A hearing in State Supreme Court in Riverhead this week may have been the beginning of the end of an ongoing battle between East Hampton Town and the owners of Cyril’s Fish House, the popular eatery and bar on Napeague, but the case is not over yet. The town is seeking a preliminary injunction to prevent the owners, Michael Dioguardi and Cyril Fitzsimons, from operating a business in any other form than existed in 1984, when it was a small roadside cafe. They, in turn, have brought suit against the town for what they say is malicious prosecution and abuse of process.

Friday’s hearing on the request for a preliminary injunction cuts to the heart of a controversial issue: how to regulate businesses that predate zoning and are grandfathered as legal in areas where they are no longer permitted. Both sides agree that Cyril’s is a business on a site zoned for residences. The dispute is whether it has been expanded, which would be a violation of the zoning code. The owners contend the bar and restaurant was always there in some form, while the town argues the use was expanded in 1990. The owners’ suit is being held in abeyance until the current matter is settled.

The hearing got off to a rocky start when the attorneys for the owners, Dianne K. Le Verrier and Conrad Jordan, were not present at 10 a.m., as scheduled. Mr. Jordan explained he had been involved in two trials in Queens, but Acting Supreme Court Justice Joseph Farneti was clearly unhappy. He scolded Mr. Jordan,  saying that because there was no jury involved, he would have been able to be flexible in handling the case. “You denied me that flexibility by not being here at 10 a.m.,” he said.

 Joseph W. Prokop, representing the town, told the court that he had subpoenaed several witnesses for that morning. Because the hearing did not get underway until after the lunch break, he had time to call only one: William J. Walsh, who surveyed the property several times, beginning in 1984. The other witnesses were to have been a former owner of the site, a representative of the State Liquor Authority, and an aerial photographer. Also present as potential witnesses was Tom Preiato, the town’s chief building inspector, and other officials. 

Mr. Walsh told the court that, according to his survey as well as original notes, there was no exterior bar or awning there in 1984. When asked if there was anything different when he revised the survey in 1990, his answer was, “Yes. The deck and the bar, and a walking ramp to step up to the deck level.” Mr. Jordan’s cross-examination quickly became adversarial. He pressed Mr. Walsh about whether an exterior counter might have been there in 1984. “If there was a counter, it would have been in the survey,” Mr. Walsh answered.

Mr. Jordan then questioned Mr. Walsh about a phone conversation he had with Debra Choron, another attorney with the Le Verrier firm, asking whether Mr. Walsh had expressed concern that he could be legally liable if he had left anything off the original survey. “I returned a phone call. I didn’t expect to be interrogated,” Mr. Walsh responded, saying the call upset him, and he didn’t recall all the details of the conversation.

Justice Farneti told Mr. Walsh that he should not take any of Mr. Jordan’s questions personally, saying it was just part of the process. That process will continue either on Tuesday or July 7, depending on the status of Mr. Jordan’s Queens trials. 

The Republican Party’s primary election to determine the candidate who will face the incumbent, Representative Tim Bishop, will take place on June 24. The primary pits Lee Zeldin, a two-term state senator from Shirley, against George Demos, an attorney formerly  with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission who lives in Stony Brook.

Mr. Bishop, who is seeking a seventh term in what is expected to be a closely contested election, does not face a primary challenger.

Mr. Zeldin is a graduate of the State University at Albany and earned a law degree from Albany Law School. He spent four years on active duty with the Army and served in Iraq. At present he serves as a major in the Army Reserves. He is backed by the Republican and Conservative Parties.

Mr. Demos, the grandson of Greek immigrants, served on the team that prosecuted Bernard Madoff, the investment adviser convicted in what is considered to be the largest financial fraud in U.S. history. Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former Gov. George Pataki have endorsed him.

Both candidates point to the economy as the top issue facing the district. Mr. Zeldin, who ran unsuccessfully against Mr. Bishop in 2008, criticized the congressman for what he called an ineffective effort to obtain funding for Hurricane Sandy recovery. “By the first Memorial Day, Jones Beach had new dunes, new roads, and money was flowing into Queens, Brooklyn, and Staten Island,” he said in an interview. “Yet the Fire Island to Montauk Point plan is still loaded with projects that haven’t seen a dime. It’s important for our local representative to be our strongest and most effective advocate to get those projects started.”

