DAN'S PAPERS, October 23, 2009 Page 16 www.danshamptons.com
Montauk Highway
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at every big intersection. And every Saturday and Sunday, Swan Lake and other ballets would be performed by beautiful young abllerinas in diaphanous gowns from around the world. At the Lobster Inn at the western end of Montauk Highway, I’d install the biggest car wash in the world. All motorists about to get on the Montauk Highway would have to go through it. There would be no dirty cars on my Montauk Highway. At tight spots, where a lot of traffic comes through a narrow area, I would double-deck the Montauk Highway—not up, but down. At each end, passing lanes would go down a hill to big tunnels going under the narrowed area. There would be one at the intersection of
County Road 39 and Montauk Highway in Southampton (the tunnel would curve), another under Water Mill where the traffic ties up at the light, another under the monument in Bridgehampton, another at the famous Perelman Pond Pinch, where the road comes through south of the airport, and another under all of Main Street in East Hampton. There would be no tickets given out for speeding or other poor driving on my Montauk Highway. Instead, after a full-scale monitoring by surveillance cameras, certificates of accomplishment would be handed out to those who went the whole distance without doing anything wrong. Finally, no signage would be allowed anywhere except for uplifting and encouraging
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signage telling motorists, “Yes, you can do it,” “Keep up the good work” and so forth and so on. All signage would have to be approved by the Dan-Montauk Highway Signage Panel, which I would appoint. Driving down Montauk Highway would be a very different experience if I owned it. I think it would be much improved. What do you think?
Quogue
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newspaper that village mayors are given wide berth in how they run their communities in the state of New York. Town supervisors, who represent far more people, are held to strict standards. But mayors, short of taking all the taxpayers’ money out of the village safe and walking down the street with it in a laundry basket, can do as they please. They are free to appoint relatives, harass the neighbors of relatives—which was done in Southampton Village not long ago—and otherwise run their little fiefdoms without interference from above. All that said, it is interesting to note that the current mayor of Quogue, George Motz, was photographed last week leaving the courthouse in Central Islip with his wife, Village Justice Kittric Motz, the both of them looking very unhappy after he had pled guilty to fraud. He has made no plea bargain. And it is okay with him that in pleading guilty, he lost his right to appeal. He faces a conviction that could bring 25 years in prison. Experts say he will probably serve half that. On the surface, the fraud has nothing to do with his vacation home or residency in Quogue. Motz makes his money on Wall Street by buying and selling stocks for his clients. He heads up the firm of Melhado, Flynn & Associates and, apparently, between November 2000 and June 2005, he stole money from his clients by, for example, buying 100 stocks in the morning but listing the buyer as “to be assigned before the end of the day,” then waiting, seeing which stocks performed the best and writing in his name on those that did. The other, not-so-good transactions, he assigned to his clients. There’s a name for this in the world of brokerage houses. It is called “cherry picking,” because it is so easy to do. Just delay filling in the name of the buyer. A broker can do that. Using this method, a person can be a whiz at picking stocks that go up. According to the investigation, during one period Motz bought 204 stocks in the “morning,” and by the end of the day 202 of them went up. The other two were apparently either clerical errors or for window dressing. When this sham was finally exposed, Motz was indicted not only for defrauding his clients out of $1.4 million—enough to buy an estate in Quogue—but also for putting down the wrong times of day to accommodate the cherry picking, which is considered forging public documents. Motz, when first charged, was outraged. “We have the facts on our side. If it goes to trial, we (continued on page 26)