I came home from a Village Design Review Board meeting a couple weeks ago thinking about all the things they're dealing with...and realized how hard it is to see into the future. If only we could! For instance - who would have thought twenty years ago that people would rather put shiny gold "Manhattan style" signs on their businesses instead of the beautiful "New England style" carved signs that have always been popular here in East Hampton? Had people realized what would eventually happen to our downtown area they could have written the code to reflect it, disallowing things that might make us look more like fancy Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills than Main Street in quaint little East Hampton. 
Who'd a thought, right?
And could one have ever imagined that a store owner might want to paint their building bright pink instead of conservative white? Or that another might want to serve cocktails and hors doves from their front steps?
I think of all the difficulties in holding a government position, the worst is the need to be very pro-active. Without the abilities of a gypsy that's not an easy task. You really can't imagine what people will come up with next, or how tastes will change, or what the general public will think about things ten or twenty years down the road. So by and large we have to react to what comes up and try to deal with things as well as possible. Change is inevitable, as much as people detest it, and the most we can hope for is to channel things in the right direction and make all change as easy as possible to deal with. Its not an easy job.
Who'd a thought, right?And could one have ever imagined that a store owner might want to paint their building bright pink instead of conservative white? Or that another might want to serve cocktails and hors doves from their front steps?
I think of all the difficulties in holding a government position, the worst is the need to be very pro-active. Without the abilities of a gypsy that's not an easy task. You really can't imagine what people will come up with next, or how tastes will change, or what the general public will think about things ten or twenty years down the road. So by and large we have to react to what comes up and try to deal with things as well as possible. Change is inevitable, as much as people detest it, and the most we can hope for is to channel things in the right direction and make all change as easy as possible to deal with. Its not an easy job.
5 comments:
I HATE that pink building! Is it possible to write statutes that maintain the 'old' look of EH, so that these things can't happen? I know you can't dream up what some knucklehead might come up with, but is there a way to write the codes so that nothing 'irreverant' or 'out of place' could possibly pass through?
Some things are possible-some are not. But I can tell you we talk about it constantly and work hard to find ways to control things as much as possible. I just get frustrated when we have to "react" because then the offensive thing is "grandfathered". Government - at least our form of government in this democracy called America - is complicated. No dictatorships and many constituational rights! We need to keep it all in perspective though. Like I said, not easy stuff! But we'll kep trying...
PS-there is also the issue of "taste" which is so subjective and complicates things further...
Thank Heaven we have committed folks like you an the rest of the town board to look after us. Otherwise, we could be just like upisland!
Oh Tiger-please do not confuse us with the Town Board! I know you realize the difference between the village and the town but others find it very confusing and think we are in financial trouble. The village is quite fiscally sound! And thank you for the compliment but sometimes we do it well and sometimes we don't. It's all about trying and like I said, being a bit of a soothsayer!
Post a Comment