
Some residents who live near the border of East Hampton and Southampton towns are asking lawmakers to allow for a little cross-border reciprocity when it comes to limitations on using their neighbors’ beaches.
Adam Flax, who lives in East Hampton, and Michael Daly, who lives on the Southampton side of Sag Harbor, have set up a Facebook group called “South Fork Beach Pass” and have approached the Trustees of both towns with a request that the two towns sell beach stickers to residents of the other towns at a more friendly rate.
“I miss all my friends in the summer because they go to their beach and we go to our beach,” Mr. Daly said, lamenting how local “fiefdoms” have forced groups of friends to segregate, or orchestrate an intricate dance of car shuffling and over-stuffing, during the months when going to the beach is the main activity and one group can’t park at the same town beach a friend is going to.
“Nobody can come with me unless I meet them at King Kullen and park their car there illegally and they get in my car,” he said.
Nonresident parking stickers for town beaches run well over $300, a high price to tack onto already costly living on the South Fork simply to be able to spend an afternoon with friends at the beach, he argued.
“If you just let someone from the other town buy a sticker for 40 bucks, you’re only going to get 30 or 40 people that will do it—it’s not going to cause any problems,” Mr. Flax said on Monday evening after an East Hampton Town Trustees meeting.
More than 200 people have joined the South Fork Beach Pass group on Facebook already, Mr. Daly told the East Hampton Town Trustees on Monday.
MICHAEL WRIGHT