Town Council Candidates In East Hampton Find Common Ground on Anti-Development Stance

There will be two council seats on the East Hampton Town Board on the ballot on November 7, with four candidates seeking election.

Just one incumbent, Councilman David Lys of Springs, is seeking reelection. Longtime Councilwoman Sylvia Overby has chosen not to run for a fourth term.

The Democratic Party has nominated Thomas Flight of Montauk to replace Overby and maintain its hold on all five seats on the board. The Republican Party has nominated Scott W. Smith of East Hampton and Michael Wootton of Wainscott as their candidates for the two seats — and to break the party’s nine-year drought of election victories.

The candidates met for three forums over the past month: one hosted by Montauk United, one by the League of Women Voters of the Hamptons, and one by the Village Preservation Society of East Hampton.

All three conversations delved into recurring themes of how to address development pressures, wastewater treatment and make living on the South Fork viable for middle class residents.

All four candidates voiced firm stances against “overdevelopment” — a term they applied alternately to both the pace of construction and the size of homes that are being built in East Hampton’s neighborhoods. They each said it lay at the root of the problems of housing affordability for middle class residents and the traffic congestion that plagues the region.

All four also said the town needs to press forward aggressively with water quality improvement projects, especially in Montauk — though their thoughts on how that should be approached differed somewhat.

The Democrats touted the achievements of the current Town Board in spurring affordable housing projects that have created or are in the process of creating dozens of new below-market housing units, in preserving open space and historic landmarks in the town, pushing water quality improvement projects forward and in taking up what is sure to be a decades-long battle against rising sea levels and climate change.

The Republican candidates said that some of those initiatives languished too long under the recent Democratic administrations or said that they think some fresh voices from beyond the Democratic fold would serve the town better in the grand scheme.

The winners of the election will serve four-year terms on the five-member Town Board.

THOMAS FLIGHT

Flight grew up in England but married a Montauk native, Georgia Biondo, and moved to the easternmost hamlet in 2009, where the couple has owned a number of retail businesses. Flight previously worked in corporate finance for The Gap and Walmart.

“It’s such an incredible place, it inspired me to throw myself into the community,” he said of Montauk, during the Montauk United candidates forum.

He is now an elected member of the Montauk School Board and a volunteer EMT for the Montauk Fire Department.

During the pandemic, he worked with town officials to help set up vaccination clinics, where seeing the impact that elected officials could have on residents got him interested in town government, he said.

At the Montauk United forum, the question of East Hampton Airport’s future was abuzz but dampened by the incumbent candidates’ inability to comment on anything related to the facility because of the three lawsuits brought against it — including by the founder of Montauk United, Tom Bogdan, and several other Montauk residents. Flight was not constrained by such concerns and said that the airport needs to be “regulated, in some form, like all businesses do.” He merged the issue with another one raised by the Montauk inquisitors: noise from large gatherings like weddings at local businesses in residential neighborhoods, and other nuisances.

“Noise pollution comes in many forms: It can be from weddings, it can be from leaf blowers, it can be from airplanes,” he said. “Many of the problems we’re facing right now, be it from Blade helicopters going all hours, or people trying to gouge the system out here to make as much money as they can without taking into consideration the well-being of this community — I think most of us are tired of that and want a government that is actually going to stand up to those bullies and look out for your wellbeing.”

Asked about the town’s decision to opt out of the state’s marijuana sales allowance, Flight said he would like to see the town develop codes that do ultimately regulate pot sales, but said he does not see marijuana use as a major issue of concern.

“From an EMT standpoint, the most dangerous thing I see out there is alcohol, not marijuana,” he said. “Southampton is allowing it. The [Shinnecock Nation] is selling it. I do feel it’s better to have a regulated industry than an unregulated one. It’s going to be here anyway.”