Mr. Zeldin was also critical of the implementation of the Common Core academic standards, the Affordable Care Act, and the state of veterans’ health care.

Mr. Demos, who is also critical of the Affordable Care Act, has positioned himself as a political outsider not beholden to his party’s establishment. “The defining issues of this campaign are Obamacare and taxes,” he said. “On both issues, Lee Zeldin went to Albany and voted for Obamacare and higher taxes, and I would not have done that.”

Voters, Mr. Demos said, “want someone who’s going to stand up and defend conservative principles regardless of what the establishment says. The problem in Washington is we have too many go-along-to-get-along politicians who take their marching orders from the Republican bosses.”

The Town of Southampton earned the highest rating possible from Standard and Poor’s Rating Services on Tuesday, when it was upgraded from AA+ to AAA. Supervisor Anna Throne-Holst said the new rating was the result of fiscal discipline at Town Hall over the past four years.

According to a statement from S&P, the rating reflects the agency’s view of the town’s economy, management, budgetary flexibility, liquidity, budgetary performance, debt and contingent liabilities, and institutional framework, which were identified as being “strong” or “very strong.”

It isn’t usual for the East Hampton Town Planning Board to actually welcome an application for site plan review of commercial construction, but that was the reaction on June 11 when a proposal for a two-story building in the downtown area of Montauk came up. Two other site plan applications also were on the agenda, and in those cases the board called for more narrative.

The Montauk application was submitted by Peter A. Kazura, who plans a two-story building with a single business on the first floor and a two-bedroom affordable apartment on the second. The property is one of five undeveloped  rectangular lots on the north side of South Euclid Avenue. The lots are on one of the last undeveloped commercial blocks in the hamlet. The lot in question is 4,100 square feet. The building would be constructed in Tudor style, something Nancy Keeshan, a member of the board who has a real estate business in downtown Montauk, applauded.

The plan, including the apartment, which would require a special permit, was welcomed by the board, although there was a hitch when they heard a report about the plan for parking from JoAnne Pahwul, assistant town planning director. The problem, she said, is that an adjacent property already has site plan approval with a totally different configuration for parking. She suggested that the sidewalks between the parcels  be better aligned and the parking spaces on the Kazura lot pulled farther back into the right of way. The board agreed that the parking plans needed to be modified before Mr. Kazura’s next go-round in front of the board.The review of East Hampton property at 79 Spring Close Highway, which is the title of the limited liability company that owns it, brought up groundwater questions. Slightly under an acre, the property is the site of Spring Close Antiques and Restorations, which is seeking a 245-square-foot greenhouse, concrete slabs around its workshop, and to add parking. Access is via a long strip of land running parallel to the Long Island Rail Road tracks, with the entrance on Spring Close Highway. The site is unique in being zoned for commercial-industrial use, whereas all the other properties in the area are residential. The owner’s representative, Britton Bistrian, told the board that the workshop had been there over 100 years.

In a memo to the board, Thomas D. Talmage, the town engineer, expressed skepticism about elements of the initial plan. One question was about groundwater, which is apparently only 2.3 feet beneath the surface. This would hamper any effort to put in a septic system, he noted. “I do not find the engineering elements to be satisfactory,” Mr. Talmage wrote.

Ms. Bistrian countered that Mr. Talmage was referring to water trapped between the surface and a thick clay deposit. Pat Schutte, a board member, agreed. Mr. Schutte, a builder, said he had worked on a nearby house. “The first two feet were muck. The next eight feet were real pottery clay. You couldn’t drive a truck on it. It was like ten feet down. When you got through it, it was fine. Sand. But it is fine. It is just trap?ped water.”

Overall, the board expressed a desire to see a narrative on the uses of the site, and one that would address Mr. Talmage’s concerns about parking and other issues as well as groundwater. Diana Weir, a board member, said nearby wetlands needed to be reflagged, and another member, Reed Jones, noted that no additional landscaping would be needed. “It is really tucked away back there.”

The second initial site plan review that night was for a storage shed on land also zoned for commercial industrial use, 14 Plank Road in a water recharge area. The site is home to Paul Consiglio Contracting. According to a memo from Eric Schantz of the East Hampton Town Planning Department, the company wants to legalize an existing 275-square-foot shed on a 6,480-square-foot parcel. In this case, however, surrounding properties are similarly zoned. Nevertheless, Mr. Schantz noted that the applicants had “not stated the nature of the intended use of the storage shed.” The board agreed, asking the owners to produce a narrative that explains the use.

