Clean It Up

Southampton Town officials need to get on the ball and clean up — and clean out — a blighted parcel of land it owns in Riverside that has become a home to drug dealers and prostitutes.

The Flanders, Riverside and Northampton communities have for decades been a low priority for town officials; the causes, and results, include low property values (and corresponding property tax revenue), blighted properties and vacant businesses. The community has long been home to the drug and sex trades, and has been the scene of other crimes, and often violence.

Efforts to clean up the hamlets often stall or fall to the wayside as the town focuses on neighborhoods to the east with wealthier constituents and tax bases. A recent planning effort to revitalize Riverside has stalled due to a lack of resolve to incorporate an expensive sewer district, an idea that has been stillborn.

So it came as no surprise to residents living in the area that the town-owned property on Riverleigh Avenue, which the town purchased a decade ago, has not been maintained. It is overgrown, garbage-strewn and full of ticks. But that doesn’t stop the criminal element from using the lot as a base of operations.

According to some neighbors, sex workers are dropped off at the lot at 4 p.m., along with the drug peddlers — both groups taking advantage of a handy circular drive that runs through the property — to meet their respective clients. The overgrowth and infestation of ticks make it difficult for Town Police to get into the property to address the rampant criminal activity.

The town, according to the neighbors, cleaned up the property when it bought it, but have been absentee landlords since.

The community should expect better from their local lawmakers. Area civic groups like the Flanders, Northampton and Riverside Community Association, according to its leaders, perform an annual rite of spring, sending letters to town and police officials asking them to clean up the property and thwart the observable crime there — but the requests always fall on deaf ears.

Town Supervisor Jay Schneiderman last week said the town had plans to clean up the land but deferred to Town Police, who, he said, had asked that the town not disturb the property while a drug investigation was ongoing. It seems unlikely that the investigation lasted 10 years, however.

Mr. Schneiderman, town lawmakers and the Town Police need to make this property a priority. It needs to be cleaned up, blocked off, and the criminal element chased away. Southampton’s leaders need to take the opportunity to demonstrate that they are listening to the residents of these neglected neighborhoods and that are concerned with making these forgotten residents’ lives better — just like everyone else in the town.