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So last year, a foundation called the Southampton Public Safety Foundation was founded.

The co-founders are Annie and Michael Falk, as well as Tim Moran.

Tim Moran is the founder of something called the Palm Beach Police and Fire Foundation, which the Southampton organization is modeled after.

And Annie Falk currently serves there.

as the Palm Beach Foundation's secretary.

Now, we had reported last year about the foundation being created, but they've been back in the spotlight again over the last two months in Southampton Village after they made a pair of donations to the Southampton Village Police Department that raised some questions from the village board and some village residents.

These two donations were, one, was a $5,600 donation to assist with fitting the village's canine vehicle.

And the second one was a donation worth about $37,000 to support the installation of some security cameras in Agawam Park.

Now, the village board voted to approve these in September, but it was a split vote among the board there because there were some questions raised about should we be relying on private donations as a village to fund parts of our police

department here? With the cameras.

We should explain.

That's the point here is it's a nonprofit.

Yes.

And they were created basically to bring in private donations.

And do they do they apply for grants and things, too, or is it just private donations?

From my understanding, it's just private donations.

They collect money from people in the community to support things that need to be purchased for the police department, the ambulances, just additional stuff that doesn't have to come out of the municipal budget then.

Yeah.

And when I had talked with Annie Fock, one of the co-founders, about this, kind of one of the points she mentions is that, you know, one of the points of the foundation is to help fill in the gaps that the budget doesn't necessarily account for.

And that's kind of where the camera donations came in, because...

Trustee Rob Coburn had questioned, you know, why wasn't, you know, the need for these, the funding for these cameras identified the budgeting process earlier this year.

But Mayor Bill Manger had explained that this came up earlier in the summer after there were some incidents of vandalism near the men's bathroom at Agamon Park.

And the cameras near there had failed.

So this was not something that had been identified and just came up over the summer there.

Now, but him and trustee Willa Bernstein, you know, they raise a point like, why should we be relying on public funding for these? And they were the two who ultimately voted no.