or the project itself, would have to be discussed at a public hearing, he said, and as for bonding, “the voters might turn it down.”
He said there are around 1,500 properties in the town’s so-called “lighting district,” but that A.C.A.C meetings typically draw only a dozen or so community members. “It’s really important to make the taxpayers in the lighting district aware of the project before we start spending funds,” Mr. Van Scoyoc said. He did bring up the lighting proposal at Tuesday’s town board work session, he added, and, like himself, “other board members are supportive of the concept but don’t want to act without broad support.”
