Recent Stories: Government

    Dick Cavett’s Tick Hall, one of seven McKim, Meade, and White houses on the Montauk ocean bluffs, and two houses on the waterfront on the other side of the Montauk peninsula, have made for interesting agendas at recent East Hampton Town Zoning Board meetings. The latter, an  application for erosion-control work on Soundview Drive, was approved on Tuesday. A hearing on Mr. Cavett’s application met with favorable response on April 23, although a decision is pending.

    As expected, the East Hampton Democratic Committee’s screening committee has recommended that Larry Cantwell, the retiring East Hampton Village administrator, should be the party’s nominee to run for town supervisor in the November election. The choices are in advance of an official nomination convention on Wednesday.

    Two proposed houses, in two different neighborhoods, had neighbors seeing red at public hearings during a marathon East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals meeting at Town Hall on April 16.
    In both cases, the board concluded that the wisest path for the property owners might be to break bread with their neighbors, to see if a compromise could be worked out. And in both cases, the applicants offered compromises on Tuesday, although whether they would satisfy the opposition remains to be seen.

East Hampton Town

Barn at Duck Creek Farm

    The condition of the barn at the East Hampton Town-owned historic Duck Creek Farm, which is the former studio of the painter John Little, will be evaluated to see if it can be used for a temporary art installation proposed by the Parrish Art Museum for the month of August.

    East Hampton’s representatives in the State and County Legislatures came out this week in support of creating a town comprehensive wastewater management strategy and plan, an initiative that has drawn strong opposition from East Hampton Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson and Councilwoman Theresa Quigley.

   After approving a three-year capital spending plan last Thursday, which includes projects totaling $12.4 million, the East Hampton Town Board decided to issue $2.7 million in bonds to kick-start a number of projects.

   The East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals ruled on two controversial matters on April 9 with a voting pattern unusual for this board.
    Members voted 4-1 to grant several variances and a natural resources special permit to Morgan Neff, which will allow him to keep, unchanged, two of his seven cottages, known as Millionaires Row, on Fort Pond in Montauk.

   Chris and Kristen Vila appeared before the East Hampton Village Zoning Board of Appeals on Friday with scaled-back plans for an addition to their house on Mill Hill Lane.
    Though far more amenable to the revised plans, board members expressed lingering skepticism and pressed the couple’s representatives for satisfactory answers.

            Before a crowd of friends, family, and old colleagues from across the local political spectrum, Larry Cantwell, the East Hampton Village administrator, announced his candidacy for East Hampton Town supervisor Friday at the Highway Diner in East Hampton, saying he hopes to win support from the Democratic and Independence Parties.

    With a “yes” vote by three members of the East Hampton Town Board last Thursday, consultants were hired to create a comprehensive wastewater management plan for the town that will address water protection, septic systems, and the town’s aging scavenger waste treatment plant.
    Councilman Dominick Stanzione, who has been advocating for the plan and offered the resolution, lauded it after the meeting as an important step for the town’s environmental future.

    An oceanfront house on Marine Boulevard in Amagansett was before the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals on April 2 for variances that would allow what might be called a creative expansion.
    “I’m a composer,” Carter Burwell, the applicant, told the board. Mr. Burwell is, in fact, the composer for the Coen brothers, the Academy Award-winning film-making duo, having written the scores for all but one of their films.

    Montauk’s Viking Fleet has its eye on Three Mile Harbor as a fishing site, and has asked for permission to dock a 60-foot boat at the East Hampton Town dock there, to take passengers out for daily fishing trips during the springtime months.
    The proposal was first submitted to the town board last fall and was renewed some weeks ago, with hopes that the boat could run out of the Gann Road dock in April, May, and June.