A proposed administrative change to Gibson Lane Beach prompted backlash from longtime beachgoers after the Sagaponack Village Board voted on July 17 to notify Southampton Town of the village’s intent to take over maintenance of the beach next summer.
Per an intermunicipal agreement between the two jurisdictions, the vote had to be completed by Aug. 1 for the change to take effect next year. While the details of the proposed change remain vague, beachgoers from outside the village limits have begun voicing their discontent.
“Before we did anything, we had to let them know there could be a possibility,” Village Trustee Mark Landis said of the vote to notify Southampton Town. And if the village board had waited until Aug. 2 to make that decision, nothing could be changed next year because of its agreement with Southampton Town.
As of now, it is unclear how the proposed change will affect non-Sagaponack residents who frequent Gibson Beach with Southampton Town beach permits, but Mr. Landis said that the thought process was not to keep people away.
“The biggest thing that we were looking at is the amount of garbage during the summer months,” he said, adding later, “People don’t like the garbage.”
Additionally, Sagaponack residents have expressed concern about traffic buildup and difficulties biking to the beach, Mr. Landis said. With those issues in mind, the board asked: “Can we do it ourselves?”
At the July 17 meeting, the board voted 3-1 in favor of notifying Southampton Town that it wanted to take over the beach’s upkeep, with Mayor Bill Tillotson, Mr. Landis, and David McMillan, another trustee, supporting it, while the dissenting vote came from Carrie Thayer Crowley.
Sarah Koenig, a journalist who is the host and executive producer of the “Serial” podcast, grew up in Sagaponack, but now has a house in Sag Harbor. She has been going to Gibson Beach since her childhood, viewing it as a common space to share with her friends and the community, and is there almost every day in the summer.
Now, Ms. Koenig is concerned about how the change might affect fellow Southampton Town residents who go to Gibson.
“For me, personally, it upsets me because that’s my beach. We all have our beaches that are close to our heart. For me, that’s Gibson,” Ms. Koenig said, acknowledging later that choosing beaches is a “privileged argument to make.”
“We’ve watched these communities get more and more closed off,” Ms. Koenig added. “It’s all these things that erode the thing that makes Sagaponack a village in the first place, which is people knowing each other and meeting each other in these common spaces,” such as the post office, farm stands, and beaches.
“It’s just a very laid-back, friendly, and social beach where we often go to meet people at the end of the day,” Jill Musnicki of Sag Harbor said. “It’s a real community spot.”
Recently, opposition to the proposal has grown. Concerned beachgoers have formed online communities to speak out about the change. A Facebook post circulated last week stating that the change “has gone under the radar.”
A website, gibsonbeach2025.com, also recently popped up in protest. “Stop Sagaponack Village from taking away Gibson Beach,” reads a banner at the top of the website.
A tab on the page labeled “what you can do” lists email addresses for Sagaponack Village and Southampton Town and urges people to attend the next Sagaponack Village Board meeting on Sept. 18.
“If people have ideas on what to do and what not to do, they’re more than welcome, as far as that goes,” Mr. Landis said of the next board meeting, again reiterating that “nothing has been set in stone.”
As for the other two ocean beaches in Sagaponack, Peter’s Pond and Sagg Main, the village has no plans to change their status as town beaches, Mr. Landis said, adding that there are some 18 alternate beaches that can be accessed with a Southampton Town permit.
Ms. Koenig thought back to her childhood when she would walk a path to a small beach between Gibson and Sagg Main. This small beach — known in the community as Trees Beach — was the one she visited most as a child.
About 10 years ago, the walking path was removed, gated, and “privatized,” ending access that residents had “been using for 40 years.”
While the gate was eventually taken down, Ms. Koenig discussed this as part of a larger pattern of increasing exclusivity on the East End, the context through which she views this latest development.
Additionally, in the past year or so, Southampton Town residents lost access to Town Line Beach, which straddles the border between East Hampton and Southampton Towns, she said. Now, Ms. Koenig can no longer “congregate” with her East Hampton Town friends at that beach. She did, however, acknowledge that the Town Line Beach decision did not involve the Sagaponack Village government.
“To further erode these things that should be common is to me the opposite direction of where we should be going, and it’s really sad,” she said.
As for Gibson Beach, Ms. Koenig hopes for more clarity about the “specific issues,” stating that Sagaponack should be “a lot more explicit to the public” when taking steps like this one.
“That’s every beach everywhere,” Ms. Koenig said, having been informed of some issues floated by the board, such as traffic and garbage buildup. “You’re always going to be balancing public access with people’s behavior. . . . That’s just living in a community, to me.”
With the issues in mind, Ms. Koenig hopes to see more answers from the village board, and wondered who is complaining, how many people are complaining, and what the complaints allege.
“We should be looking at the garbage,” Mr. Landis said toward the end of a phone call. “We should be looking at the sand. We should be looking at all these things. I wouldn’t be doing my civic duty if we weren’t doing that.”
“These beaches are already so hard to access for anyone who isn’t local, which is already problematic,” Ms. Koenig said. “To further make them exclusive just seems to go really against the spirit of what makes these places special.”