The board also discussed changes to the town code regarding exterior lighting, which have been proposed by the town board. A public hearing on it had been held on June 5, and board members expressed some confusion about why they were being asked to weigh in on the matter after the hearing had been held. In the end, the board agreed to support most of the proposed legislation except a clause that calls for a range of color temperatures. They expressed the belief that 3,000 Kelvins should be the maximum.

East Hampton Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell has suggested a countywide ban on disposable plastic shopping bags.

Mr. Cantwell said he had proposed the idea at a recent meeting of the East End Supervisors and Mayors Association. “That is a more comprehensive way to do it,” he said. “I’m hoping that the supervisors are going to support that request to the county.”

The East Hampton Village Board voted in 2011 to outlaw the bags, which are blamed for wildlife deaths, require petroleum to manufacture, and release toxins into soil and waterways as they decompose. Southampton Village prohibited them in 2013.

The East Hampton Town Litter Committee is preparing to launch a lobbying effort in support of a ban, East Hampton Town Trustee Debbie Klughers, a member of the committee, said.

Mr. Cantwell this week also called the quantity of roadside litter “troubling” in East Hampton Town.

The town’s Highway Department, he said, “does a very respectable job. The state and county do a much poorer job of keeping the sides of their roads clean.”

A result of budget cuts to the county roads program and the state’s Department of Transportation, “those efforts are deplorable compared to 20 years ago,” he said. “The burden falls on everyone else.”

On LTV

“Cleaning the Sands of Time,” a film depicting the Feb. 22 beach cleanup organized by Dell Cullum, a nature photographer and wildlife specialist, is airing on LTV. The 28-minute film chronicles the day on which 84 volunteers collected and removed 3,510 pounds of mixed debris from the ocean shoreline from Montauk Point to Georgica Beach in East Hampton Village.

“It’s a really good message,” Mr. Cullum said. “We’re anxious to get it out there so the summer people can see how hard we worked prior to the summer, and give them an idea of what we’re trying to do here and how they can help — by not littering, bringing out what they bring in, picking up after their dogs. The simple things that everybody is neglecting.”

It will be broadcast tonight at 6:30 and 11 more times through July 7. It will appear with Mr. Cullum’s “Imagination Nature,” a program that recently debuted on LTV in which he discusses wildlife and nature. Each episode features “Trash Talk,” a segment in which an individual or group delivers a message about keeping the town free of litter.

“Dell is raising awareness to get people to stop littering,” Mr. Cantwell said. He is also raising the awareness of government to stay on top of garbage removal from receptacles, he said.

Mr. Cantwell “has done a lot for the cause,” Mr. Cullum said. “Even though there’s more to do, if he can do it, he’s going to do it.”

“Every single person is responsible to not litter,” Ms. Klughers said. “It’s so simple: Bring it home with you, find a garbage can.” One of her concerns is road-end dumping, people leaving household garbage in or around receptacles at the roadway endings at public beaches.

“Dell sees the same people every morning. The rest of the residents are paying for their trash removal,” she said.

The town, Mr. Cantwell said, “has got to keep doing a better and better job of providing the facilities and doing all it can to pick up the trash that is left, in some cases left legitimately. Maybe we’re not picking it up as frequently as we should, although this year we’ve increased our schedule of pickups,” he said.

An Army Corps of Engineers’ amphibious vehicle known as a LARC, for Lighter Amphibious Resupply Cargo, will be out in the ocean and along the beach between Ditch Plain and the eastern edge of Washington Drive in Montauk today in preparation for the design of a beach protection and reconstruction project.

The “vehicle is designed to allow surveying in the water, across shoals, and even through the surf zone up to the base of the beach dunes,” according to a release.

East Hampton Town

Stop-work Order Upheld

The East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals has upheld a stop-work order issued in January by Tom Preiato, the town’s chief building inspector, rejecting an appeal from the owners of Cyril’s, the bar and restaurant on Napeague. The board concluded on June 17 that Mr. Preiato was correct in finding that “the applicant did not have the proper permits and approvals to remove two 2,000- gallon underground fuel tanks from the subject premises.”

