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Democrats P ick Malone Amid Calls For Unity The East Hampton Town Democratic Committee, agreeing as usual that it was high time it stopped feuding and united to beat the Republicans, last Thursday by a narrow majority elected Andrew Malone to serve as its Chair man until the September primary, when ex-Chairman Nancy Woodward’s term was to have expired. Ms. Woodward had resigned as Democratic Town Leader a month earlier, citing a commitment to write a weekly column for the New York Post as what she admitted later was her “excuse to get out.” She also said she had lost “the spirit” for the local Party, whose interests, she asserted, had “taken second place to egos and personal desires.” Mr. Malone was chosen over Eamon McDonough after the Committee re jected a sort of fusion ticket that one member dubbed “Andy McDon ough.” This, a compromise in which both Mr. Malone and Mr. McDonough would have been elected, as co-Chair- men, might have been accepted by a majority if an attorney for the County Democratic Committee had not ordain ed a few hours earlier that it would be against the rules. Mr. Malone, who declared as he assumed the chair that the Commit tee’s “most urgent priority” was “un ification,” was applauded warmly. The “wisdom of the Committee,” he remarked, had given the Town its first woman Supervisor, Judith Hope in 1973, and now had given it its first black Town leader, himself. But he wanted to be remembered not as the first black Town leader, “but as the one who brought us together for the common good.” He and Mr. McDonough (who was out of town on vacation Thursday) had emerged as the alternatives at an “informal meeting” of the Committee, which acting-chairman David Myers said had been “very friendly,” at Fromm’s the previous Sunday. “The general feeling after the meeting broke up two and a half hours afterwards was that most people would be very happy to support whichever candidate won,” declared Mr. Myers, and no one contradicted him. Candidacies He said the Committee was “very fortunate” to have a choice of “two of the most distinguished and long-stand ing Committeemen.” Mr. Malone, who runs an auto body repair shop in Sag Harbor, is a State Committeeman as well as a Town one, was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 1972, pledged to George McGovern, and ran unsuccessfully for Town Coun cilman the same year. Mr. McDonough, East Hampton High School librarian, was elected a Town Councilman in 1973 in his fourth try for that post and served through last year, when he was defeated in a race for Town Justice. Though no one speaking at Thurs day’s meeting gave any hint of how the two men would have differed as Chair man, many of those supporting Mr. Malone were people who helped elect Ms. Woodward in 1976 and supported Arthur Roth’s nomination for Super visor last year, while many of those supporting Mr. McDonough opposed Ms. Woodward and backed Mary Ella Richard’s successful primary race against Mr. Roth. Mr. Malone has not been noticeably a partisan of either faction, but when members of the second saw that members of the first were supporting him, some apparently had misgivings and turned to Mr. McDonough, whom Continued on Page 18 Radar Base Is Mourned The Air Force’s announcement last week that it planned to close its radar station at Montauk provoked an out raged protest by Assemblyman Perry Duryea of Montauk, who said he would “urge our Congressional delegation in Washington to seek to have the President reverse this decision,” but the East End’s Congressman, Otis Pike, said he would not “lead the charge” to save the base if, as the Air Force indicated, it had outlived its military usefulness. The Montauk Air Force Station is scheduled to be shut down “sometime during the spring of 1980.” The closing was one of 28 announced by the Air Force, which said they were “designed to improve combat readiness of the Air Force through reductions in overhead and support cost and personnel.” The 28 bases, part of the Aerospace Defense Command’s “Semi-Automatic Ground Environment” radar system, date from the 1950s. Another reason for the “closure action,” according to the Air Force’s press release, was “to replace the aging SAGE network with technically up to date hardware which will enable the air sovereignty mission to be performed more efficiently and cost effectively.” Announcement The formal announcement was dis tributed last Thursday morning by Lieutenant Chavis Harris, the Station’s information officer, two days after Pentagon officials passed the news to Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who passed it along to the press. A rumor of the closing had circulated in Montauk a week earlier, but per sonnel at the base, who hadn’t yet been notified, apparently didn’t believe it. Between now and 1980, according to Lieutenant Harris, the