Paging King Solomon

Anyone who believes every local issue is cut-and-dried, and simple to resolve, should take a closer look at Poxabogue Field in Sagaponack, and at least acknowledge just how thorny a choice the Southampton Town Board faces.

On the surface, it should be simple. The eight-plus-acre farm field would have become just another high-end subdivision, but the late Geri Bauer bought it in 1987 — a time before the Community Preservation Fund and other farmland preservation efforts had been born — to keep it in agriculture. In 2021, with the CPF firmly in place, she completed the task by selling it to Southampton Town, designating it for agricultural use.

Frankly, that could be the end of the conversation — and possibly it should be. But it really isn’t so simple.

It’s a reminder that the town taking ownership of a piece of farmland is the worst option: It’s much better to buy the development rights and allow the owner, a farmer, to make use of it. But in this case, the town reportedly insisted on buying it outright.

With that in mind, perhaps the town has a moral obligation to consider the interests of the party it purchased the land from — the late Ms. Bauer, who clearly wanted it to remain a farm field. But how strong is that moral obligation, considering that the town paid a fair price for the land? And there were no special restrictions on the sale requiring that the property be maintained as farmland or it would revert back to the seller — as, for example, Margaret Olivia Slocum Sage did when her philanthropic foundation provided the land for Mashashimuet Park in Sag Harbor: It’s to be a park, or it goes back to the foundation.

But others have noted that removing the field from agricultural use, as was the original intent, could have a marked impact on future donations: If a farm family is worried that a transaction with the town to preserve a working field isn’t rock solid, some could be discouraged from taking the chance.

In fact, the town’s only true responsibility is to make sure the land is put to the best public use, offering the most public benefit.

Here’s where it gets tricky. State law says farmland is the highest priority for preservation — a sweetener to win the Long Island Farm Bureau’s support for the CPF in the first place. However, state law doesn’t actually distinguish farmland from any other open space. It’s simply one category among many — despite being the heart of the CPF’s promise.

So, what is the best public use of the land? The creating of the CPF was in large part designed to preserve open space, but mostly as working farmland, to maintain the agricultural nature of the region, and to support that industry going forward. Poxabogue Field was, in fact, farmed for years, and was tilled as recently as 2018. And the Sagaponack Village Board, for what it’s worth, has strongly supported the option of keeping it as active farmland, though it has no ultimate say in its fate.

The counterargument is compelling. In the interim, the field has gone fallow and has reverted to its natural state. As a parade of people who spoke at recent Southampton Town Board meetings have pointed out, there will be real impacts on wildlife if the field is tilled once again. It is located in the Long Pond Greenbelt, and near Poxabogue Pond, an area where the use of fertilizers and pesticides should be discouraged. There are differing reports about the quality of the soil for raising crops, but it seems fair to say it’s not the prime agricultural soils found elsewhere in Sagaponack.

It’s notable that well-respected environmental advocates, like Dai Dayton of the Friends of the Long Pond Greenbelt, and Frank Quevado of the South Fork Natural History Museum, have supported the idea of keeping Poxabogue Field as a wild meadow, and preserved merely as true open space.

In such a circumstance, when there is no clear-cut “right” answer — truly a conundrum worthy of King Solomon — compromise is really the only real solution. It will mean including parties from both camps and, in a moment in American history when finding middle ground appears to be a lost virtue, the Town Board has to work hard to rediscover the art of accommodation.

Reportedly, the Peconic Land Trust has suggested such an option, involving sustainable, regenerative agricultural practices on much of the property, ringed by natural vegetative buffers. Councilman Bill Pell brought forward a farmer’s suggestion: Till the field in the spring, but plant buckwheat and wildflowers instead of row crops. Any crop grown for market would require fences to protect it from marauding deer — and in this case, good fences would not make good neighbors, nor the kind of open space that’s desired. And truly ignoring the space, as has been done in recent years, risks allowing the meadow to simply revert to an oak/hickory successional forest. Nature is a partner, but she can just as easily take over completely.

There is, pardon the pun, a germinating solution here. Town officials should put together a work group made up of competing interests (it must be said: both sides have the best of intentions, which helps) and cultivate it.

In the end, Poxabogue Field will stay either another working farm field, or a lovely wild meadow — both of which are preferable to, as Sagaponack Mayor Bill Tillotson pointed out, another 8 acres of manicured lawns. This is a success story, regardless. But maybe the town can aim even higher.