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PAGE 8 T he S ag H arbor E xpress OPINION DECEMBER 21, 2017 E ditorial Public Vetting S he Sag Harbor School Board o f Education kept the public’s best interest in mind this week when it chose to appoint someone to fill the va cancy left with the resignation of Thomas John Schia- voni, who is departing the board having been elected to the Southampton Town Board. Choosing an appointment over a special election, while not ideal when it comes to a position that is traditionally voted on by residents o f the school dis trict, makes the most fiscal sense. Spending $12,000 to have a member serve for just two months would be a waste of tax dollars that certainly could be used elsewhere in the budget. The board has ensured that residents will have an opportunity to be a part o f the vetting process, announcing it would conduct interviews with interested candidates during a public board meeting, a welcome path forward considering anyone willing to serve on a school board should be willing to share their views on issues candidly. , It is also a smart move for a board that for years has been dogged by allegations that it has done some pub lic business behind closed doors. The current board appears willing to do what it takes to dispel that view, whether through vetting candidates in a public forum or ending regularly scheduled executive ses sions prior to their business and education meetings — a practice that was in direct opposition to how public meetings should run, according to opinions of fered by the state’s Committee on Open Government. That said, volunteering for school board is largely a thankless job, and all current and past members deserve gratitude from the rest o f the community for taking on one o f the most im p ortant roles in public office, and having to learn a tremendous amount in a relatively short amount o f time. Those interested in filling Mr. Schiavoni’s shoes would be wise to take that to heart, and understánd it comes with tremen dous responsibility. Curtain Call A year ago, in the days following the fire that / A caused heavy damage to the Sag Harbor Cin- A. l e m a and surrounding buildings, it Was hard to imagine a future for the rundown old art house that had often shown obscure film s to audiences number ing in the dozens. But due to the hard work and indefatigable spirit o f members of the Sag Harbor Partnership who launched a drive last spring to buy the wreckage of the building and convert it into a cinem a arts center, there is the promise of new life for the theater. Thanks in large part to a $1.4 m illion state grant, announced last week, and a $500,000 anonymous donation received that same day, the partnership has surpassed its year-end deadline to raise the $8 mil lion it needs to close on the purchase of the building. Before the curtain can be raised on a new cinema arts center, there is still much work to do, starting with the need to raise another estimated $5 million to build a new state-of-the-art theater complex with two main screens, a smaller screening room/class- room and café that will replace the original struc ture on the site. New York State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. has already called for the continuation o f the public-pri vate partnership that has helped secure the purchase o f the building, hinting that additional state funding might be available to help during the construction phase o f the project. While additional state aid, as well as large private donations, will certainly be welcome, it is vital that cinephiles from all walks o f life, who have already helped the project w ith their small donations, con tinue their patronage. That participation will help insure that the reborn cinem a will truly be a center for the entire community. ¡¡iSSm&fv ¡ ¡ I gggfeL* . ¡i ■xrnmfflmmmmmm. s i s wftrw • . ■*. ft. ,*St # • ft«‘i Bi- n :«■ ■ Æ - m'\ n h J i a r b a r ' I E r p r t ^ Published continuously since 1859 Official newspaper fo r the Village o f Sag H arbor/the Village o f North Haven the Tom o f Southampton / the T om o f East Hampton the Sag Harbor School D is trict / the Bridgehampton School District W inner of Ih E N ew Y ork P ress A ssociation ’ s 2000,03,11,15,16 S tuart D orman A ward for E ditorial E xcellence 2013,2015,2016 N ewspaper of the Y ear A ward Bryan Boyhan, CONSULTANT A N D PUBLISHER EMERITUS Gardner \Pat\ Cowles, PUBLISHER EMERITUS CO-PUBLISHER, EDITOR Kathryn G. Menu CO-PUBLISHER, ADVERTISING DIRECTOR Gavin Menu new s editor Stephen J. Kotz acco u n t executive Terry McShane associate editor Michelle Trauring acco u n t executive Ellen Dioguardi reporter Christine Sampson classified sales Renee Sabloski reporter Annette Hinkle graphic artist Christopher Lester photographer Michael Heller COLUMNISTS Lauren Chatman, AI \Big Time” Daniels, Richard Gambino, Karl Grossman, Hope Harris, Helen Harrison, Annette Hinkle, Susan Lamontagne, Lawrence Larose, Jim Marquardt, Paige Patterson, Nancy Remkus NEW VORK PRESS ASSOCIATION Tuesday Evening, Madison Street The Walking Tour I BY MICHAEL HELLER L etters to the E ditor Teaming Up to Fight Opioid Epidemic Dear Editor: I am very pleased to see that you have established the East End News Project on Opioid Addiction. As you know, we have established the Southampton Opioid Addiction Task Force. We would