During the LWV forum, Flight was asked about the impact of the Community Preservation Fund on development pressures and the rising costs of housing. Flight harked to the founding of CPF and the cries of development pressures threatening the rural way of life on the East End and likened it to the echoes of that same message in the recent hearings on overhauling the town’s zoning code to rein in the outsized scale of redevelopment in neighborhoods.

“We’re destroying our local environment, it’s not because of the CPF,” he said — applauding the current Town Board for having taken up the issue and saying he would carry the flag if elected as well.

“I’m not running as a candidate who complains,” he said. “I’m running as someone who goes in to fix things.”

DAVID LYS

The lone incumbent in the council race, Lys has been on the Town Board since 2018, when he was appointed to fill the council seat vacated when Peter Van Scoyoc was elected supervisor — an opportunity that would arise again for the new council members if Councilwoman Kathee Burke-Gonzalez wins the supervisor’s race — and is now seeking reelection to his second full four-year term on the board.

Lys, who came to the attention of town officials through his spearheading of the renovation of the historic Amagansett Lifesaving Station, held up his work ethic and the projects he has helped advance in the last four years.

The board’s aggressive movement on creating affordable housing units — 37 rental apartments in Amagansett, 50 more under construction on Three Mile Harbor Road, 16 single-family homes in the planning and another 60 rental apartments in the pipeline for Wainscott — he said were his proudest achievements.

“The Town of East Hampton under the Democratic Party … we have moved the needle on housing,” he said. “We’re making it possible for individuals to find affordable apartments again. We need to do more and we are going to do more.”

The Town Board has been the subject of much criticism over the poor cellular service within its borders, which he said was misplaced since the town has little power to spur cellular companies to put up new antennas but, nonetheless, he said the town has seen more “macro” sites created in the last three years than in the 15 prior years.

“We do that through partnerships and good planning,” he said — the town has drafted a cellular infrastructure master plan and overhauled its codes to smooth the creation of new sites, including rolling back restrictions that would allow the Springs Fire District to erect a cellular tower that meets town codes.

Asked by Montauk United moderator Joe Gaviola about the town’s proposal to put a sewage treatment plant on county parkland adjacent to the town’s landfill in Hither Hills, Lys said he is not a fan of the proposal, but that he is open to all options and wants to see much more examination of the possibilities.

“We need to investigate all options, which includes the parkland,” he said. “Am I in full support of it? No. But more than 60 percent of Montauk is preserved, which is a wonderful thing, but makes it very difficult to meet the need of a community that has grown. There is more work to be done, but there is a need to address a problem.”

SCOTT SMITH

Smith is a newcomer to town politics, who says he was pulled into the race by what he said was the impression that the current administration is not leading the town in a direction that is “conducive to the family environment” and is not a direction “that holds on to the value of the Bonackers and why people live here.”

“The old East Hampton life is gone,” he said during the Montauk United forum. “I see the struggles adults have trying to stay here.”

He said he disagrees with some of the ways the town has used the Community Preservation Fund, to purchase and preserve some small properties. The land preservation fund should be reserved for large parcels and water quality projects, he said, lest it worsen the shortage of housing opportunities in the region.

“We’re running out of land,” he said. “I feel like the fund has been abused a little bit … half-acre and quarter-acre lots are not large tracts of land and it decreases the availability of land for our residents. Using that money to buy small tracts of land, I am not for.”

He also said he is firmly against the proposal to put a sewage treatment plant in Hither Hills. He acknowledged that improvements to the septics management in Montauk is needed, but said he is not in favor of the plan focusing first on the downtown business district.

“Ditch Plains should be phase one — the town needs to worry about the residents of Montauk, not the hotels and restaurants,” he said.

He said that water quality improvement projects have been folly.

“Floating wetland, what is that — it’s an eyesore,” he quipped, referring to a floating vegetated mats placed in Fort Pond by the Concerned Citizens of Montauk as a pilot project testing the usefulness of plants in removing nitrogen from the water.

He said he would like to improve working conditions for town staff, many of whom he said are underpaid and overworked, and to improve communication between the Town Board and employees.

