Each Stamp Sold
Wainscott
January 5, 2025
To the Editor,
Dear patrons of Wainscott Post Office: On Jan. 17 I step away from the role of postmaster. I find myself overwhelmed with gratitude for the warmth, kindness, and community you’ve shared with me over these years. Serving you has been an honor and a joy, one that I will carry with me always.
Each letter sent, package delivered, and stamp sold has woven us closer together, creating a tapestry of memories that I will cherish. From the daily greetings to the holiday rushes, your smiles and stories have made every day special.
I want to thank you for your trust, for sharing your moments of joy, your times of need, moments of sadness, and for the countless conversations that have enriched my life. Your support has not only made this post office thrive but has also touched my heart in countless ways.
As I pass on this role, I do so with a heart full of love and a hope that the bonds we’ve built continue to flourish. Please welcome the new postmaster with the same warmth you’ve shown me. Keep this place the heart of our community, where every letter tells a story, and every piece of mail brings hope.
Thank you for making my time here so memorable. I will miss you all dearly.
With heartfelt thanks and fond farewells,
MORGAN O’CONNELL
Important Need
Sag Harbor
December 23, 2024
Dear David,
Thank you so much for the coverage you provided the Sag Harbor Lions Toy Drive to benefit the clients of the Sag Harbor Community Food Pantry. Your coverage of the toy drive was informative and brought awareness of an important need in our community, Thanks again for the time and effort you put into the article and for a wonderful and successful toy drive that resulted.
Sincerely,
JEAN VAN ERK
Secretary
Food for Thought
East Hampton
December 31, 2024
Dear Editor:
New year’s resolution, anyone? How about one with multiple benefits for our health, our planet, and the animals? Eating more veggies, fruits, legumes, grains, and nuts helps us stay healthier, reduce global warming, and stop animal suffering. It requires no exertion or deprivation. And it saves money, too!
The abundant nutrients and vitamins in plant foods keep us in top health, while their fiber keeps us regular. Plant foods don’t do drugs, antibiotics, hormones, cholesterol, or saturated fats. Concerned about ultraprocessed foods? Then you certainly don’t want your food processed through an animal’s digestive tract.
Best of all, plant-based eating is supported by your local supermarket, which offers a rich variety of plant meats, cheeses, and ice creams in their frozen food section, as well as a wide selection of nut and grain milks. Same goes for your favorite family restaurant and nearly every fast-food franchise.
There is more food for thought at nytimes.com/2023/11/15/well/eat/plant-based-diet-nuts-beans-grains.html, forksoverknives.com, and bitesizevegan.org. Bon appetit!
Sincerely,
EDWIN HORATH
Potential for Intrusion
Amagansett
January 4, 2025
To the Editor:
Let me see if I have this right: An unelected, multimillionaire funder of something called the East Hampton Village Foundation suggests East Hampton use powerful technology to surveil residents and visitors and the village just kind of goes for it? (“Village To Have ‘Eyes’ On Drivers,” Jan. 2) No asking the folks under surveillance? No public discussion? Dare I say it, no putting it up for a vote?
No, I am not moved by citing the system’s adoption in Palm Beach — that happy, historic home of well-mannered, meanspirited exclusion (and heck, I liked the old Breakers as much as the next person).
Given the potential for intrusion and abuse, the new Flock license plate readers feel like something we should have discussed first.
Sincerely,
SAUL M. DENNIS
What Oversight Exists?
Southold
January 5, 2025
To the Editor:
The recent decision by the East Hampton Village Board to install Flock Safety license-plate readers at every entry and exit point raises serious concerns about privacy, data security, and the future of the village’s character.
While the stated intentions behind this surveillance system are understandable — to aid law enforcement in solving crimes like the recent luxury store thefts — the implementation of comprehensive surveillance creates risks that far outweigh potential benefits. These cameras don’t just read license plates; they track vehicle makes, models, and even details like bumper stickers, effectively creating a detailed record of every resident’s and visitor’s movements.
