If all goes according to plan, solar panels could be cropping up next year on a number of vacant parcels owned by East Hampton Town.

       On Tuesday, the town board, acting at the request of Councilman Dominick Stanzione, agreed to seek bids from solar contractors to lease as many as 14  town-owned parcels, from Wainscott to Montauk. Mr. Stanzione said the project was the first step toward realizing a far-reaching objective adopted last summer by the town’s energy sustainability advisory committee, to which he is the liaison.

       The goal is to reduce the town’s energy consumption by 20 percent over the next decade. Leasees would pay the town an annual fee and make a profit by selling the electricity generated back to the Long Island Power Authority. 

       The program is being offered in conjunction with LIPA, which wants to expand solar power production on the island by 100 megawatts in the coming years through its Clean Solar Initiative, Mr. Stanzione said. LIPA has targeted the five eastern towns for up to 40 megawatts, with individual projects limited to 3-megawatt solar arrays.

       The East Hampton Town Democratic Committee feted its own during a holiday party at the Palm restaurant in East Hampton on Friday, honoring retiring Justice Catherine A. Cahill for her 20 years of service to the town and saluting a number of committee members for their work on this year’s campaign.

       Among the crowd of 95 guests were Supervisor-elect Larry Cantwell, Councilwoman-elect Kathee Burke-Gonzalez, and Steven Tekulsky, who was elected to take Ms. Cahill’s place on the bench.

       Andrew Harris of Montauk, a committee member, was named the Democrat of the Year, in part for his “countless hours and effort to the tasks of fulfilling the duties of a committeeman as well as bringing new energy and vitality to the Montauk Democratic community.” Betty Mazur, the committee’s vice chairwoman, got a nod for her “tireless management of the Democrats’ get-out-the-vote project year after year,” and Christopher Kelley, chairman of the campaign committee, was proclaimed “Major Domo Campaign 2013.” Both have the T-shirts to prove it.

       Also at the party, Arlene Coulter, another committee member, announced the creation of a new student internship in memory of the late Phyllis Madan, a member of the Democrats’ executive committee.     

       It will soon be harder for business owners to park their commercial vehicles overnight on the streets and in the driveways of residential neighborhoods.

       On Tuesday, the East Hampton Town Board agreed to adopt a resolution banning the parking of big work trucks and other heavy equipment from residential streets between the hours of midnight and 6 a.m.

       The decision came in response to months of appeals from residents of Springs, who had complained that large trucks and other construction and landscaping equipment parked on neighborhood streets were causing a safety hazard and devaluing their property.

       Board members concurred that tougher restrictions were required for big trucks, excluding pickups and vans, but had some misgivings. Councilwoman Theresa Quigley, who later in the meeting unveiled a study showing that two-thirds of the businesses in town are located in a nonbusiness zoning district, said she did not want to make things more difficult for business owners. But she said the board could not ignore a situation where contractors’ trucks block narrow residential streets.

       Councilman Dominick Stanzione expressed concern that if a homeowner were having a project done and a contractor found it necessary to leave a truck at the site overnight, it might be unfairly ticketed. After some discussion with John Jilnicki, the town attorney, the board agreed that residents who faced such a situation could call police and explain their predicament.

       Mr. Stanzione also wondered where business owners who do not own or lease commercial property elsewhere and have no space for their trucks on their own property would park them.

East Hampton Town

Hunting Deadline Tomorrow

    Applications to hunt deer on East Hampton Town lands are due in the town clerk’s office on Pantigo Road by 4 p.m. tomorrow. Permits for individual hunters will be awarded in a lottery-type drawing. The 2014 deer-hunting season will open on Jan. 6 and last for the month, excluding Saturdays and Sundays. Guidelines are available from the clerk’s office.

New York State

D.E.C. Website Blackout

    Beginning next Thursday, the state website through which hunting and fishing licenses are bought and big-game and turkey kills recorded will be unavailable while the system is overhauled. Joe Martens, the commissioner of the Department of Environmental Conservation, said in a release that the move is part of a statewide effort to consolidate licensing operations. The changeover is expected to last one to two weeks.

    The website blackout means that those planning to get licenses to hunt or fish in New York State must do so before Wednesday. The current sales page can be accessed via dec.ny.gov. Hunters are required by law to report deer and turkey harvests within seven days of killing the animal. During the blackout period, hunters will not be able to report their harvest. They will be given a seven-day grace period to report their kills once the new system is functional.

