Citizens Rebel vs. Westhampton Officials, Score Some Victories

The citizen revolt against officials in Westhampton has brought some victories including the resignation of three of the five library trustees and the switch of meetings to nighttime. Emails of the trustees are to be provided.

But the main demand—for an elected rather than an appointed board—remains on the table.

Tom Moore

The appointment of Tom Moore, husband of WHB mayor Maria Moore, as president until 2019, signals that there is still a lot of fighting ahead for the aroused citizens.

Moore on Oct. 30 engaged in a shouting match with residents who claimed that being the husband of the WHB mayor was a “conflict of interest” that compromised the independence of the library.

Moore answered, “There is no conflict whatever. Zero. You’re wrong! You’re wrong!”

He also said he saw no need for the board to switch to an elected rather than an appointed format. “I have serious reservations on moving to an elected board for something that has worked for over 100 years,” he said.

Ex-WHB Attorney Backs Elected Board

Hermon “Bo” Bishop, former WHB town attorney, made a lengthy plea for the board to switch from appointed to elected status.

He noted that a member of his family had served on the initial library board in 1897 and that legally switching to an elected status could be done quickly.

“There’s no reason why you can’t be a democratic library,” he said. Citizens would then “have input into what takes place in their library.” The Rogers Memorial Library in Southampton has an elected board, he noted.

Libraries in WH, Quogue and Hampton Bays are “association” libraries that are private, 501/c/3 non-profit corporations. Only 14% of U.S. libraries have that status.

Bishop’s remarks brought more than 20 seconds of applause, the largest such demonstration of the meeting.

Citizens Take Control of Meeting

The 60+ citizens at the meeting, angered by refusal of the board to make certain reforms and the last minute cancellation of the Oct. 14 meeting, were in no mood to be pushed around when the board finally met at 9:30 a.m. Oct. 30. Ordered to leave the room so the board could go into “executive session,” the residents refused to do so.

Moore motioned that the public session be held first and that defused, for the moment, an incendiary atmosphere. A resident then accused the board of being “stonewallers” and “liars” and used a profanity when he could not get his questions answered. Efforts were made to eject him from the room. He escaped this by promising to control his temper.

Key Questions Not Answered

Resigned president Joan Levan was asked what “critical last minute information” caused the Oct. 14 meeting to be cancelled. That phrase was in her letter of apology to the Oct. 22 Southampton Press.

She refused to answer. The board was then asked where was advertised speaker Kevin Verbesey, director of the Suffolk County Cooperative Library System who was to have talked about converting the WH board from being appointed to being elected. Trustees would not answer that question, either.

The issue that then came up was how could Moore possibly be on the library board when his wife is WHB’s mayor? Both Moores are lawyers. The 2010 library board included WHB trustees Levan and Hank Tucker, indicating domination of the library board by the WHB village board. Levan was the campaign manager for Maria Moore’s run for mayor in 2014.

Tom Moore is law clerk to Suffolk Country Superior Court Judge John Rouse.

He was appointed to the Westhampton Beach Village Zoning Board of Appeals in 2008 but resigned in 2010, three years before his term was up. He authored "controversial resolutions" during his time on the board, according to local blogger Dean Speir, including one that barred Bishop for allegedly sharing his legal opinions in public. Moore operates a blog called progress4WHB that covers his wife’s administration.

He has taken the trustee spot of Marth-Ann Betjemann who resigned after one year. Officer terms are for two years.

During the meeting Oct. 30, new trustee Susan Rosenberg, a retired math and science teacher at WHB high school, had initially sat in the seat that had been occupied by Levan. The other new trustee is Barbara Matros, who retired in 2005 after teaching Spanish, Latin and English at the H.S. 33 years.

Meeting Was Democracy in Action

The Oct. 30 meeting was an exhibition of democracy in action. More than 30 residents got up and spoke their minds. The library trustees are quaking in their boots at the arousal of the tiger of public opinion. The WHB village board has also retreated before the lash of public opinion, discussing the eruv threat for 45 minutes at its meeting Sept. 3 after refusing to discuss such “litigation” for years.

Tom Moore says he has “serious reservations” about the library board switching to elected status.

We have serious reservations about the influence of lawyers including the Moores on policies of the WH library and WHB.

Lawyers and law are identified with controlling and even blocking the flow of information.

The Oct. 30 meeting, a session of intense public interest, should have been webcast live by SEA-TV which performs that service for the Southampton Council meetings. WHB trustee meetings are videotaped, archived on the WHB website, and televised on local Channel 22. The Oct. 8 meeting aired Oct. 31 at 6 p.m.

There’s no reason that the Oct. 30 library board meeting was not similarly videotaped and made available to the public. The library has $4.1 million in its savings and checking accounts including $1.3 million from the estate of Ann Skovek. It has earmarked $3 million for capital projects on a building that is only five years old.

Instead, it needs to forge ahead intellectually and stop its infatuation with bricks and mortar. A subject that needs examining is the influence of law and lawyers on communications. Corporate legal departments have succeeded in limiting press contacts of their PR people to emails that are monitored by legal. Press conferences have virtually disappeared as have directories listing corporate press contacts. Some 25 New York City PR luncheon and dinner groups vanished because legal does not even like PR people talking to each other.

PR heads of four giant law firms, with 3,586 lawyers on staff, who were to tell their PR stories to the PRSA/New York chapter Nov. 5, suddenly cancelled the meeting without explanation when critics noted the role lawyers play in limiting communications.

WHB's only supermarket is closing Nov. 23.

Library and WHB trustees, who are sometimes the same people, need to host public meetings on topics of interest to the citizens including the shutdown Nov. 23 of the only supermarket in town, Waldbaum’s. New buyer Best Foods will not reopen it for six months. BF has offered to take on 25% of the staff or about 18 people. The nearest supermarket is King Kullen in Eastport, an 11-mile roundtrip.

That subject as well as an elected library board and what WHB should do about the $1 million in legal fees and costs threatened by the East End Eruv Assn. should be the subject of live televised town meetings.

Aroused citizens, who have busted on the library and WHB boards, should confer with the union employees of Waldbaum’s, who have secured 3,500+ signatures in support of a unionized Best Foods, and form a united political front.

That is what is needed to end the torpor and inaction of local officials.

Also guilty of torpor and inaction are media such as the New York Times, Newsday and sister media news12.com, Dan’s Papers (biggest weekly circulation on L.I.), and local news service patch which ignore the revolt against WH library management. 27east.com covered the Oct. 30 meeting extensively as did local blogger Dean Speir.

This is a good lesson in civics but we can’t interest any local colleges including Stony Brook University or any local high school teachers or students.