Station would undergo a “gradual phase-down,” as “all non-essential functions” are elim inated. He said the Air Force had not decided yet which jobs were non- essential. The Station’s 121 military personnel would sooner or later be transferred to other posts; some of its 29 civilian employes might be offered transfers, or might not. The civilians include typists, cooks, construction workers, and technicians who help run the base’s power plant and radar equipment. Sorry To Hear Montauk businessmen were sorry to hear the news; the military personnel, noted Frank Capozzola, president of the Chamber of Commerce, spent money in the community, and some times had visitors, who also spend money. And the loss of 29 jobs in an area with a year-round population of only about 1,800, he said, “does hurt.” It probably wouldn’t be “disastrous,” said Mr. Capozzola, a real estate man, but all the people he had spoken to about it agreed it was “going to hurt the area.” Assemblyman Duryea’s blast, which he read over the radio last week, and which echoes a well-known Daily News headline, ran as follows: “It appears that the Carter adminis tration is attempting to communicate a message to us that all of New York State should drop dead. In the past few hours the Federal Housing Adminis tration has acted to devastate jobs and home-building in the Town of Brook- haven [Mr. Duryea was referring to a proposed cut in housing loans], and now comes word that President Carter has placed the Montauk Air Force Station on a ‘hit list’ of Defense Department facilities to be shut down.” “First, I am concerned about our national security, and the direction the Carter administration is taking that security. But I am equally concerned about the loss of 110 military per sonnel, and the loss of the jobs of 30 civilian personnel at the Montauk Air Force Station.” “I will urge our Congressional dele gation in Washington to seek to have the President reverse this decision.” Mr. Duryea, according to his press secretary, Robert Spearman, has since joined legislators representing two other places in New York State where radar bases are to be shut (Lockport and Watertown) in appeals to Senators Moynihan and Jacob Javits. Mr. Spear man maintained that considerable op position was growing in Congress to the Defense Department's proposed cutbacks, which besides the radar stations would affect a number of far huger bases such as Fort Dix, N.J.; Congressmen from the Northeast and West were angry, he suggested, be cause most of the cutbacks would occur in their areas, and very few in the South. Not Leading Charge Congressman Pike was not angry about the closing of the Montauk Air Force Station, however. “If it has outlived its usefulness,” he said, “I am not going to lead the charge to try to keep it in operation. A military program should not ever be justified on the basis of how many jobs it creates, but only on the basis of what it can contribute to the national defense.” “I would applaud the Department of Defense,” Mr. Pike added, “for con tinually reevaluating its programs; I only wish all the other agencies of government would do the same. I Continued on Page 18 Bistrian Wants Money A new chapter was written this week in the history of contention between East Hampton Town Highway Superintendent John Bistrian and the Town Board. It began with Mr. Bistrian’s being scolded by Town Supervisor Ronald Rioux for having accepted bids on two pieces of highway equipment for which the Board had recently authorized Mr. Bistrian to go out to bid. Mr. Rioux said yesterday that the Board had not authorized Mr. Bistrian to accept any bids, and thus, he said, Mr. Bistrian had been told to hold off accepting them until the Board could discuss the matter at its “brown bag” session this afternoon. Meanwhile, Mr. Bistrian, who has always complained that the Board has short-changed him on road work bud geting, took out an advertisement in this issue calling for the people to support him in a demand for “supple mental funding . . . to salvage roads that need to be put in shape to make it possible to survive another winter.” In Advertisement In the ad Mr. Bistrian said that “an unanticipated 26 per cent rise in the price of road oil and sizable increases in related material, plus a horrendous escalating of repair parts depleted our operating budget even sooner than I expected.” The Town bookkeeping office shows a balance as of yesterday of $115,930.31 in the Highway Department’s Item One (“Repairs and Improvements”) which had been budgeted for $167,992.10. Yet Mr. Bistrian main tained in the face of that that major road repairs would have to be curtailed in the near future if the Board did not grant him more money. Council woman Mary Fallon, long a critic of Mr. Bistrian’s budget manage ment, acknowledged that Mr. Bistrian did not get the $343,000 in materials that he had asked for, but