By Marianna Levine
Last spring when Bridgehampton Citizens Advisory Committee member, Jeffery Vogel spearheaded a resident-led re-visioning of Bridgehampton’s 2004 hamlet study, he realized the CAC’s website needed to be updated. He wanted the site to allow more community interaction and a direct say in the new hamlet study’s design. And out of that desire came the idea to make the AboutBridgehampton website a live community forum. “A sort of virtual post office” Vogel explains.
“We did have an older website designed by another CAC member, Shira Kalish, but it wasn’t interactive and we wanted to be able to gather information from people who may not always be able to attend CAC meetings,” Vogel, an international banker, who now resides in Bridgehampton full-time relates.
The idea was to be able to educate the public about the hamlet’s history and its many community organizations; but at the same time gather information and concerns from the community to incorporate in CAC discussions.
On the website there are links to the Town of Southampton as well as a Wikipedia page about Bridgehampton. Residents can look at letters written to the town by the CAC, and look at pictures as well as read about the history of the hamlet. Vogel hopes residents will send him their photographs of Bridgehampton.
One fun aspect of the website is a page devoted to interesting facts about Bridgehampton. It explains that Bridgehampton got its name from the bridge originally built on Bridge Street back in 1686 by Ezekial Sandford in order to connect the settlements of Sagaponack with Mecox, and that the hamlet’s windmill was built in Sag Harbor in 1820, and only moved to Bridgehampton in 1837. However, Vogel stresses the website has primarily a very practical and inclusive mission.
“What we’re doing is posting meeting minutes on line so that people who can’t come to the CAC meetings can comment on them. And in that way these comments can guide the next meeting’s agenda,” Vogel continues.
While the website can be accessed currently, it is as yet not fully completed. Vogel hopes to have the live forum up and running by mid-February. Once the forum is in working order there will also be links included to the hamlet’s major community organizations such as the historical society, the Hampton Library, the village improvement society, the food pantry, and the local schools.
Vogel hopes the forum “will be a place to raise topics and issues of concern to the hamlet.” And noted that unlike some other websites “we do ask people to register to be a part of it, and we request that they use their real names while addressing their neighbors. Discussions tend to be more civil if there are names attached to them.”
In the meantime, Vogel hopes the redesigned website will help the CAC complete their hamlet study.
“We opened up the study on the website to get comments on it from people in the area. I’m trying to wrap it up at some point soon, but it has been slow going as a lot of people don’t know about the website yet.”
The CAC’s reason for reworking the official hamlet study was that “what we were often discussing at CAC meetings were land use and zoning issues and whenever we asked the town what they were using to make their decisions they often referred to the hamlet study drawn up in 2004. It didn’t really address issues in 2009, and it concerned itself almost entirely with the Gateway area. You know the area by Carvel on the Montauk Highway,” Vogel elaborated.
The CAC felt this study didn’t address the concerns and needs of the community and had been drafted by outsiders who didn’t understand the area’s identity or fluid boundaries. Actually trying to define the hamlet’s boundaries was another reason Vogel wanted to take a stab at reworking the study.
Vogel sincerely hopes more people will become aware of this resource and mentions that the library has promised to hold a few educational sessions for community members about the web including the AboutBridgehampton website in its program.
Vogel would also like people to know “you don’t have to be a Bridgehampton resident to use the site. Just register. We do ask what neighborhood you live in, but that is just for our information. It’s a very simple process.”
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