Police Chief Erickson’s comment that “Big Brother is everywhere” should give us pause rather than comfort. The comparison to Ring doorbells is misleading — private home security cameras are fundamentally different from a government-operated surveillance network that tracks citizens’ movements without probable cause or warrant.
Of particular concern is the precedent being set by allowing private money — in this case, two $30,000 donations from the East Hampton Village Foundation — to fund public surveillance infrastructure. When private entities fund public policing tools, it raises serious questions about influence, accountability, and the role of private interests in public safety decisions. The additional $30,000 annual subscription fee further commits the village to a system that creates a searchable database of people’s movements.
In today’s landscape of frequent data breaches and “zero-day” exploits, we cannot guarantee this sensitive information will remain secure. The data collected would be an incredibly attractive target for criminals — providing real-time intelligence about one of the wealthiest communities in the country. Anyone gaining unauthorized access would know not only when residents are away from their homes, but also the locations of police vehicles. This system, intended for security, could become a sophisticated tool for targeted criminal activity.
Before proceeding with this installation, the village community deserves answers to critical questions: Who exactly will have access to this data? How long will it be retained? What oversight exists to prevent misuse? What independent security audits have been conducted on Flock’s system?
The Institute for Justice’s ongoing lawsuit against Norfolk, Va.’s similar system highlights the serious constitutional concerns about warrantless surveillance. East Hampton Village should be a leader in protecting privacy and personal freedom, not rushing to create a pervasive surveillance network.
As a resident of a neighboring town who regularly visits East Hampton Village, I find myself grateful to live outside the perimeter of these prying eyes, where my daily movements won’t be logged in a database for unknown parties to potentially access. However, I feel deep sadness that the village leadership has chosen this path of surveillance over privacy, allowing private money to influence public safety decisions that affect not just village residents, but everyone who drives through the village.
Shame on those who would so casually trade the community’s privacy for a false sense of security.
Sincerely,
MARK GHUNEIM
Against Flock
East Hampton
January 6, 2025
To the Editor,
I wonder how our old town has existed all these hundreds of years without Flock watching our every step? Surveillance equipment is now all dolled up as gifts! And January 6 was a love-in.
I stand against Flock and all the flocks of incursions on my privacy.
TOM MACKEY
‘Monday Night’ Tradition
Amagansett
December 30, 2024
To the Editor,
Monday marked a first for my children and it couldn’t be any better. Back on Dec. 28, 1992, my mother (God rest her soul) let me stay up to watch my first “Monday Night Football” game. It was the Detroit Lions playing the San Francisco 49ers. It was winter vacation from elementary school, just as for them now, same two teams playing three decades and a little change later.
Between the popcorn, ice cream, an appearance by ponies, princesses, and dinosaurs, I’ll be wagering seeing them fall asleep before the end of the first quarter. I get to share with them this memory and tradition. Maybe next year we will actually get to take them to Detroit. Here’s to a great new year for everyone.
Still here,
JOE KARPINSKI
My Optimum Bill
Wainscott
December 30, 2024
Dear David,
What a nice Christmas surprise when I opened my Optimum cable bill — it went from $169.35 to just under $200. The answer given was enhanced service and upgraded equipment. I explained that I am unaware of fiberoptic wiring because the nearest pole is almost 350 feet away and it is buried underground. They explained my package; I mentioned that I do not speak Spanish or any other languages, nor do I watch cartoons that are broadcast 24 hours a day.
The programming is awful. The old system allowed us to select movies on demand and enter a name and it would list them. I asked, why isn’t there a program where we can customize and pay for what we watch? Unfortunately, we are a captive audience and pay through the nose, not to mention the inflated price of gasoline and heating oil.
Respectfully,
ARTHUR FRENCH
Already Overcrowded
Springs
December 2, 2024
Dear David,
Every time the town board approves higher density and more housing, it brings more people into this already overcrowded town. It strains the infrastructure, makes roads more dangerous, costs us more in taxes for services. It also impacts the fragile environment, water quality, night-sky quality, and our quality of life. Lines are longer, fewer parking spaces, and, did I mention, higher taxes?