added that, in addition to the $168,000, another $50,750 had been put in Item Five to qualify for two miles of road recon struction under the State’s “Donovan Plan.” The bookkeeping office said that money had yet to be spent. “That money is his to spend as he wishes,” said Mrs. Fallon. “It’s up to him.” Called An Increase She added that, therefore, Mr. Bistrian got a six per cent increase last year, not a cut. Another account in Item One has $15,000 on hand, which represents a five per cent downpayment on a proposed $300,000 bond issue to re construct three miles of Old Montauk Highway. Mr. Rioux said yesterday the Board had yet to decide whether to go ahead with this. Mr. Bistrian had said in the ad that in the past five years the highway budget “allowed us to do no more than 15 miles of road per year, which is not nearly enough to update the Town road system.” Mr. Rioux said that “some past Highway Superintendents covered 60 miles a year with sand and oil.” [There are 220 miles of Town roads.] “The bluestone he uses is fine if you have a good base and good drainage, but if you don’t have good drainage, nothing will withstand the frost,” he said. “Blue- stone is very much more expensive than sand and oil. You can’t possibly meet that expense using bluestone.” Conciliatory Councilman Hugh King, chairman of the Board’s highway committee, was more conciliatory, but still criticized Mr. Bistrian for not taking over the maintenance of two roads in Montauk — Industrial Road Extension and South Eldert Road — as he said was required by the Highway Law. “I get tired of him saying he’s being picked on,” said Mr. King. “He’s not being picked on. I wish he’d give us an overall program that would provide fair and equal distribution of road repairs throughout the Town, instead of spending money in one area and letting the rest go . . . I can assure you, Continued on Page 12 School Budgets Are P ut ToVote The proposed 1978-79 budgets for the Montauk and Wainscott School Districts were approved by the voters of those Districts Tuesday night at the close of their annual meetings. The Springs School District also held its annual meeting Tuesday, but voting there did not take place until yesterday afternoon, too late for the results to be included in this week’s issue of the Star. Amagansett, meanwhile, plans to hold its annual meeting next Tuesday, May 9, at 7:30 p.m. in Scoville Hall, followed by voting the following day at the School between 2 and 8 p.m. The proposed Amagansett School budget for next year, which was reported on at length last week, totals $894,476, approximately $5,200 less than this year’s budget, and carries with it an estimated tax rate of $7.97, 44 cents less than this year’s rate. Elsie Treleaven is running unopposed for re- election to the Board, and the Ama gansett Free Library has placed a proposition on the ballot asking voter approval of $ 22 , 000 , the same amount requested last year. Approval Amagansett is completing the sec ond year of a three-year contract it has with its teachers which provides for a four per cent raise next year. A six per cent raise was granted the first year on the contract, and a five per cent raise this past year. The Montauk budget was passed by a vote of 60 to 31, and the incumbent, A. Philip Dinkel Jr., was elected to another five year term of office on the Board with 76 votes. Although Mr. Dinkel was running unopposed on the ballot, several write-in votes were cast: one for Mary Stanick, one for Robert Fisher, one for “Joe Blow,” two for Kay Weldon, and three for the Rev. Thomas Holmes of the Montauk Community Church. The Montauk budget totals $1,590,- 912, up $56,999, or three per cent, from this year’s budget, and carries an estimated tax rate of $8.09 per $100 of assessed value as opposed to this year’s rate of $7.93. Montauk, like Ama gansett, is completing the second year of a three-year contract with its teachers. It provides for a five per cent increase in salaries next year. The first year under the present contract the teachers received no salary increases and last year they received five and a half per cent increases. In addition to the budget proposi tion, the voters in Montauk this week approved, 73 to 18, a proposition providing transportation for three students to Mercy High School in Riverhead at a cost not to exceed $10,600. A proposition to transport one student to the Hampton Day School in Bridgehampton at a cost of $6,500 was defeated, 70 to 20. Claudia Maas, mother of the five- year-old Hampton Day School student, told the audience at the annual meeting Tuesday night that her daughter had a “right” to transportation. She ex plained that though her daughter expressed an interest in art, reading, and writing at four years of age, the local kindergarten refused to accept her because she was not of legal age, John V. N. Klein’s 1978 “Annual Environmental Report” opens