An East Hampton Village resident has sued the village for revoking his permit to park in one of the lots at Main Beach and ordering him to clear out his locker at the Main Beach pavilion, claiming that the village violated both state and federal due process and equal protection laws.
The suit stems from an incident that occurred in early June in which the village alleges that David Ganz did not follow protocol for entering the parking lot and put a beach employee in danger.
The entrance to Main Beach’s Lot 1, adjacent to the pavilion, is blocked by a cone. Permit holders wait by the cone until an attendant verifies they have a beach pass and moves the cone, allowing them to enter. The village alleges that Mr. Ganz chose not to wait for the 16-year-old attendant on duty that day, instead speeding around the cone, brushing up against a wall, and running over and damaging a cable. Mr. Ganz parked for roughly 20 minutes, the village said, and then left the parking lot without reporting the incident, or the damage he had allegedly caused.
“The village’s allegations are nonsensical, baseless, and retaliatory,” Mr. Ganz wrote in an emailed statement. “More importantly, they are in clear violation of my constitutional rights to due process.” Since there is a criminal portion to his case, Mr. Ganz had no further comment.
In an affidavit he provided in his petition, however, his account of the incident was that he stopped, realized a car was exiting the lot, and so moved over as the car passed, and then drove to his spot. Hours later, police officers showed up at his house and gave him two tickets, one for leaving the scene of an accident, and the other for disobeying a traffic control device.
In his affidavit, he writes, “I can only surmise that I struck something when I moved my vehicle to the right to avoid the other car leaving the lot. When the police officer said I caused the damage, I advised them that I may have hit something, but I was unaware and didn’t see any damage. Curiously, despite this apparently serious incident, not a single person said a word about it to me.”
On the day of the incident, Drew Smith, the chief lifeguard for East Hampton Village, called the village administrator, Marcos Baladron, who came down to the lot to survey the damage. Mr. Baladron spoke with the 16-year-old attendant, who, he said in his affidavit, “was visibly shaken up by the incident and indicated that he had almost gotten run over. I promised him something like this would not happen again.”
(In an incident report Mr. Smith collected from the teenager after the event, the attendant wrote, “I was scared due to the aggressive actions of this driver.”)
The traffic cone system “is a low-tech process which relies on cooperation and civility. It is not supposed to be dangerous or hazardous,” Mr. Baladron said in the affidavit. According to the village, the cost to repair the wall is $2,000. As for the cable, according to an affidavit given on Aug. 27 by Mr. Baladron, “Optimum advised that it was a very costly repair,” but they fixed it at no cost “in return for continued village patronage and promise of purchasing extended service in the future.”
On June 7, the village administrator sent a letter to Mr. Ganz informing him that his Lot 1 beach permit and with it, his access to locker 102, had been revoked after a review of what happened. “Your recent behavior now poses a safety risk to village employees and beachgoers. Given the severity of the incident, and your decision to leave the scene of an accident, the decision has been made to revoke your Lot 1 pass privileges effective immediately,” he wrote.
Further, Mr. Baladron said that this hadn’t been the first time he had heard complaints about Mr. Ganz’s driving. “Your speeding in Lot 1 was brought to Village Hall’s attention several times last year and again this past Sunday.” While beach staff had notified Mr. Baladron, in writing, about past incidents, Mr. Ganz himself had not received a warning.
“Mr. Ganz should not need a warning to avoid endangering the life of a village employee and leaving the scene of an accident,” Mr. Baladron wrote in an email. “Access to Lot 1 is a privilege, not a right. We revoked his beach sticker, and the penalty is entirely appropriate given the seriousness of the offense.” Mr. Baladron noted that there was nothing stopping Mr. Ganz from parking in Lot 2 and enjoying Main Beach.
But Mr. Ganz’s lawer, Anthony Palumbo (also a state senator), argued in the petition that nowhere in village code does it provide for a mechanism to revoke or suspend a parking permit and that Mr. Baladron, and the board of trustees, had overstepped their bounds. Nor was Mr. Ganz granted a hearing. Instead, the village relied on verbal admissions given by him when the police visited his residence after the accident.
In his affidavit, Mr. Ganz said that he has had a Lot 1 permit and locker for over 16 years, and that he was on the waiting list for over five years before receiving it. No one in the village or at the beach had discussed his driving with him previously, he said.
And, Mr. Ganz noted, the day before he got the letter informing him that his beach pass was being taken away, he had published a letter to the editor in The East Hampton Star that was critical of the village board. In it, he called out the board for what he saw as inequitable treatment of village residents, using a line from George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” to describe what he observed: “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” He also frequently uses the public comment portion of village board meetings to question Mayor Jerry Larsen’s policies.
Mr. Ganz was refunded the $500 he paid for the parking permit and locker, via certified mail. However, he sent the refund check back to the village unopened. Despite ordering Mr. Ganz to clear his locker by June 30, which he did, Suffolk County Supreme Court Justice James F. Quinn ordered that it not be rented for the season while the litigation preceded.
Mr. Palumbo now has until Tuesday to respond to the court. After that, Justice Quinn will decide whether to give Mr. Ganz his permit and locker back for next summer’s season or to put him at the end of the long waiting list.