SUSAN HARDER
An Important Time
East Hampton
January 6, 2025
Dear David,
This Friday (tomorrow), Jan. 10, at 6 p.m., we are co-hosting a screening and discussion of the documentary film “One Big Home” here in East Hampton at LTV Studios in Wainscott. It is the story of how residents in one town — Chilmark on Martha’s Vineyard — came together to address the negative impact that overdevelopment was having on many aspects of their community.
This film took 12 years to make and was released back in 2016. Still, it resonates deeply today, and the dynamics that define the story are acutely relevant here in East Hampton as we are all grappling with the severe impact of expanding and accelerating development on our town infrastructure, on the land, waters, natural resources, on the quality of life, neighborhood character, irreplaceable beauty and sense of place, and so importantly, on affordability of homes for people who live and work here full time.
If this sounds familiar, that’s because we actually screened this movie for the first time back in October 2022. But now we want to tell you why, here at the start of 2025, this is an important time for an encore showing of the film. Whether you’ve seen it already, or have not watched it before, we hope many of you will join us for the event.
Having first watched this movie in 2019, it was inspirational and helped motivate the creation of Build.In.Kind/East Hampton, an awareness-building and community advocacy effort, even if at that time, change here seemed mostly aspirational and somewhat far off. And when we first screened the film for the community in 2022, the idea that real change could be made here still felt somewhat remote. But that amazing night, we and everyone in that room agreed that it was the time to mount a real effort and try.
Just seven months later, on May 2, 2023, led by Council member Cate Rogers, the town board announced unanimously the launch a formal process to address the issue and assess real changes to the current land use/zoning codes for adoption.
And here we all are, more than two years after that screening and 20 months deep into that legitimate process, with the town board already having passed a number of amendments, and now with a meaningful proposal put forth in December to rebalance the town’s core maximum house size “formula.”
The formula is perhaps the most important element of change, and as such, this first quarter of the year is also shaping up to be the most crucial — and perhaps the most contentious — part of the code amendment public process.
All along this journey, we have known that there are a great many people in East Hampton who are like-minded in their concerns about the overwhelming scale of new construction and blistering pace of redevelopment, and who want to see — who are demanding that — the town board do something real about it. We’ve also been keenly aware there would be a vocal, rather influential group of interests that would emerge to oppose all meaningful proposals laid upon the table that would instill forward-looking restraint, no matter how rational and well considered.
In one moment in the movie, while discussing potential limits to house size, we hear a builder caution, “The line in the sand is going to involve a battle. Some people won’t like the line, and some people will like the line.” One of the things we appreciate so much about the film is that it is a testament to how the active engagement of citizens can achieve constructive change. Perhaps what the film does best is to compel people in any place threatened by a loss of equilibrium and destruction of community sustainability that it is possible to slow or even halt that impact and to restore balance. That is, if members of that community decide to stand up, engage, and fight for it.
Showing “One Big Home” here in East Hampton the first time inspired many among us to step up to the plate and get in the fight. It energized robust, out-in-the-open conversation, listening, and debate, and helped get a real town board process started. Showing it now a second time will help us all to stay in that fight — until necessary, meaningful changes actually get done by the town board.
Sincerely,
JAINE MEHRING
Founder
Build.In.Kind/East Hampton
ESPERANZA LEON
Co-Founder
Wainscott Heritage Project
Closed-Loop System
Springs
January 3, 2025
To the Editor:
As we approach the next November election, many residents may not realize how candidates for East Hampton Town office are selected. According to the East Hampton Democrats, “Beginning in January of every election year, the full, 38-member East Hampton Town Democratic Committee screens and interviews potential candidates for town office. This includes incumbents who are seeking re-election. The committee then holds a convention where committee members vote for their preferred candidates. The candidates who receive the most votes by the committee members at the convention become the official Democratic Party candidates for election to town offices.”