with a photograph of a cloud — blocking the sun — over a somewhat stormy sea. Indeed that’s the picture painted with words on many of the following 33 pages. “As Long Island continued to lag behind the rest of the nation in economic recovery, cries are redoubled for relaxing environmental controls,” Mr. Klein writes to the County Legislature. But, he stresses, “that view serves neither the environment nor the economy.” “Environmental vigilance is an econ omic necessity,” he goes on. “True, there may be short-term economic gains to be had by certain sectors of our economy by removing environ mental controls. But what would be the outcome of such a policy ten or even five years hence? A bleak and de spoiled landscape? A polluted drinking water supply that will take many decades to purify? Polluted streams and rivers? Unhealthy air? Urban congestion?” “Quality Of Life” “What would become of the $1 billion annual tourist and recreation industry that depends on a pure environment?” he writes. “Of the largest hard clam industry in the world? Of the com- and she thus was sent to the Hampton Day School where she had received individual attention. A letter written by Perry B. Duryea, First District Assemblyman, was also cited by Mrs. Mass in “support” of her argument. The letter warned against certain “inequities which have crept into the law,” she said, such as the 15-mile limit on public transportation of taxpayers’ children to private schools. The Hampton Day School is more than 15 miles from Montauk. Edward A. Pospisil, president of the School Board and the appointed chair man of the annual meeting, pointed out that Mrs. Maas’s proposition was different from the Mercy High School proposition in that tuition moneys for High School students were figured into mercial fisheries dependent on our wetlands?” “In short,” he concludes, “what would happen to the quality of life in Suffolk County?” Mr. Klein says “it is nonsense to talk of turning our backs on the environ ment to gain some spurious economic advantages. It is our responsibility as legislators, administrators, members of the economic community and private citizens to take a positive attitude toward environmental protection.” He notes as issues: • The “way in which we use our land .... Some Towns and Vil lages . . . still allow construction of homes in environmentally sensitive areas, such as the north shore bluffs and the south shore erosion areas. In some locales, shopping centers are built with little or no relationship to their need, leaving boarded up shop ping centers to blight the landscape.” • Clean air. “We generate pollutants ourselves through residential and com mercial heating, electric generating and the automobile.” • Energy. “What will be burned for fuel by the end of the century is probably the most important issue Suffolk will have to face.” • Water. “Maintenance of the qual ity and quantity of our groundwater drinking water supply and of our the Montauk budget at the rate of $3,550 per student, and would be transferred into the transportation budget. The $6,500 requested for the Maas child was “new money,” he said. Curriculum Money Another resident at the meeting made the point from the floor that if the Maas proposition were approved, other parents in the District could ask for money to transport their children to schools beyond the 15-mile limit. Numerous objections were also raised from the floor to a $4,000 increase in the amount budgeted for next year for “curriculum development.” M r.. Pos pisil explained that there was no specific curriculum development pro gram as yet, but that, in general, Continued on Page 7 surface streams and lakes is of major importance.” Energy Of energy, Mr. Klein says “the need in Suffolk is for strong conservation and for the rapid development of the so-called soft technologies, especially solar and wind energy. Pinning our hopes on additional production of fossil fuels and increased electrical genera tion is . . . somewhat foolish.” Further “conservation and soft en ergy technologies are largely non polluting and tend to be labor intensive rather than capital intensive, as is the case with power plant construction.” He cites Senate testimony that “con servation has the potential to produce two and a half times more jobs than nuclear power plant construction while costing about one third less.” A picture flashes of a solar home, and Mr. Klein says that the County’s Department of Buildings and Grounds is “developing some solar proposals.” About oil drilling beginning off Long Island’s shores, he reiterates his op position and says this “is based on hard facts, good economic policy and good conservation common sense.” Oil Impact “Offshore oil drilling can only have negative impacts on our economy and environment,” he writes. “Oil reaching Continued on Page 2 Cloud Over Stormy Sea The Beach VOL. XCIII, NO. 35 John Spear
