UPDATED 8/30/07
James Henry an attorney and economist of Sag Harbor launched his campaign for
Southampton Town Supervisor with a press conference Monday, August 20 on the steps of Town Hall.
Henry, who is running on the Democratic ticket lashed out at incumbent Skip Heaney for
accepting contributions from developers and people doing business with the Town.
Henry said " 2/3 of Heaney's contributions are coming from outside the town and a lot of
that money is coming from people who have a direct blatant interest in doing
business with the Town. That is un-acceptable and I refuse to take money from
anyone doing business with the Town."
The democratic candidate and ACLU cooperating attorney may be best know here for his
successful suit against Southampton Village which allowed anti-war groups to march in the
annual July 4 parade.
Henry talked about the lack of progress in the Town on affordable workforce housing and in
acquring open space. He proposed that the Town borrow on the funds collected by the
property transfer tax so as to buy more open space now while it is still available.
But Henry focused on a major thorn in the side of some Town residents .. the tax
re-assessments and steep increases in Town Taxes that many think are unfair.
He blamed current Supervisor Skip Heaney and his rival for the Republican
nomination for Supervisor, Town Councilwoman Linda Kabot.
Henry said "We found that more than 50% of people we talked to were extremely dissatisfied
with the performance of the Heaney-Kabot administration in this (re-assessment) issue
and very concerned with the unfairness of taxes they are paying,not only becase
they are increasing but also because they don't see they are getting value for the money spent."
"Town spending went from 40 million in 2000 to 80 million last year, doubling in almost six
years."
"in 2004 after having promised not to have a re-assement, Skip Heaney went
ahead to re-introduce it. In 2006 he did it again."
" He appointed people to run the assessment who were incompetent The result was predictable.
The information was sent late. There was no time to file grievences. There were all kinds of
inequities in the assement adjustments. There was a collision between the tax reassesment
in Southampton Town and the school budget votes all over the county. As a result school bud-
gets were voted down. There was an all time record of 8600 tax grievences filed."
Neither Heaney or Kabot responded to a request by the WPKN news department to comment on the
allegations made by Mr. Henry.
Prepared by the WPKN /WPKM East End News Team.
