Letters

With Election Day on Tuesday, November 5, Southampton will see new and familiar faces among East End officials. Yet one unfortunate constant remains in Southampton Village: an ineffectual administration led by Mayor Bill Manger.

Under Manger’s leadership, critical issues like traffic mitigation, environmental and water quality protection, overdevelopment, controversy over Pond Lane, and the decline of our downtown have been ignored or poorly addressed, leaving our community in a state of stagnation.

Manger refuses to address the assessed value issue. The present Southampton Village system of determining assessed values produces absurd and unfair results. The system benefits Manger’s wealthy financial backers, to the detriment of the rest of the village residents. Manger’s behavior in choosing his personal self-interest is consistent with giving himself a 40 percent compensation increase and continuing exorbitantly expensive fringe benefits.

While Election Day may bring some changes across Suffolk County, the results won’t address the urgent issues facing Southampton Village. True change — where we have the power to reshape our local government — happens on the third Friday in June 2025, when village residents can vote to make meaningful improvements.

This is our chance to hold accountable an administration that has failed to act on the issues that define our quality of life and the future of our village.

David Rung

Southampton Village