As reported in these pages last week, I was one of several members of Wainscott United who presented the case against the incorporation of Wainscott at the Oct. 3 meeting of the Wainscott Citizens Advisory Committee.

The bulk of the discussion before the W.C.A.C. was on why incorporation was not a good idea for Wainscott. We emphasized the advantages, past and future, of Wainscott’s status as a hamlet within the Town of East Hampton. We noted the substantial investments by the town in preserving farmland and other green spaces and providing safe drinking water. We pointed out that the proponents of incorporation had seriously understated the complexity and likely resulting expense of establishing and operating a functioning village. We brought attention to the fact that only one new village had been formed in the state during the last decade and that it had been dis-incorporated amidst undelivered promises of more responsive government and better services and the reality of higher than advertised expenses and taxes. We made clear that the $250,000 to $300,000 annual budget used by Citizens for the Preservation of Wainscott to sell incorporation was a fantasy, if not an outright deception, and that the assurance of Wainscott’s being just like Sagaponack was a fairy tale.

A lively discussion of these issues followed our presentation. Several speakers pointed out that incorporation might not be as expensive as we had hypothesized and that, with more time and study by their consultants, C.P.W. might come up with something that might better approximate what a Wainscott village might cost. These apologies and pleas for more time for study are beside the point because, as we told the W.C.A.C. on the 3rd, incorporation of the hamlet is not possible. A number of those at the W.C.A.C. meeting seemed to find it difficult to accept that reality.

But it is clear that New York State law does not allow for Wainscott to be made into a village. The requirements of the village law are clear and unambiguous. Because Wainscott is more than five square miles in area, its territory could be incorporated only if it shared exact boundaries with a school or other municipal district. It doesn’t do that. The published map of the Wainscott School District makes clear that it doesn’t share exact borders with the hamlet, doesn’t fit within the hamlet, and includes territory within Sagaponack and East Hampton Village. The only open question is how C.P.W. and its legal advisers failed to spot this issue. Did they not look at the law or the school district map before they told Wainscott residents they should sign up for incorporation?

C.P.W.’s blatant failure to do the most rudimentary legal and financial homework before it went out to Wainscott residents with a petition for incorporation and then persisted in that effort even after undoubtedly realizing there were problems with its proposal is seriously troubling. It raises issues of both competence and candor that should concern us all, particularly the W.C.A.C. and those residents who were at least temporarily attracted by visions of effective home rule, local control.

But fooled once, I have confidence that we all will take with a grain of salt anything we hear from C.P.W. going forward.

Sincerely,

John Hall
Wainscott, NY

a Letter to the Editor of the East Hampton Star from October 12, 2020