The town and the restaurant’s ownership group, led by Michael Dioguardi, are engaged in lawsuits against each other in New York State Supreme Court in Riverhead which could determine the future of the establishment. The next hearing date in court is July 7.  T.E.M.

Interim Tax Receiver

The East Hampton Town Board appointed Rebecca Rahn as interim tax receiver last Thursday night, at an annual salary of $62,000. An East Hampton resident since 2008, Ms. Rahn, who is married and has two children who attend the East Hampton Middle School, worked most recently as the manager of finances and human resources for Naturopathica in East Hampton. She has a degree in finance and accounting from Westwood College and a degree in biology from Middlebury College.

Ms. Rahn replaces Monica Rottach, whose management of the tax receiver’s office came into question early this year when it was discovered that nearly a quarter of the annual town tax bills had not been mailed out, and that payments that had been made were not being deposited in a timely manner.

Gansett Committee Remade

The town board made new appointments to the Amagansett Citizens Advisory Committee last Thursday night. The new members are Tina Piette, Marc Shultz, Jeffrey Reich, John Jaxheimer, Beverly DiSunno, and former Councilman Dominick Stanzione. Wendy Dellapolla, Jeannette Schwagerl, and Ed Gifford were removed from the committee.

Ms. Piette owns property in both Amagansett and Springs, and is a member of the Springs Citizens Advisory Committee. She was appointed after a short discussion among board members about allowing a volunteer to serve on more than one hamlet advisory group. While Ms. Piette offered to resign from the Springs group in order to join the committee in Amagansett, where she resides, the majority of the board found that unnecessary.

About Appearance Tickets

Next Thursday, the town board will hold a hearing on a town code amendment expanding the list of town officials authorized to issue appearance tickets for violations of state or local laws. According to the proposal, the list would be expanded to include the directors of public safety and code enforcement, ordinance enforcement officers and the chief town investigator, all of the building inspectors and fire marshals, harbormasters and bay constables, and the animal control officers and animal shelter supervisor.

J.P.

New York State

Region’s C.P.F. Takes in $38 Mil

The 2-percent real estate transfer tax adopted by the five East End towns produced more than $38 million in the first five months of 2014, Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. reported in a release this week. The amount is up slightly, by just over 5 percent, from that raised during the same period last year. The money is used by the towns to buy land for open space, recreation, farmland, and historic preservation.

Over the last year, the Peconic Bay Region Community Preservation Fund, which receives the money from the tax, has provided more than $97 million to the towns; $923 million has been generated since its inception in 1999.

In East Hampton, the transfer tax raised $11.6 million from January through May this year. The highest revenue from the tax flowed into Southampton Town, at $22.5 million, while Riverhead and Southold received $1.5 million and $1.7 million, respectively, and Shelter Island received $820,000.

Last week, the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals considered a six-foot-wide boardwalk. Next week, it expects to come to terms with bodies six-feet deep.

Last week’s application is from a couple who want to install a six-foot-wide, 848-foot-long boardwalk from their house, at 2 Tyson Lane, through the dunes. Patrick B. Fife, the couple’s attorney, explained that each uses a wheelchair and needs assistance to get to the beach. The roughly eight-acre parcel on which the house sits is owned in part by the Nature Conservancy, which neither supported nor opposed the proposal. But the hearing lasted three hours.

The property is in what is the Double Dunes, Brian Frank, the Planning Department’s chief environmentalist, said, which extends 2.8 miles from Further Lane and Tyson Lane all the way to the western part of Bluff Road, and covers about 100 acres. In a memo to the board, Mr. Frank wrote that the land is ecologically important and shelters many forms of wildlife and plants.

The planned width of the boardwalk “exceeds the four-foot width consistent with coastal access policies and the past practices of the board,” he wrote. He also objected to the particular chosen path, which, he said was along a current footpath. This was disputed by another representative of the applicants, although Cate Rogers, a board member, and John Whelan, the chairman, pointed out that the survey submitted with the application uses the words “along existing footpath” five times.

Mr. Frank and the representative also disagreed about whether rolling the boardwalk over plants would constitute clearing, which is prohibited on the dunes. In the end, the board asked for a new survey that clearly delineates the proposed path and also asked that the path itself be staked, so that members can do a field inspection. The record will be open until July 15.