This closed-loop selection process, also likely mirrored by the Republicans, raises a crucial question: Does this method truly serve the public good? When only a select group of 38 party members decide who will appear on the ballot, it creates candidates who are loyal to the party, rather than to the diverse needs and concerns of the community. The voices of ordinary residents — who may have different political affiliations or no political affiliation at all — are often drowned out in the process.
While party loyalty is an essential part of the political landscape, it should not overshadow the true role of public office: serving the interests of all residents, not just those aligned with a particular political organization. A more inclusive and transparent process, like a primary, would better reflect the values of the community, allowing for a broader range of candidates with fresh ideas, independent of party pressures.
Taking this one step further, East Hampton’s town board structure could also benefit from expansion. Currently, the five-member town board represents the entire town, but the residents of our five hamlets each have distinct needs. By expanding the town board to six members, each hamlet could elect a representative who is deeply connected to the local issues that affect them. Meanwhile, the town supervisor could continue to be elected by the entire town, ensuring a balanced approach to townwide governing.
Expanding the town board would bring greater representation to all East Hampton residents, ensuring that each hamlet has a voice that truly reflects its concerns. This shift would also allow for more diversity in perspectives, strengthening our local government and making it more responsive to the unique needs of each community.
As the 2025 election season approaches, let’s demand a system that gives all residents a more direct say in who represents them, ensuring that our local leaders are truly accountable to the people they serve.
FRANK RIINA
Misled the Public
East Hampton
January 6, 2025
Dear Editor:
The recent decision to eliminate zoning for the senior center was carefully orchestrated. From the start, the town board misled the public about its intention to erase zoning. Public participation was squelched by closing the hearing on the issue, and then hiding a decision for nearly a year to ensure that memories would fade and participation dwindle.
The recent dismissal of the planning board chairman was a “smackdown” of that board’s efforts to compel independent review. It sent an unmistakable chilling message: Friends and favored projects get special treatment; dissent provokes retaliation. One can only imagine the pressure exerted behind closed doors on Councilman Tom Flight who courageously objected to a process that literally threw the zoning code out the window.
Notably, the supervisor never served on any review board. Perhaps that explains her apparent view that board members are simply employees.
Independent planning would illuminate the budget impacts of this grandiose project. There has never been an estimate of maintenance or operating costs, there is no management plan, no analysis of new employees required to run the supersize building. Employment costs for recreational personnel have never been calculated.
In 2023, the town spent more than it could cover with town property taxes. Employee salaries, benefits, and retirement costs were blamed for the overspending. The town had to raise taxes exceeding the state’s tax cap, despite taking $1.8 million from other existing accounts. Now the board blindly races to begin construction without any assessment of the same problematic costs. Who needs planning anyway?
The supervisor dismissed any concern citing some $75 million in various town funds. However, most of those funds are already committed for necessary expenses. Only $25 million is unassigned and available to spend as surplus in the general fund.
The question is one of prudence: $30 million will eventually be paid with real taxpayer money. Is a project “right-sized” at 22,000 square feet? Does it cost too much if it exceeds the sum of our unrestricted general funds? Can we do more with less?
Climate change, sea level rise, beach erosion, hurricane preparedness, affordable housing, and renewable energy are all looming challenges. We need a town board with broad vision, not a narrow focus on a single glamour project. Open impartial planning provides the most reliable roadmap to our future. The town board has abandoned it at our peril.
JEFF BRAGMAN
The Facts
East Hampton
December 29, 2024
Dear David,
I was so upset listening to the public comments during the Dec. 10 work session in Montauk and reading the Dec. 19-26 letters to the editor! The misinformation being shared was unbelievable. I just had to write you a letter with the facts.
Abraham Lincoln said, “And in the end, it’s not the years in your life that count, it’s the life in your years.” The older we get, the more we realize the best things in life are not things but moments and the people we share them with. There is a real need for a new senior center. I go to the wellness classes, activities, and nutrition at the present senior center. Facts:
Thursday, Dec. 12. Temperature 33, feels like 21. Exercise class: 23 people. Lunch: 51 people.
