Size Matters

As the new administration settles in at Southampton Village Hall, one of new Mayor Bill Manger’s first acts is to seek to amend the village code to reduce the size of the Planning Commission from eight members to five. It’s an odd thing to prioritize, particularly when the Planning Commission itself didn’t call for it. In fact, at the July 6 meeting, two commission members offered that five members likely is inadequate, considering how much work the Planning Commission is tasked with.

By village code, the Planning Commission makes recommendations to the Village Board aimed at implementing the village’s comprehensive plan. It also recommends amendments to the village code and takes up whatever matters the Village Board chooses to refer to the commission.

“Their preference is to keep it at five,” Chair Marc Chiffert said of the Village Board during the commission’s recent meeting. “I think there is enough work for six.” “If we get a lot of committees going, five’s not a lot of people,” member Pamela Gilmartin added.

Member Michael Anderson was deferential, saying that he was sure the mayor and trustees did not come to this conclusion lightly and that they studied it. But why so sure? If Manger and the trustees did debate the makeup of the Planning Commission, it didn’t happen during a public meeting — where these discussions are supposed to take place, by law.

As things stand, only five of the eight Planning Commission seats are full. This deficiency goes back to before Manger’s election as mayor. In April, Manger joined his fellow trustees in rejecting then-Mayor Jesse Warren’s reappointment of Laura Devinney and Ed Simioni to the Planning Commission. It was a slap in the face to two long-standing members of the commission, who both wished to continue serving. When hard-working volunteers are difficult to come by, why turn anyone away?

Manger has said he was against the reappointments simply because he felt the Planning Commission would work better as a five-member panel. But leaving seats vacant before actually changing the village code that establishes an eight-member body was putting the cart before the horse. The move also raised eyebrows because Devinney and Simioni were dissenting voices who opposed calls for the terms of the Village Board to be doubled from two years to four.

It is difficult to find village residents who are qualified, willing and available to serve on village committees. The answer is not to spread the same amount of work among fewer people. That will only make it more challenging to secure volunteers who can make the requisite time commitments.

However, the bigger cost of smaller committees is losing a wider breadth of points of view. The Planning Commission in particular should have enough diversity and enough representation from different constituencies in the village that the members don’t always see eye to eye on every issue. If everyone in the room agrees all the time, there are undoubtedly voices in the community that are not being heard. In such a situation, five is definitely not greater than eight.