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Community Corner

ACAC to Town Board: Rescind Permit For Music Festival

The East Hampton Town Board considered the request it received by letter, but decided to keep the approval in place.

During a nearly three hours long, spirited meeting of the Amagansett Citizens Advisory Committee on Monday night, the committee voted to formally ask the to rescind its approval of planned at in August. The following day during its meeting, the town board agreed to uphold the approval.

over the past month not only against the festival's timing, in the height of the summer, but also what some saw as the lack of dialogue between the town and the committee.

During the meeting held at the , Lyle Greenfield said, “I found it disturbing that a mass gathering permit approval was granted for a two day, 22 hour outdoor concert on farmland on Route 27 in Amagansett and treated as though it were a wedding reception or a fundraiser instead of the massive commercial venture which it in fact is.”

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Greenfield continued “I found particularly disturbing the fact that the town didn’t think this was an important enough an idea, the invasion of the basic social fabric of the little hamlet to involve anybody, to engage anybody in the subject. In fact, this felt big enough so a referendum would be appropriate.”

Fears that the police force would be overextended that weekend as the will hold their two largest annual events, Author's Night and the Children's Fair, that weekend were also expressed. The library is located in East Hampton Village, which has its own police department, while the festival traffic will be managed by the .

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John Broderick, a resident of Amagansett, attended the meeting and said that he had extensive concerts of this scale and much larger. He raised concerns of crowd control and what he saw as the festival promoters’ inexperience. He said “Everyone talks about traffic control. Crowd control is the issue. Crush control, people get crushed at these shows. Period.”

But, it was not all opposition as Britton Bistrian suggested a more moderate stance. “Maybe instead of being the land of 'no,’ maybe we would be supportive of it if it was tailored to something more like the one we had before,” referring to the Ladles of Love concert held at the same venue last summer.

Robert Schwagerl of Amagansett, who is also the chairman of the town's architectural review board, said that the opposition to the festival was “selfish and disheartening.”

He said, “Everyone in this room has missed the whole important point. This is an opportunity for the town to create a special opportunity for the youth of this community.”  He continued, “They can sit at the table one day and say ‘Hey, this is how I met mom.’ How can you not see that? For a little discomfort?”

East Hampton Town Councilman Dominick Stanzione who is the liaison to ACAC said that the concerns raised are “absolutely legitimate” but suggested making, "lemonade out of lemons.” 

He told the committee that could not speak for the board, but offered his opinion, saying, “The likelihood of them reversing the decision is quite low.”

He was right. At the town board meeting held at the on Tuesday, the board briefly discussed the music festival, having received the letter from ACAC Chairwoman Rona Klopman to rescind its decision. Supervisor Bill Wilkinson said, "I don’t see any need to rescind what we did."

"It's real simple: This town is in financial stress. We have a committment to try to help our various not-for-profits," Wilkinson said speaking of the $100,000 that the organizers have promised. "It's a wonderful opportunity for private-public partnership."

Theresa Quigley introduced legislation that she has begun working on that would require those using public spaces, such as beaches and parks for large gathering to not only reimburse the town for police overtime, but for other fees, such as cleanup, that would give back to the community. "You want to take a benefit out of the community, you can give back to the community," she said.

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