Friday, Dec. 13. Temperature 33, feels like 21. Knitting: 16 people. Lunch 56 people.
Monday, Dec. 16. Raining. Temperature 45, feels like 36. Craft: 34 people.
Knitting: 11 people. Lunch: 42 people.
I know these facts are true because I attended all of these activities.
Throughout the decades, members of the community like myself have supported our children and the town. Now, as seniors of the community, we need your support. As a senior, we try to stay active and live a healthy lifestyle but in reality, we need a place to support healthy aging. We need a new senior center.
I personally would like to extend a warm welcome to all seniors of the community to come on down and join us at the senior center for wellness classes, activities, movies, bridge, mahjong, knitting and nutrition.
Happy new year,
VICKIE LUNDIN
Demand Better
Amagansett
January 3, 2025
Dear David,
I write with concern in response to recent issues highlighting significant local governing failures under Supervisor Kathee Burke-Gonzalez’s leadership. It is becoming increasingly apparent that the supervisor is engaging in retaliatory practices, which is an insult to the voters in East Hampton who placed their trust in her. This conduct undermines her constituents and sets a dangerous precedent for our community.
Supervisor Kathee Burke-Gonzalez, notably refusing to comment to The Star, seems to have turned a deaf ear to the very people she was elected to serve. Moreover, she is directly responsible for not reappointing Sam Kramer as chairman of the East Hampton Town Planning Board. His dismissal follows his decision to do the right thing by questioning the town’s application of the Monroe balancing test, a move undesired by the supervisor.
The supervisor’s actions have extended to silence other dissenting voices as well. Through the use of the East Hampton Town Democratic Committee, Councilman Jeff Bragman was removed from running for office for a second term. Similarly, Si Kinsella was dismissed from the Wainscott citizens advisory committee over disagreements regarding the wind farm project. These actions disturbingly underscore a pattern of retaliatory conduct.
Amid these actions, I want to applaud Councilman Tom Flight for his integrity in listening to residents and challenging the status quo. His commitment to transparency is commendable. Additionally, Ian Calder-Piedmonte’s decision to abstain from a discussion, despite having been duly elected by the people and serving on the planning board for 12 years, highlights the troubling environment fostered under the supervisor’s leadership. Shame on those who have suppressed honest discourse.
At this time, when an editorial lauded the honesty and fairness of President Jimmy Carter, our supervisor stood as a stark contrast. Her style of governing, characterized by suppression and control, is a disgrace to East Hampton’s values.
Leadership must mirror the community’s transparency, respect, and accountability principles. My concerns serve as a wake-up call for residents and governing officials alike to demand better of our leaders.
The 2025 election is coming fast.
RONA KLOPMAN
Exempted Itself
Amagansett
December 30, 2024
Dear David,
Fascism has come to the Town of East Hampton. Kathee Burke-Gonzalez thinks she can violate all the town’s zoning and planning laws to ram her pet project, the new senior center, down the throat of our townspeople. Unbelievably, she has demoted the town’s planning board chairman, Samuel Kramer, in no doubt due to the planning board’s hiring a lawyer to advise it on whether or not the planning board should oversee the town’s proposed 22,000-square-foot new senior center under the New York State Environmental Quality Review Act just as it does for every large project proposed in the town. For this, the supervisor is firing the planning board chairman.
The planning board just wanted to do its job, but “in a split vote, citing what’s known as the Monroe balancing of public interests analysis, the town board voted to exempt the project from local zoning and land use regulations,” to quote Christopher Gangemi of The Star. No developer could ever get away with this! The town has just exempted itself from all the planning and zoning regulations that have protected our quality of life here in East Hampton.
The town is about to destroy seven acres of beautiful, carbon-absorbing forest that is home to an endangered species, the brown long-eared bat, that is extinct almost everywhere else, but happens to thrive in those seven acres of forest. This forest is also vitally important to the Stony Hill aquifer, providing vital recharge and filtering for the drinking water to all of Springs, Montauk, northern East Hampton, Amagansett, and Napeague.
