SOUTHAMPTON A NO-SHOW AT PINE BARRENS MEETING

by J. Palasek

RIVERHEAD -  On the day that Brookhaven Town Supervisor Mark Lesko delivered on his promise to personally attend the Pine Barrens Commission meeting at the Riverhead Town Hall and make a motion to resurrect the long tabled motion to assert jurisdiction over the reopening of the Suffolk County Trap and Skeet Range, Southampton Town was nowhere to be found. 

Neither Southampton Supervisor Linda Kabot, nor her representative, Marty Shea attended the meeting where a motion to address the tabled motion was made by Supervisor Lesko and seconded by Riverhead town representative, Dan McCormick.  A vote was then called for and with Commission Chairman Peter Scully abstaining and Suffolk County representative, Carrie Meeks Gallagher voting "no", a deciding vote was then left to the conspicuously absent Southampton representative. 
The resulting 2-1-1 vote was not enough to bring the motion forward and the motion remains tabled.
The Commission went into executive session to discuss the issue before voting and we were told that while in conference, calls were placed to Southampton Town, but that "no one answered the phone".

Maybe Southampton is closed on Wednesdays?

The absence of Southampton Town was highly unusual as no one can recall a time when Southampton has ever been absent from a Commission meeting and we can only assume that Southampton's absence was deliberate, especially since Linda Kabot has expressed in the past her belief that the closure of the range for longer than one year does not constitute "abandonment" as is required by Pine Barrens Law.  The subject of abandonment has been the major point of contention in the Commission's reluctance to address this issue.  Countless examples of case law submitted by SYCA over the last year proving that abandonment is attached have so far failed to sway the Commission to act.  In the case of Southampton, the very laws of that town clearly define abandonment and have in fact been used in the past to deny the re-establishment of a non-conforming use (which is the designation of the shooting range) in their own town and we feel that since this is true, Supervisor Kabot chose to ignore this meeting altogether rather than admit that her own town code supports our case.

The political and Special Interest overtones here are obvious and cannot be tolerated.  SYCA will continue to press this issue until it is resolved with either a "yes" or "no" vote by the Commission, either of which will allow the process of deciding the fate of the range to continue to move forward, since a non-vote such as the one today does nothing.  If Linda Kabot wants to make it known to the world that she doesn't support us then she should have the courage to step forward and say so.  But to completely ignore the issue is no way to deal with it and is certainly not the way that the supervisor of a town should behave.