Big Decisions Loom in Bridgehampton Fire District Election on Tuesday

Voters in the Bridgehampton Fire District will be making some key decisions on Dec. 10, including who should sit on the board of commissioners and a referendum that would transfer the treasurer from an elected position to an appointed post.

According to the district’s newly hired attorney Brad Pinsky, the referendum would shift the treasurer position from a three-year, elected term to a one-year appointed term.

Pinsky said the measure would allow the board of fire commissioners an easier path to remove an appointed individual from the post if they’re not satisfied with the individual’s work performance. Under the current system, the treasurer is an elected term of office, which would require something akin to an impeachment proceeding to remove the person from office, according to Pinsky.

With the position falling under an appointment from the board of commissioners the treasurer will need to be a resident of the district and qualified to perform the tasks of the job — something Pinsky also outlined as a positive distinction.

“When you are appointed you have to be qualified,” he said. “When you are elected you do not have to be qualified...you simply have to be more popular than the other candidate. This allows the public to ensure they have a qualified individual each year performing the job.”

The ballot referendum on the treasurer’s position comes on the heels of the district’s decision to run an advertisement in The Southampton Press that was critical of longtime secretary Charles Butler, who has been working for the fire district since 1977. Butler was the appointed secretary and elected treasurer. His current term as treasurer ends at the end of 2014.

If approved, the shift will not take effect until 2015.

The second referendum to appear on the ballot approves the sale of a 60-by-100-foot vacant plot of land to a private buyer in the amount of $940,000. According to Pinsky, the district-owned land, located at 113 Main Street in Wainscott, is no longer needed. Voters will need to decide on whether the district can go through with that sale.

As to the fire commissioner position, current chairman Steve Halsey is running for re-election after six years on the board. His name is the only one that will appear on the ballot, though former commissioner Bruce Dombkowski has mounted a write-in campaign.

Halsey is a 35-year volunteer member of the Bridgehampton Fire Department and a lifelong, multi-generational resident of Bridgehampton. A former electrical contractor by trade, Halsey works as a real estate agent for Douglas Elliman. At one point he served as a member of the Southampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals and the Southampton Town Board. He graduated from Lycoming College with a degree in Business Administration.

Dombkowski once served on the board of commissioners from 1997 to 2007 — the year he lost his re-election bid to write-in candidate Jeff Loucheim, who has since left the board. Dombkowski has served as a volunteer with the Bridgehampton Fire Department for more than 30 years, as well. He ran unsuccessfully for a spot on the board in 2011. This year Dombkowski is running on a message of change to what has been described in campaign material as a “Good Old Boys Club.”

Recently, Dombkowski’s petition to appear on the actual ballot was denied. Pinsky said the petition forms submitted were not properly filled out. He said Dombkowski’s name and address needed to be printed on each page of the petition form to ensure that supporters signing the petition were aware of who they were supporting. Pinsky said his name did not appear on the form.

Dombkowski told Patch that he submitted the petition the same way he has done in years past without any issues. Pinsky argued that if that was the case, it was done in error.

“The law says that a candidate must file their name with a secretary,” Pinsky said. “A list of signatures showed up to support an unnamed individual. How do the residents, when they are signing, know who they are signing the petition for? Simply because an individual goes to them with a form and says vote for ‘whoever,’ that is not a legally sufficient petition.”

Dombkowski said he became aware of the rejection only when he was approached by members of the press after the deadline to submit had passed.

In the ad taken out in the paper last month, district officials announced its decision to hand the bookkeeping responsibilities over to the Pinsky Law Group after finding “concerning” financial transactions made by Butler. Both Pinsky and Commissioner Halsey have said they are not making criminal accusations, merely that Butler’s operation of the finances might have been improper.

Butler has retained the services of Thomas W Horn, a Sag Harbor-based attorney who specializes in municipal grievances and civil rights violations. Horn told Patch this week that he believes the fire district acted improperly by taking out the ad and should “keep their nose and their mouths out of the paper.”

“I think that this behavior by the fire district is what puts the small in small town,” Horn said. “There’s a lot of smallness going on here.”

Election Day is Dec. 10 and the poll station, located at the Bridgehampton Fire House; 64 School Street, will be open from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.