Dan's Papers - February 15, 2008 - Old News: Town Supervisior Takes on the Trustees

Sometimes when I read in the local papers about something that happened it makes me think - hey this happened before, it didn't work, so why are they doing this again?

Two years ago, the Village of Southampton confronted the Southampton Town Trustees about the fees charged for beach driving stickers. The Village said they wanted to charge their own fees. The Trustees said this was a duplication and the Trustees were willing to share the money for the fees. But they wouldn't support a separate fee.

There was a whole lot of posturing and yelling and politicking in Southampton for about a month when that happened, until finally the Trustees said enough is enough and that if the Village wanted to charge a second fee, they, the Trustees, would just close off the Trustee access roads to the beaches. The Village backed down. There is no second sticker to be bought for Southampton Village today.

Now they are doing a variation of this dance at East Hampton Town Hall.

The East Hampton Town Trustees, just like their counterparts in Southampton, have been entrusted to administer the bay bottoms, wetlands and beach access roads on behalf of the citizens of that town. This is as a result of an edict issued by the King of England in 1680 known as the Dongen Patent. It has been upheld in court time and time again. The Trustees, an august group of elected officials who are completely independent of the Town, on behalf of the townspeople, administer the publicly owned access roads to the beach. The Town and Village governments, which were created for the Towns and Villages at a later date, have a whole lot more to do, including police and ticket violators, administering the beaches and taking care of zoning and other matters.

It does not include overlapping the responsibilities previously given to the Trustees.

Two years ago, a couple of guys who were driving out onto the beach without a beach sticker from the Town, were ticketed and brought to court, where, with lawyers defending them, they successfully argued that the Town had not properly created their beach sticker laws back in 1995, because they had done it without the approval of the Trustees, as required by law.

The decision was made by a Justice Ketcham who noted that the passage of this law was a "clear infringement upon the authority of the trustees."

The 1995 law reads, "The Town Board shall not amend any section of this local law as the same applies to any trustee beach without having first received the written permission of the majority of the Trustees..."

Now, Town Supervisor Bill McGintee is trying to go off without the Trustees' approval again. He appeared agitated with the Trustees at a Town meeting last week where he proposed that the beach fees for beach driving stickers for non-residents be raised from the current cost of $200. The Trustees, who were present, said they'd like to think about it. McGintee said he intended to go ahead anyway. He said, according to one Trustee who attended, that he'd do whatever he pleased.