Southampton maps out a new identity

Ask anyone in the Town of Southampton where they live, and they'll tell you - in the blink of an eye - which community they call home, from Northampton in the west to North Haven in the east.

Even so, getting universal agreement on where one community ends and another begins has been a challenge.

So when the town board adopted a map outlining those communities earlier this month, it was an accomplishment eight years in the making.

The town has seven villages, but most of the 66,000 residents live in unincorporated hamlets. The drawn-out process of identifying the boundaries of each was complicated by the multitude of arbitrary lines - fire districts, school districts, ZIP codes, park districts, village lines, census blocks, even the roads or streams that traditionally served as hamlet markers.

The new map identifies almost two dozen separate hamlets and villages - a major change from the 1970 master plan that divided the town into 10 areas. And while the map will not have any specific impact on residents, town officials said it is a vital planning tool.

As the town runs out of open space and reaches its maximum build-out, officials say they need to define communities to provide for future needs - to decide what kind of shopping should be included in local zoning, for instance, or to set aside enough land for parks and other recreational needs.

Town Councilwoman Nancy Graboski found just how complicated the issue of boundary lines was as she held dozens of sessions in search of agreement. She engaged in a kind of shuttle diplomacy, meeting with different community groups in an effort to reach a common understanding of where one community ended and another began.

"We have one area of Hampton Bays, it changed to Hampton Bays in 2004 or 2005. Before that, it had always been East Quogue," Gabroski said. "It's in the East Quogue school district, but the students go to Westhampton Beach High School."

After dozens of changes, Noyac got a little bigger, Bridgehampton got a little smaller and East Quogue grew a bit by taking a chunk out of what had been considered Hampton Bays.

"It's interesting what you think your community is," says Fred Cammann, chairman of the Bridgehampton Citizens Advisory Committee. "It's arbitrary."

He used Bridgehampton as an example: The western part of the Bridgehampton school district is in the Water Mill ZIP code. Residents there must pick up their mail at the Water Mill post office, which doesn't provide home delivery. And that routine reinforces their identity as residents of Water Mill.

Years ago, when Bridgehampton was considering becoming a village, "when we proposed a boundary on the west side, you should have heard the yelling in Water Mill," Cammann said.

The sense of identity stretches outside village lines, too. In Sag Harbor, for example, the village border is clearly marked, and residents vote in village elections and pay village taxes. But people who live just to the south of the village boundary feel they live in greater Sag Harbor. The new map identifies that area - south of Sag Harbor Village and north of Sagaponack and Bridgehampton - as Sag Harbor, minus the "Village."

Some residents have been fighting over the issue of identity for years. Carl Iacone, former president of the Bayview Pines Civic Association, lives in Flanders - and has tried to get people to believe that for nearly two decades.

But the phone book lists his address as Riverhead. His ZIP code is Riverhead. And his house, like the rest of Flanders, is in the Riverhead School District.

"It's very important for people who live in a community to have a sense of identity," Iacone said.