like you to join forces with us. When we first created the Task Force, we immediately set up a pub lic forum to hear stories from people directly affected by opioid addiction. We knew we needed those stories to help develop a strategy to effectively reduce the growing number of deaths. Our first public forum was a success. But we need to do a considerable amount more to stop the spread of opioid ad diction. With that in mind, we have set up four impbrtant meetings in the coming months. The Task Force is work ing on a deadline to present a report to the Southampton Town Board by June 1st. There are now 36 people on this Task Force. As soon as we announced the creation of the task force, we were overwhelmed with requests to join. And so it is our mission to push forward quickly to find some solu tions to this problem. We have created three ^ub-fqmrnit-, tees to work specifically on measures we believe are impor- tarit to finding an end to this crisis. The committees are: “Enforcement”; “Prevention”; and “Treatment”. We are scheduling the following forums that we think will help each sub-committee break new ground in our pursuit of answers. We will hold a forum with students from several schools in the Town of Southampton on Wednesday January 17th from 5:30-8 p.m. at the Greek Orthodox Church. The students will break out into sub-groups and come back to the Task Force with some ideas. We believe this exchange will prove valuable as we develop our final report. On Wednesday, February 7th, we will hold a medical/ treatment forum at Stony Brook/Southampton with the help of the Hospital. We will gather doctors and staff from East End Hospitals and treatment facilities, people who are on the front line in this battle to share with us their needs. On March 14th, we plan to visit the Hauppauge Recovery Community Outreach Center, known as THRIVE to see first hand what could be a model for what we believe is needed on the East End...a facility that offers many services under one roof. On April 11th we plan another Public Forum, this time at Southampton High School which can hold close to 1,000 people. We welcome your participation in any of these discussions: As you can see this is a very ambitious plan. Critical to the success of any one of the forums and to any proposed solu tions is education and communication, two areas in which the press group can play a vital role. That’s why I am reach ing out to you to help us get the word out. Many of you were very generous donating ad space for the Public Forum in November. We will call on you again in the near future to place future ads. But most important, I would like you to join us to help develop a comprehensive plan to battle the opioid epidemic. Best regards! Connie Conway, Chief of Staff Town of Southampton A Team Effort Dear Editor, On behalf of Sag Harbor Youth Hoop, I want to thank you for the great coverage in last week’s paper. Running Youth Hoop is very much a team effort and I would like to take an opportunity to extend my gratitude to the many others involved. Across our program, we have over 20 parents who volun teer their time to facilitate Saturday instructional clinics, many of whom are learning on-the-job to teach and coach young athletes. Keeping elementary school children fo cused and on-task for 60 minutes can be challenging, but these parents have embraced the role, preparing practice plans, researching drills on YouTube, downloading coach ing apps, and sharing ideas with each other. For grades 3-6, our coaches commit even more time to run weeknight prac tices, travel for games, set lineups, design plays, etc. Our program will continue to be successful thanks to dedicated parents stepping up to coach. In addition to our coaches, the members of the newly created Youth Hoop Board have been instrumental to this year’s program. It’s a lot of work coordinating registration for 175 kids with 20 hours per week of practices and 12 trav el teams iri 2 leagues. I’m grateful to our board members — Erica Aubry, Karin Schroeder, Jeff Robinson, Dan Mitchell, and Eric Bramoff — who have helped with a wide variety of tasks involved in running Youth Hoop this year — registra tion, insurance, gym logistics, practice scheduling, equip ment orders and much more. Running Youth Hoop is very much a team effort and we have a great team. Sincerely, John Cottrell President, Sag Harbor Youth Hoop C omments F rom the W eb Sag Harbor cinema Project Earns $1.4 Million in State Funding “Absolutely the very best Christmas present for the Sag Harbor communi ty -r- so happy for all!” Gen LeRoy-Walton, Manhattan “Wonderful news for our commu nity!” Marian Cassata, Sag Harbor “Hooray! Popcorn for everyone!” Gregory F. Schimizzi, East Hampton “Great! Now where does the money come from to rebuild?” Susan Fick Pluchinio, Sag Harbor “Congrats to all! Especially April Gornik!” Dianne Skilbred, North Haven As Deepwater Details Emerge, Wind Farm Discussion Heats Up “If there is not more wind energy in coming years to get carbon emissions down, there may not be any fish to fish in the bloody future.” Chris Golightly, University of Man chester SU FFOLK CLOSEUP B y K a r l G r o s s m a n Move Toward Living Shoreline S t’s a remarkable document produced by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation: “Liv ing Shoreline Techniques in the Marine District o f New