August 25 2005

Merrall Hildreth has lived in Sagaponack for 82 years. He was the hamlet’s postmaster for a period—he lives next door to the post office building—and owned its neighboring centerpiece business, the Sagg General Store, for much of his life.

And whether the throngs of people who spend summer weekends in Sagaponack like it or not, Mr. Hildreth doesn’t want any “newcomers” having any say over his beloved hamlet.

“I don’t like the idea of people coming here and cutting up hamlets and taking the best parts for themselves,” Mr. Hildreth said outside the post office one day this week.

So to keep control out of the hands of the perceived enemy, Mr. Hildreth is praying that next week’s incorporation vote is a success.

On Friday, September 2, more than five years after interest in incorporation first surfaced, Mr. Hildreth and other registered voters in Sagaponack will head to the polls and cast ballots that will decide whether there will be a Sagaponack Village once and for all. If they vote yes, they will probably be the first group of residents to do so purely as a defensive measure. If the vote fails, the specter of Dunehampton—a separate village that would carve out the hamlet’s oceanfront, along with waterfront portions of Bridgehampton and Water Mill—could rise from the ocean mist again.

It was Dunehampton that caused Sagaponack residents to quickly mount an incorporation drive, hoping to preserve the hamlet’s identity by drawing village boundaries that follow traditional lines of demarcation in an effort to block Dunehampton.

A simple majority of those who turn out for the vote will decide the next step in the long history of Sagaponack. The incorporation referendum is expected to draw a large percentage of the 478 residents registered to vote in the prospective village to the single voting booth in tiny Sagaponack School.

If residents support the incorporation effort, another sequence of legal steps will carry the new municipality toward its official formation, and a new debate will arise about what that form should be.

Signs of the upcoming historic vote, both literal and representative, were prevalent throughout the hamlet and town this week. A pickup truck with a large painted billboard encouraging voters to support the incorporation was parked across the street from the Sagaponack Post Office and General Store building, the closest thing to a hamlet center in the residential and farmland community.

Outside the post office and general store, the upcoming vote was an occasional topic of conversation among the crowd of mostly part-time vacationers who mingled on benches and chairs while clutching copies of daily newspapers. Most of them knew few of the details about the looming vote or the reasons behind it, but hypothesized and proselytized all the same.

There are 582 people listed as residents of Sagaponack, according to the 2000 census. Over a period of an hour, around lunchtime on Tuesday, just five Sagaponack homeowners were among the more than 100 people who visited the post office and general store. Of those, only two said they were registered to vote in next week’s historic vote.

At Town Hall, secretaries in the town clerk’s office fielded numerous phone calls about the vote, including questions regarding the boundaries of the proposed village and who would get to decide its fate.

The vote will take place at the schoolhouse between noon and 9 p.m. on Friday, September 2. Fittingly, if incorporated, the village would follow the boundaries of the Sagaponack School District, which follows Town Line Road as its eastern border, the Long Island Rail Road tracks to the north, the dunes along the ocean to the south, and the shores of Sagg Pond for most of its western border.

Should voters support incorporation, the village will have two months to hold elections for a mayor and four village trustees. At that time, officials will finalize the unanswered questions, such as what services the village would take on and any controls it might seek to impose on its roads and properties.

To date, leaders of the incorporation drive have said that they will seek a bare-bones government, leaving essential public services, such as police protection, highway maintenance and zoning issues, to be administered by Southampton Town. As a result, the incorporation would have little tax impact on the residents of the new village, according to the Sagaponack Association’s website.

The new village, however, will have to hire a part-time clerk, lease office space for records and to hold public meetings, and retain an attorney and auditing firm to represent the municipality. The village could impose its own codes, including parking and zoning laws.

Proponents also said that the village administration would not seek to limit parking at the three beach access points that would fall, at least partially, under village authority. Meanwhile, Southampton Town would continue to control Sagg Main Beach, which is owned by the town, and the Town Trustees would continue to control parking along Peters Pond Lane, which is a Trustee road.

The previous move to incorporate began in 1999, fueled by dissatisfaction with Town Hall and anger over the town’s approval of Ira Rennert’s enormous estate off Daniels Lane, but it fizzled after a few months primarily due to a lack of interest shown by Sagaponack residents.

When, in 2002, a group of oceanfront homeowners proposed creating a serpentine village running along the southern parts of Sagaponack, Bridgehampton and Water Mill, a group of Sagaponack residents, concerned about the potential loss of control over the beachfront, began the latest incorporation drive. Sagaponack residents in particular bristled at the idea of one of the most cherished portions of their ancient hamlet being cleaved off by the proposed new village.

Southampton Town Supervisor Patrick Heaney later denied the Dunehampton application, a decision that set off a year-long court battle. Dunehampton proponents filed a second petition, this time seeking to establish a village to be known as Southampton Beach, just a week after Sagaponack filed its petition for incorporation.

While they said they will not challenge the Sagaponack incorporation bid, proponents of Dunehampton said they will proceed with a similar effort, which would establish a village named Southampton Beach, if next Friday’s measure is rejected by voters.

White settlers first arrived in Sagaponack—the name is derived from the Native American word for potatoes, sagga—in the 1650s. The school district was created in 1712, the 10th in the Town of Southampton, and the first schoolhouse was built in 1776.

Until the early 1990s, the vast majority of the land in the 6.2-square-mile hamlet was used for farming. In the last 15 years, however, much of the land has been subdivided to permit the construction of large homes, including many that overlook the ocean.

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