Among the matters on next week’s agenda, at the board’s meeting at Town Hall on Tuesday, is an application from Temple Adas Israel in Sag Harbor, which wishes to expand its cemetery on Route 114 into an adjacent, roughly one-acre parcel. Eventually all of the property would be cleared for burials. However, because the land is in a water recharge district clearing is strictly limited. An even more worrisome challenge, though, is that the practice under Judiac law is to bury the dead in simple wood coffins.

The town code explicitly requires that the “creation or expansion of a cemetery in the water recharge overlay district, shall only be approved upon condition that internment caskets be encased in watertight liners to restrict the entry of body decomposition and embalming chemicals into local ground or surface waters.” In a memo to the board, Eric Schantz, a planner for the town, said the requirement for watertight liners was “moot” because embalming fluids are not used in Jewish burials. He did not address the matter of body decomposition, however, apparently leaving it up to the board.

Also on Tuesday, Lee White rejoined the board after being appointed by the East Hampton Town Board to replace  Bryan Gosman, who resigned recently.

The East Hampton Town Board will hold hearings next Thursday on several property purchases with the community preservation fund. Land in Northwest, East Hampton, at 32 and 36 Mile Hill Road, owned jointly by family members through the estate of Mary Whelan, is proposed for purchase at $4.8 million. The 18 acres would be preserved for open space.

In Montauk, three lots are being looked at for open space. A lot just shy of an acre at 28 South Federal Street, owned by Steven Bitondo, is proposed for purchase at $325,000. Also to be discussed is the purchase of just over half an acre at 36 South Geneva Court, owned by Elizabeth Vermilyea, for $330,000, and a .67-acre lot at 20 Brisbane Road, owned by Maryanne Dunne, Dolores Albert, and Beverly Gimon, for $662,500.

Several community preservation fund land purchases in Montauk were approved by the town board at a meeting last Thursday, following public hearings. The board will move forward with the purchase of an acre at 38 South Greenwich Street, owned by Anthony and Irene D’Agostino, for $345,000; the purchase of .55 acres at 15 Furness Road, owned by Fred Pedersen, for $250,000, and the purchase of a .35-acre lot at 148 Greenwich Street, owned by Virginia Colombi-Carbone, for $275,000.

All are in the Lake Montauk watershed area, where all vacant lots have been targeted for purchase. The town board will hold a hearing next Thursday on the addition of all of those vacant lots to the community preservation fund project plan, a precursor to their possible purchase.

The hearings begin at 6:30 p.m. at Town Hall.

East Hampton Town will seek proposals for the use of its new tract of public land in Amagansett, 19 acres of open space and farmland along Montauk Highway where a luxury senior citizens housing development had been planned.

The property was purchased this spring with $10.1 million from the community preservation fund for “the preservation of agricultural open space and recreation,” according to a town board resolution approving the deal.

Supervisor Larry Cantwell said Tuesday that a draft request for proposals is being prepared by Scott Wilson, the town’s director of land acquisition and management, and would be discussed by the town board at an upcoming meeting. The board, Mr. Cantwell said, is “focusing on an agricultural use for the property that includes the building and the land.” The site contains a stable and a residence and is set up as a horse farm.

However, he said, the call for proposals will likely not narrowly define the types of proposals that could be submitted for the board’s review. The more specific the request, Mr. Cantwell said, “the less opportunity for people to come in with ideas.”

This week, Peter Garnham, an Amagansett resident who is active in the local farming community, expressed his concern in a letter to the editor and in an interview by phone that the South Fork Country Club, which has a clubhouse and 18-hole course on Old Stone Highway, has the Montauk Highway property in its sights as a location for a driving range.

“We cannot afford to lose any more farmland,” Mr. Garnham wrote in his letter to The Star. “At a time when there is great demand for fresh local produce, it would be a mistake if the opportunity to return this land to productive organic farm use is abandoned.”

He asserted that the terms of the request for proposals have been “rewritten to favor an application” by the golf club. “It’s possible that those of us who opposed [the land’s] development could be dealt a sharp disappointment,” Mr. Garnham wrote.

Reached by phone on Tuesday, Bob Maroney, the country club’s general manager, said that “at this point, the club really doesn’t have anything to say.”

Asked whether a bid by the club to use the town land would be entertained, Mr. Cantwell reiterated that the call for proposals will be “broad,” but “agriculturally focused.” The board, he said, “can always negotiate, focus, or restrict” what can happen on the property before entering into an agreement for its use.