Talk Is Cheap

Last week was the final Express Sessions event of the season; a dozen live events brought together panelists and community members to discuss a variety of topics of importance to the community. As the break for a busy summer arrives, the question arises: Does it make a difference?

The topic for the event last week in Sag Harbor focused on that village’s readiness for climate change and the perils it will bring — but, like other topics from throughout the fall, winter and spring, it was relevant for other villages and hamlets on the South Fork. Rising waters and worsening storms affect Westhampton Beach, Quogue, Flanders, Montauk and many homes and businesses in between. Sag Harbor grapples with its issues on its own, but if it finds solutions they will be useful far beyond its borders.

The mission of Express Sessions is rooted in the notion that brainstorming — coming together and having a wide-ranging discussion with knowledgeable experts, policy-makers and affected residents — is a necessary first step toward finding solutions and implementing them with success. Government does that, with public hearings and open meetings, but sometimes removing the formality and simply kicking around an idea over lunch can better bear fruit.

That’s a charitable view. It’s also fair game for more jaded opinions: that the events can be mere navel-gazing, that the discussions are akin to preaching to the choir much of the time, that the result is “talking in circles,” as one critic put it, secondhand, in a Letter to the Editor this week. And it’s absolutely true that talk does not necessarily lead to action. Put another way, an Express Sessions conversation is not an end — the best you can hope is that it’s a means to an end, or a spark that can be cupped and fanned and coaxed into fire.

There are examples that suggest it happens. For instance, an event in January, following up on a news series published by The Express News Group, brought together many stakeholders in the future of the Stony Brook Southampton campus. Stony Brook notably sent a small bus of officials to the discussion, and by all accounts they left impressed with the passion that local residents have for the campus, the connection with the Shinnecock Nation, and the high hopes of many local officials. Some folks who were at odds had civil conversations. The result: More communication — and, with surprising speed, a resolution to the thorny question of what to do about the disintegrating historic windmill on the campus property. Town, state and Stony Brook officials built on the foundation laid over lunch in Southampton Village that chilly afternoon.

So discussions are a necessary groundwork, but unless participants take what they gain from those gatherings and actually take action — draw up agreements, write legislation, spend money — all the talk generates no more heat than just hot air.

Who is doing the talking also matters a great deal. And, here, parallel efforts deserve a moment in the spotlight.

Guild Hall Teen Arts Council and Sag Harbor-based architect Nilay Oza have been working on an art project called “The Sag Harbor Backyard Project,” which gives teens a chance to respond to climate change with art and insights, both playful and serious. Meanwhile, architect and artist Ronald Reed enlisted fifth-year architecture students from the New York Institute of Technology to think about what Sag Harbor might look like in the future — and tapped a wellspring of ambitious ideas that came from viewing the village through a new prism.

It’s all talk. But if all these conversations keep happening — about Sag Harbor, about how to make housing more affordable, about how to clean up our polluted waters — and the ideas begin to be shared, from young to old, among friends and families, between energized activists and entrenched skeptics — something wonderful can start to happen. In fact, it’s the only way something wonderful ever happens.

Talk is cheap, no question. But it’s also invaluable. Conversations matter, and the more we talk — and listen — about the issues that frustrate us, the closer we get to solutions that local officials can craft into meaningful action.

Express Sessions will return in the fall. Until then, keep the conversations going.