The battle of Westhampton Beach citizens vs. village and library officials is a case study in whether legal/stonewalling tactics can defeat aroused citizens who use modern communications tools. A showdown is set for Thursday at 7 p.m.

Record numbers of citizens demanding information and reform have attended meetings of WHB and library officials in recent weeks. Citizens marched in front of the library passing out 200 leaflets that brought a record 35 to the Sept. 16 board meeting. They seek an elected board to replace the current appointed board.

There is an “uncomfortable and unforgiving environment at the library,” a former employee told the Southampton Press Sept. 10. Evidence of dissatisfaction is the 31-3 staff vote Aug. 21 to form a union. It’s the first union in the 100+ years of the library.

The five Westhampton Beach trustees plus outside legal counsel Stephen Angel will face the public Thursday at 7 p.m. at a meeting that was scheduled for Oct. 1. It was postponed a week with no reason given on the WHB website.

WHB Officials Face Uprising

sokoloff
Sokoloff

We think the trustees wanted more time to decide what to do about the unprecedented citizen uprising on two fronts.

The previous Sept. 3 board meeting was a disaster for WHB officials in many ways. The gavel-to-gavel videotape shows officials being undone by their own flirtation with modern technology.

Because of the videotape record, there can be no question as to what was said or not said. This would make a good case study for college and high school students who want to see how a municipality confronts citizen criticism. Journalists are up against lawyers who have assumed a dominant role in many forms of communication and discussion.

Viewers will see outside legal counsel Brian Sokoloff holding the floor for 54 minutes, initially from 17 minutes to 49 minutes without interruption, after which he took questions until 1:11.

He led the people in the room, as well as those who would see the videotape, through a swamp of eruv legal decisions, some dating back to 1971, and none of which acknowledge the existence of the web. The videotape is permanently on the WHB website and is also being shown on local Channel 22.

Legal Decisions Rest on Ancient Cases

Sokoloff’s initial 43 minutes of remarks failed to note that eruvim are highly visible on Synagogue websites and Google maps. He quoted legal decisions that refer to the “near invisibility” of lechi eruv markers on utility poles.

He quoted the Jan. 6, 2015 Appeals Court decision as saying that “Every court to have considered whether similar government actions violate the Establishment Claus has agreed they do not.”

That statement ignores the 2001 decision of Federal Court Judge William Bassler in the Tenafly Eruv Assn. vs. Borough of Tenafly that said “Public property should not be permanently allocated to a religious purpose” and ordered an eruv taken down.

The Jan. 6 decision, as with other eruvim decisions, rests heavily on Lemon v. Kurtzman, a 1971 case that is 30 years before the advent of widespread use of the web. “Casual” and “reasonable” observers, says Lemon, supposedly would not notice the plastic lechi strips on utility poles nor impute any purpose to them.

Given the notoriety of the Hamptons eruv battle, now in its eighth year and costing millions in fees to the towns not to mention Hamptonites being falsely accused of anti-Semitism, there is no such thing anymore as a “casual” observer of this costly mess.

Anyone with a pulse is also fully aware of what an eruv signifies—public land being turned into the home of the observant. Far from just allowing “pushing and carrying,” it is a deal breaker for those thinking of moving into an area.

WHB Lawyer Angel Shouts at O’Dwyer

Angel
Angel points to O'Dwyer.

Readers who scroll to 1:11 of the tape will see this writer at the podium, the first words we speak being that we are “addressing the board” but also speaking to the people in the room and to the camera.

We make the point that legal decisions ignore the existence of the web which has made the public thoroughly familiar with eruvim and what they mean.

There is a new “reasonable” person who knows all these things or can quickly find them out. The “reasonable” person on which Lemon rests vanished about three decades ago.

After a couple of minutes speaking, Angel starts shouting at us “Address the board,” since we were looking at the people in the room as well as the video camera.

He interrupted us a half dozen times and included the admonition that if we wanted to talk about Southampton’s duel with the EEEA, which should take our remarks to SH.

Sokoloff, in his address, had made extensive references to SH, noting that the town had agreed to drop all defenses against an eruv in return for EEEA not seeking millions in damages against it.