“Right now, in Town Hall, there is a lack of pride, a lack of camaraderie, a lack of feeling they are a part of something,” he said he has heard. “The communication from the current Town Board with the employees of the town is nonexistent. They just want a pat on the back.”

He said he would advocate for more salary hikes beyond those that have been given and that the town’s ordinance enforcement department needs to be expanded to help with cracking down on illegal short-term rentals through websites like Airbnb.

Like his Republic running mate, Smith applauded the spotlight on overdevelopment that Amagansett resident Jaine Mehring and her advocacy through the group Build-In-Kind have brought. He said the Town Board should have tackled the matter much earlier.

Pressed in one exchange during the Village Preservation Society forum, he said the town needs to be taking action against climate change.

“Renewable resources, wind turbines, I support all of that,” he said. “Global warming is real, we all know it’s real.”

An East Hampton native and volunteer firefighter, Smith runs his own East Hampton-based kitchen design and construction company, Smith River Kitchens.

MICHAEL WOOTTON

Wootton described himself as a “libertarian at heart” and “passionate about preserving open space,” during candidate forums. He also said that he sees his beliefs as crossing party lines.

“My philosophy does not fit into our rigid two-party labels — I’m fiscally conservative, socially progressive and I am an advocate for the environment,” he said. “I hope to bring people together to find common ground.”

Nonetheless, he said, he thinks the Democratic hegemony on the Town Board needs to be ended.

“I believe one-party rule in East Hampton has created an echo chamber where new ideas are not considered or even heard,” he said. “I hope to change that.”

Wootton repeatedly spoke of supporting aggressive new rules to rein in residential development — or redevelopment — to bring down the size of homes that can be built when more traditional structures are sold to speculators or wealthy second-home owners and replaced. He applauded the town’s recent work on updating the zoning code, but said the town should have picked up this flag years ago.

“We’re at maximum buildout — there’s no more places to build,” he said during the VPS forum. “I think the issue of overdevelopment is intertwined with all the other problems we face out here: water quality, affordable housing and traffic congestion. There is no way for people to live here.”

He points to the goals of the town’s Comprehensive Plan to maintain the rural character of the area, which he said has faded increasingly toward failure.

“In Amagansett, they continually knock down buildings and build huge McMansions,” he said.

He said the 443 units of subsidized housing the town has created over the last 40 years is “not enough” and needs to be greatly expanded.

He also championed aggressive water quality protection measures, including working with Suffolk County to develop codes that would ban or strictly regulate the use of chemical pesticides and herbicides in the region. He said cutting down the size of homes, especially those with “huge subterranean basements” would also help with water quality issues and that septic effluents flowing into ponds needs to be stanched.

He said he is against the town allowing the sale of marijuana — saying that pot use “creates a degree of passivity” that he does not think is good for society.

East Hampton Airport must remain open, he said, for the sake of evacuation and medical emergencies and for the economic stimulus it brings to the region. He minimized the complaints of residents in neighborhoods beneath flight paths, saying that 35 percent of complaints are about aircraft that are not even headed to or from East Hampton Airport.

He said he would advocate for a town crackdown on short-term rentals, suggesting that code officers could use reviews posted on Airbnb listings to more efficiently bring charges against homeowners violating the town’s limits on rentals of less than two weeks.

A former banker, Wootton now works as a lifeguard and volunteers with the East Hamtpon Ocean Rescue squad. He has lived in Wainscott since 2007 and is an elder at the Bridgehampton Community Church.

He said that he felt Wainscott residents were not listened to enough during discussion of the South Fork Wind cable landing and wants to bring representation on the Town Board to the town’s least-populous hamlet.

But he said he also thinks the town and its elected officials can make a real difference in the lives of town residents by using its powers to regulate development and direct funding to environmental improvement. He acknowledges that the issues facing the town are many, and complicated, but said he is eager to help work on them.

“I’m an optimist,” he said. “But I’m also a realist and a pragmatic.”