York.” It lays out an approach to the coast that the U.S. Army Corps o f Engineers should heed. It “emphasizes a natural and nature-based solution to erosion control that will protect New Yorkers and the environment.” The Corps o f Engineers has long been committed to taking on Mother Nature in battle — building sea walls, stone jetties called groins out into the water, and other wise “armoring” the coastline with “hard” structures. But, as the DEC quotes its commissioner, Basil Seggos, as saying in a statement last month accompanying the plan: “The recent severity of hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria and the destruction left in their wake underscores the critical importance of New York’s Living Shorelines Guidance. Natural defenses offer some of the best protec tion from coastal storms and incorporating nature-based solutions into the state’s coastal resiliency planning and construction projects protects our communities. Using natural solutions is part of Governor Cuomo’s vision for more resilient coastlines better prepared to withstand the impacts of severe storms and to protect New Yorkers.” The DEC statement then goes on to declare the state’s “guidance encourages the appropriate use of natural shoreline protection measures in place of hardened or man-made approaches to coastal erosion controls.” What a contrast to, for example, what the Corps of Engineers has been up to in recent years in Montauk - placing sandbags at a multi-million cost on the beach, sandbags that have been ravaged in storms and will need regular maintenance at yet further taxpayer expense. Arid the Corps is still pushing its Fire Island Inlet to Montauk Point project — to dump massive amounts of sand along 83 miles of Suffolk County’s south shore at, now, a cost of $1.16 billion. This plan was first hatched when I first got into journalism on Long Island, back in 1962. Then its price tag was a small fraction of $1.16 billion, and got combined with Robert Moses’ scheme to build a four-lane highway the 35-mile length of Fire Island. Fortunately, he was stopped and a Fire Island Na tional Seashore was created in 1964 and the magical com munities and wondrous nature of Fire Island not paved over. But the Corps of Engineers, with some moderation, con tinues on with its plan - more than 50 years later. The DEC document is available online at http://www. dec.ny.gov/lands/4940.html. Purpose and Scope” open its 47 pages. “The purpose of this guidance,” it says, “is to: (A) encourage appropriate use of living shorelines in place of hardened approaches for erosion control, because living shorelines offer greater habitat and ecological value than hardened shorelines ’ and revetments, (B) to encourage, where appropriate, modification of existing shoreline erosion control struc tures into living shorelines, and (C) to promote a consis tent approach for permit application evaluations for liv ing shoreline techniques.” “This guidance is intended for a wide audience, state permitting staff, design professionals, and property own ers,\ it goes on. In Suffolk, county government, town board and town trustees have a special responsibility to read through the plan and follow its guidance. “There is a preference for the shoreline to remain in its nature state as much as is possible,” it says. “Living shoreline projects that mimic the natural environmental are preferred over hybrid options that utilize structural components. Projects should try and emulate the natural coastal process of the areas before options with structural components are considered.” Leaders of environmental organizations are thrilled with the approach. Stuart Gruskin, chief conservation officer at The Nature Conservancy in New York, says “we commend\ the DEC “for promoting natural solutions to better protect New Yorkers and dur state’s valuable shorelines. Living shore lines provide natural storm buffers, like wetlands and marshes, which absorb floodwaters, protect our shores, and help address the cause of climate change by storing excess carbon.” “Living shorelines are a key to protect New York marine life, homes and businesses in the face of expected climate change induced sea level rise and stronger storms,” says Joel Scata, attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council. KARL GROSSMAN is a journalism professor and journalist who frequently writes about Long Island issues. mm THE QUESTION It was recently reported that the government has spent m illions of dollars researching the presence of UFOs. What are your thoughts about this? Akeen Waldo “I'm not really sure what to say about that; if s utter nonsense. While I do believe that there is some sort sort of higher being out there - how else would we have gotten here? - 1 don't believe there is alien life elsewhere, though, we would have known by now.\ Christine Stluka \Having just come back from Washington, D.C. and seeing the Air & Space Museum, I realize that you want to keep up with whaf s out there. We give so much money away to other countries, why not do something that might benefit us? We're talking about populating Mars; lefs be sure we want to.\ Nicolle Parker \I think that that is not an appropriate thing for us to be spending money on, at all - we have way more important issues at hand, such as health care, etc.; there are just so many more important things.\
