By Robert S. DeLuca
Although Group for the East End is not actively involved in the Hampton Bays redevelopment project (and therefore has no “horse in this race”), it’s still nearly impossible to think of a worse community planning screw-up than Southampton Town’s recent hiring of a tainted public outreach consultant to mediate this proposal.
The consultant involved apparently had no problem stating — and committing in writing — that their objective wasn’t to honestly facilitate public input around a controversial development project, but rather to target, humiliate and “neutralize” anybody who had a different point of view from that of town officials.
Just let that sink in.
Sounds more like a mob hit than an outreach consultant.
Given the daily crises of life, the last days of August, and the epic failures of government in general, it might be tempting to just roll your eyes and let it go. But that would be a mistake, made at our collective peril, if we fail to recognize the culture that allowed this to happen, and the implications for community land use decisions across the town.
Local land use decisions are a high-stakes game, and, like most things in the Hamptons, these stakes are only magnified by the values involved and the might of those seeking to develop just about anything that’s left.
So I’d invite this newspaper’s readers to take this particular issue apart and ask themselves if this is the kind of leadership and decision-making we want for planning the final chapters of Southampton Town’s future landscape.
First, the lead consultant on this project is actively engaged in representing developers doing business in Southampton Town. Is this not a clear and disqualifying conflict of interest? Taxpayers are expecting objective community outreach about broad planning decisions and policies, and not the risk of outcomes that developers could later exploit.
Second, the primary contractor also is on the team of developers that is currently suing the town for $100 million because they didn’t get what they wanted out of a controversial zone change proposal decided years ago. Who would hire them to do the people’s work?
Third, are we really expected to believe that absolutely no one ever vetted the sub-consultant, or had any idea what it was they planned to do with their portion of the contract? Are we also to believe that no one in the town attorney’s office, planning office or Town Board ever even glanced at a contract worth more than $200,000 of taxpayer funding to see what they were actually paying for? Even if you can accept this version of events, the distinction between incompetence and malfeasance is nearly indistinguishable.
But the icing on cake has to be the Town Board’s decision (once the issue was revealed) to just scratch the sub-consultant and leave the entire effort back in the hands of the same team that put this debacle together in the first place.
How can anyone be okay with this? Are we to believe that the lead consultant won’t just get another PR firm with the same objective but the brains to scrub any damning language from its contract?
The public cannot allow this to happen.
Setting aside a longer missive about the ever-creeping influence of developers in Town Hall, and the power of such developers to influence elected leadership, bully the staff, overwhelm the public, and buy their way to the finish line, the bottom line here is that this project needs a complete do-over.
The public trust is gone and it will not return under the direction of a developer’s consultant. The Town Board needs to get this project back on track, find an acceptable, unaffiliated community outreach firm (that doesn’t spend most of its time helping developers get approvals in Town Hall), review and report back on the decision-making that allowed this current failure to happen, and formally foreclose the opportunity for consultants actively representing developers in the town from any contract related to community planning, policy and land use decision-making.
These are obvious and rudimentary changes that should already be in place. But if the Town Board can find the resolve to step out of its slumber and complacency, it just might start us on a path to a better and more equitable future — and that path is sorely needed right now, as what’s left of the town is simply up for grabs.
Let’s see who steps up.
Bob DeLuca is president of Group for the East End.
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