On the Issues

More School Resource officers (SRO’s) are needed to protect our school children and staff. This is not a criticism of the East Hampton Town police leadership, it just needs to be an overall focus of our local government as a whole. Police officer hiring is probably at its most difficult with our geographic location and housing as an issue.This is a great opportunity for a successful School District - Town of East Hampton partnership. East Hampton School District has a successful model in place with the Village of East Hampton. I think a similar set up would be a huge win for both, it falls directly in line with shared services as encouraged by NY State. Think about it: the schools get needed protection and coverage during the school year, and the Town a resort community can use the additional Police staffing in the busy summer. Most of the School Districts that I have spoken to are willing to offset the Town to make the needed compensation so the plan can work. I do fully understand sourcing police officers is a tough task, but lets give the Police Department what it needs. This is a large benefit to the entire community.

GFA overreach, this newly passed legislation hurts local families the most. This code change was not thought out with equal representation, many sides of our community were left out of the process. It feels as if this was pre planned by a few and put forward to the public as a formality. After listening to pleas from local long time residents, some with growing families and tears in their eyes!! If you as a person can hear this from our community and then still support it something is wrong. I feel as if the Town board listens to us, but is not hearing us. To be clear much of the community is hurt by this change, I challenge anyone to go around town and guess the square footage of any of house (you will be surprised). It feels as if in some way they are trying to legislate taste, think about this for a moment (I am thinking with my School Board Member hat on) we have many “Large” homes in our community that sit vacant most of the time but in fact they pay high taxes that educate our children, pave our roads, pay for first responders, the list goes on. In the long run smaller houses put more strain on housing in general, more people will be force to leave, these could be your family members and friends