Virtually nobody wants this project — not the seniors for whom it is supposedly for. I canvassed 40 of my older-than-65-year-old friends and 1 out of 40 was for it; 39 were against it, because of the increase in taxes it will lead to and the environmental destruction its construction will cause. We already have a senior center next to Windmill Village. Why not improve that one before destroying seven acres of forest we and an endangered species need?
Sincerely,
ALEXANDER PETERS
President
Amagansett Springs Aquifer Protection
Never Forget
North Haven
January 6, 2025
Dear David:
We remain a civilized nation and must never forget or forgive the violent insurrection done to us and democracy on Jan. 6, 2021. Those lives lost or destroyed, and those disgusting lethal crimes, should not be forgotten, pardoned, or rewritten.
Our former President Trump, twice impeached and a convicted felon, will soon be peacefully returned to the White House, along with his MAGA movement. He promises to deliberately remove this violent insurrection event from the record of history. We cannot allow this whitewash of facts to happen now, or ever in the future, when other radical movements give it a try. We must never forget this insurrection.
We can take a lesson from the Jewish people who adopted the term holocaust to help everyone focus on and remember what actually happened during World War II. All of these special dates and events must never be forgotten, especially after all victims pass.
The horrors of history should not be rewritten by others with an agenda.
ANTHONY CORON
No Known Treatment
East Hampton
January 2, 2025
Dear David:
On March 12, 2024, Paul Alexander died at the age of 72. Why mention his death? A legal adviser to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President-elect Trump’s nominee to head the Department of Health and Human Services, has advocated for the discontinuation of the polio vaccine.
Mr. Alexander was one of the last Americans living inside an iron lung. He contracted polio in 1952 at the age of 6 (a few years before the discovery in 1955 by Dr. Jonas Salk of the first vaccine against polio). The disease paralyzed Mr. Alexander and left him unable to breathe independently, leading doctors to place him in an iron lung, a metal cylinder that breathed for him. Mr. Alexander would remain in that iron lung for the rest of his life. Despite his infirmity, Mr. Alexander went on to become a practicing lawyer and a published author.
The Salk vaccine and its successors have been viewed as instrumental in the virtual worldwide eradication of polio. (Mr. Salk never sought a patent.)
Surprisingly, and ominously, in July 2022 the New York State Department of Health confirmed that a case of paralytic poliomyelitis was reported from a 20-year-old Hungarian traveler in Rockland County. It was reported that the patient was unvaccinated. This discovery parallels the decline in the rate of polio vaccination in the United States to below a coverage rate of 95 percent.
Disturbingly, the polio virus was detected in wastewater samples collected from two distinct locations in Orange County, N.Y., this, coupled with the use outside the U.S. of a live attenuated oral polio vaccine, the problem with which is that the weak variant of the virus can still multiply (researchers think that the Hungarian patient was exposed to this virus and contracted the disease). Thus, the decline in vaccine coverage threatens a potential outbreak.
Polio is a highly contagious disease that spreads from person to person; a person can spread the virus even if they are healthy. Those most susceptible to infection include the unvaccinated for polio, those who didn’t complete the recommended number of vaccinations and those going to places where they might be in danger of contracting polio.
The Centers for Disease Control is working with the New York State Department of Health on the investigation of the Rockland County case. To stop the potential spread of polio to people who haven’t received the recommended vaccinations or who haven’t received them at all, health care professionals are offering, among other things, vaccination services to ward off any potential threat.
Polio has no known treatment but it can be avoided with a reliable immunization. Maintaining strong immunity protection against polio in the population through a rigorous vaccination program remains the best strategy to keep Americans safe from the disease.
It is no time to embrace half-witted notions that reject verifiable scientific results and would place the American public at risk of a renewed polio pandemic.
Sincerely,
BRUCE COLBATH