The hit show on Shelter Island these days is “West Neck Story,” a heady mix of the recent smash musical “A Hill of Beans” and the classic 1974 film noir “Chinatown.” It’s complex, exciting, offers tribal conflict and floats on that life and death issue, water. It’s Supervisor Gerry Siller’s best role in years.
Codger has skin in this game, perhaps enough to be construed as a conflict of interest. He’s a customer and board member of the West Neck Water District (WNWD) as well as a professional leaker of information, which has been scarce lately.
He thinks it’s a good thing there is no viable Ethics Committee here now, but thinks there better be soon.
As everybody should know, the 70-odd customers of WNWD have been served voluntarily and with distinction for more than 20 years by three of their own, Ann Dunbar, Lori Beard Raymond and Lisa Shaw, coincidentally an author of “A Hill of Beans,” about local entrepreneurs struggling against the elements.
Last year, as the WNWD board prepared for the retirement of the system’s operator, John Hallman, Siller let it be known he was signing a six-month deal with Suffolk County Water Authority (SCWA) to run the system, which the town owns. Thanks for the heads-up, Supe.
Ultimately the contract would become a 40-year deal. SCWA is a “public benefit” corporation, non-government, but with broad government-enabled powers to expand.
Codger agrees with the consensus that SCWA does a good job, has been scandal-free (not a given in water politics, as “Chinatown” depicts) and that the Island desperately needs professional water management. WNWD needs an infrastructure upgrade, including a new well.
So what’s the big deal? As the wise guys down at the watering hole say, “Forget it, Codg, it’s Shelter Island.”
It is a big deal. Water is life and land use. According to the screenwriter Robert Towne, his “Chinatown” was a symbol of “the futility of good intentions.” Codger thinks Siller has good intentions, certainly that he believes he is acting in the best interests of the Island as he scrambles through what he says will be his last term in office to try to pave a firm future course.
Although he keeps denying it (sometimes with a twinkle), Siller is not only famous for lack of transparency (see the recent hiring of a new town attorney) but for justifying it. He believes that if people (read enemies) know what you are doing, they will try to block you, or at least gum up the works.
Codger agrees. But if people (some of whom are allies) are in the dark, they can’t participate in the decision-making we consider the democratic process. Codger thinks preserving the democratic process, fragile and under siege like the aquifer, is ultimately more important, though harder to accomplish, than pragmatically ramming through outcomes that look right.
Codger thinks that hiring SCWA to manage the West Neck district is the right outcome. But the broad enabling legislation that gives SCWA barely checked, um, authority, including choosing neighborhoods in which to expand, is turning over too much power.
The Town Board (read the people) should retain some level of oversight and control.
Why wouldn’t the Town Board want that? Much of the current discussion, public and private, about tweaking the 40-year contract is about how and why the Town Board should have a seat at the decision-making table, especially about which areas of the Island should be rescued from bad or no water.
Such decisions are really about everything, including immediate development, long-term land use, community housing and environmental protection.
It’s also about who you trust more — a bureaucracy controlled by state politics that are influenced by wealthy business interests, or future Town Boards manipulated by the wealthy, newer residents who some town officials call “those gated-community people?”
This is not one of Codger’s paranoid no-win choices. It’s gleaned from Town officials and the various water committee members fearful that their successors will roll over for the richer, lawyered-up neighborhoods with development and land-use agendas.
Meanwhile, they seem to believe that the sturdy, State-backed professionals of SCWA will hold the line for rational environmental planning.
This may be true.
But Codger is concerned because signing the contract, already postponed at least a month from March 1, is coming up again soon and not enough citizens have been alerted and solicited to offer opinions about an event with Island-wide consequences.
Forget about the WNWD customers, whose rates will double along with a more than $1 million surcharge they will have to pay over the next 25 years.
One judicious voice in the discussion has been that of Andrew Chapman, a retired water company executive who lives in the Heights and serves on the Water Advisory Committee. He’s offered in Town and committee meetings two possible options:
One would have the Board create a Town-wide water district which would give it some powers of approval/disapproval of SCWA actions, or two, the Board would hold a Town hearing to air and explain the issues and allow citizens to speak out and get involved, to not feel steam-rollered into a critical course.
The first option was not seriously discussed (there seemed concern that SCWA, facing pushback, would just swim away) and the second was dismissed by one Board member as merely “feelgood.”
Well, Codger thinks “feelgood” might make people (read voters) feel good enough to get their hands wet because they think if this land is your land, so is your water.
It’s more than a hill of beans. Codger hopes it’s not Chinatown.
The post Codger’s column: Water music appeared first on Shelter Island Reporter.