Sokoloff failed to mention that the SH Council passed the cave-in to the EEEA in the last few seconds of its Aug. 25 meeting and that there was no discussion of the deal either by Council members or the public. The deal was not even on the Council’s agenda. Arnold Sheiffer, chair of Jewish People for the Betterment of WHB, wrote to the SH Press that the SH Council should be “ashamed” of itself for such trickery.

Citizens Ask Nighttime Library Board Meeting

On the library front, citizens are asking the library board to meet at 7 p.m. rather than at 9:30 a.m. Former library employee Sabina Trager has been making written and verbal requests to the library board and director Danielle Waskiewicz for that since July 15, 2015.

The answer she and citizens get is that such a change is “under consideration.” The library board meeting, at the moment, continues to be set for 9:30 a.m., Wednesday, Oct. 14.

Mission

The mission of the Westhampton Free Library is to serve the community; cultivate knowledge; promote curiosity; and inspire lifelong learning. We serve the communities of Westhampton Beach, Westhampton, East Moriches, Eastport, South Manor, East Quogue, Quiogue, Remsenburg, and Speonk.

Website is www.westhamptonlibrary.net

Some 35 residents attended the last meeting, virtually all of them cheering and clapping when several suggested that board president Joan Levan resign along with the entire board which would be replaced by an elected board.

Residents were told that the WH “Free” Library gets 72% of its revenues from property taxes. The actual percentage is 95.27%. CPA Al Coster’s audit shows $2,202,000 comes from Westhampton Beach taxes and another $698,000 comes from taxes levied in Westhampton, East Moriches, Eastport, South Manor, East Quogue, Quiogue, Remsenburg and Speonk.

WHB residents have no choice but to pay the taxes but the other towns have that choice, said Coster, noting the WH Library must be run to their satisfaction.

As for the WH Library being “Free,” this writer paid $288 in taxes to the library last year. The word “Free” means that the library is not “public” in the sense that its directors must seek public election. They appoint themselves. Reformers say this is “taxation without representation.” The library is a 501/c/3 non-profit “association” library, a status used by only 14% of U.S. libraries.

Intellectual Activity, Interaction Needed

The Library received $1.3 million in 2013 from the estate of WHB resident Ann Skovek who died in 2011. Waskiewicz says current capital projects total $3 million and no doubt include some of Skovek's money. Plans reportedly are to move the teen room from the first floor to the attic, keeping one-quarter of the attic for office space for the Children’s dept.

What the library needs, since its new building was only opened several years ago, is an investment in intellectual activity and not construction. The $3 million should be used to fund expert speakers, conduct surveys of citizens, host panels on key topics and make the library website interactive so that citizens can express their opinions.

Since the library has 13 full-time staffers plus 35 part-timers, there’s plenty of people who can do this and propel it into the new role of libraries—acting as a center of research, inquiry and public discussion of thorny topics as advocated by the American Library Assn.

The WH Library website does not have the hallmark of the web—interactivity. Locals who want to post remarks in a public forum have to use 27east.com, the whbqt.info blog of Dean Speir, or the progress4whb.com blog of Tom Moore, husband of Mayor Maria Moore.

Libraries Must Fill Void Left by Media

Libraries, with their secure source of taxpayer funds, must take the place of media which are weakened financially and journalistically. SH Press has sided with the EEEA, swallowing its line that eruvim are “invisible.”

Emphasis on bricks and mortar must cease. Key topics that need discussion include the eruv that threatens WHB with $1 million+ in legal fines and costs; the flawed legal system that fails to find that eruvim are unconstitutional; the economically weak, timid media that must please advertisers, and the income disparity that is one of the major issues facing the U.S. The Hamptons are noted as the home of the “one percent of one percent” in income.

At present the library is an intellectual abyss rather than a hotbed of intellectual activity and curiosity. An oppressive, anti-free speech atmosphere prevails. A similar atmosphere prevails at WHB village meetings. A new library board would chart modern directions, create a more congenial atmosphere for the staff and enable the library to fulfill its promise “to inspire lifelong learning.”

Library reformers need to come up with a slate of five directors to replace the current all-women board. At least two men must be on the slate as well as a minority group member and one or more who are in their 20's or 30's.