Government

After months of adjournments, representatives of the Huntting Inn returned to the East Hampton Village Zoning Board of Appeals last week, continuing its quest to add a pool and hot tub behind its timber-frame guest house.

Nancy Goroff and John Avlon, candidates for the Democratic Party’s nomination to challenge Representative Nick LaLota in New York’s First Congressional District, signaled unity in their belief that Mr. LaLota can be defeated in the Nov. 5 election during a candidates forum hosted by the East Hampton Town Democratic Committee.

The village board has the authority to set the number of moorings in the waterways it manages but has never done so. Now, it aims to change that. “We want to limit unchecked expansion,” said Chris Duryea, a village harbormaster.

“Today, at long last, we flip the switch and turn on the future,” New York State Gov. Kathy Hochul announced at Stony Brook Southampton College on Thursday morning, as federal, state, county, and local officials celebrated completion of the nation’s first utility-scale offshore wind farm. 

As it had signaled earlier last week, the East Hampton Town Board formally adopted the Pro Housing Communities pledge, a New York State program established last year and designed to reward local governments that are working to address the state’s housing crisis, at its meeting last Thursday.

A beach and dune remediation project at Ditch Plain in Montauk, where a critical dune system was lost to winter storms, will cost an estimated $3 million to $5 million.

“The first time as tragedy, the second time as farce” may be an apt description of a recent development in the race to represent New York’s First Congressional District in the United States House of Representatives, where former Representative George Santos of New York, who was expelled from the House in December, has announced that he will challenge first-term Representative Nick LaLota for the Republican nomination.

Sag Harbor Village has agreed to sublease the so-called "gas ball lot" from the developer Adam Potter, who controls 5 Bridge Street Limited Liability Company, which was awarded the lease by National Grid at the end of last year.

Monday night’s lengthy meeting of the Amagansett Citizens Advisory Committee was devoted almost entirely to the increasingly contentious question of the new East Hampton Town Senior Center. A subcommittee appointed last month to consider the details of the proposed building submitted the following recommendations, which were unanimously applauded by ACAC members and some 17 residents in attendance. 

1. The town should look into a smaller, less costly facility or two-story design. Use gifted plans by a local architectural firm.

A nine-foot wall of geocubes at the end of Bay View Avenue on Napeague has prevented access to the beach from neighboring houses since it was installed in 2018, but without the geocubes, the owner of the property said, his house would be inundated during storms and made unlivable. He wants to replace them with a 108-foot-long, 10-foot-high rock revetment.

John Avlon, the author, columnist, and former CNN anchor who announced his candidacy in New York's First Congression District on Feb. 21, will appear at LTV in Wainscott Monday with Nancy Goroff, the Democrats’ 2020 nominee, who is running again this year.

The League of Women Voters of the Hamptons, Shelter Island, and the North Fork will lead an educational program highlighting a new equal rights amendment to the New York State Constitution on Saturday from 1 to 5 p.m. at LTV Studios in Wainscott. The amendment will appear on the ballot in November.