Beginning next Thursday, the New York State website through which hunting and fishing licenses are bought and big-game and turkey kills recorded will be unavailable while the system is overhauled.

Joe Martens, the commissioner of the Department of Environmental Conservation, said in a release that the move is part of a statewide effort to consolidate licensing operations. The changeover is expected to last one to two weeks.

The website blackout means that those planning to get licenses to hunt or fish in New York State must do so before Wednesday. The current sales page can be accessed via dec.ny.gov.

Hunters are required by law to report deer and turkey harvests within seven days of killing the animal. During the blackout period, hunters will not be able to report their harvest. They will be given a seven-day grace period to report their kills once the new system is functional.

    Health insurance costs for East Hampton Town employees will rise next year under the New York State Health Insurance Program much less than town officials had feared, just 1.8 percent.

    In preparing the 2014 budget this fall, before the state program had tallied its costs for next year, Supervisor Bill Wilkinson included enough money in the employee insurance budget to cover an increase of up to 10 percent. Before the budget’s adoption late last month, the amount was dropped about $500,000, at Mr. Wilkinson’s request, to cover an increase of only 5 percent. New projections, he said at the time, indicated that the costs would not be as high as at first anticipated.

    Under state law, town budgets must be adopted by Nov. 20. However, NYSHIP did not confirm its cost figures for next year until Nov. 29.

    The $500,000 change was made over the objections of Councilwoman Sylvia Overby and Councilman Peter Van Scoyoc, the town board’s two Democrats, and of Len Bernard, the town budget officer, who advised budgeting for at least a 7-percent increase.

    Leaving the budget as originally proposed, Mr. Van Scoyoc said, would prevent a possible shortfall. He suggested that any funds collected from taxpayers for the health insurance premiums in excess of their cost could be set aside for future insurance costs.

    The disagreement resulted in both Democrats voting on Nov. 19 against the adoption of the $69.4 million budget.

    On Dec. 3, Mr. Wilkinson introduced a resolution calling for the surplus  between the approved budget and the actual insurance cost to be transferred into the “employee benefit reserve,” and “used to offset future expenses related to employee benefits.”

    Mr. Bernard, who has been tapped by incoming Democratic Supervisor-elect Larry Cantwell to stay on as budget officer, expressed some confusion last week about the resolution, which was, he said, prepared by Mr. Wilkinson without consulting him. Its purpose and specific intent were unclear, he said in an e-mail, and “I have not received any clarification on the resolution or its intent.”

    “We have no general ‘employee benefit reserve’ as referred to in the resolution,” Mr. Bernard wrote. Pursuant to fiscal regulations applied to East Hampton under a state-approved deficit correction plan, the town has established reserve funds earmarked for employee retirement costs and accrued benefit payouts.

    The budget officer also noted that “we do not yet have surplus for 2014 because we are still in 2013, and surplus cannot be generated when we have not even collected revenue or sent out tax bills. Normally surplus (and the existence of the cash that composes surplus) is something you identify at the end of the fiscal year and at that point use it to fill reserves.”

    Mr. Van Scoyoc and Ms. Overby voted against the Dec. 3 resolution, which passed along party lines by a 3 to 2 vote.

    After the NYSHIP announcement of next year’s rates, Mr. Wilkinson sent out a press release touting his “zero-based budgeting” practices.

    “From a budgeting point of view,” he said in the release, “we are glad we reduced the current and future tax liability for our residents. Absent of insisting on maintaining the financial disciplines which saved us in the first place, history could very easily repeat itself,” he said, referring to the financial disarray he inherited when he took office in 2010. 

    Four East Hampton Town Board hearings next Thursday on requests for changes to the town zoning code are expected to draw a crowd. Petitions have been circulating against all of the proposals.

    Two of the projects, however — including the most controversial, the proposed 555 Amagansett 79-unit senior citizens housing development — are unlikely to gain traction in the face of a thumbs-down issued last week by the Suffolk County Planning Commission.

    A town board must have a majority-plus-one vote to act counter to the commission’s advisory vote against a zoning request. Two of the board’s five members — its Democrats, Peter Van Scoyoc and Sylvia Overby — have already taken a stance against both the 555 project and a proposed downzoning of 19 acres of farmland along Cedar Street in East Hampton, from a five-acre minimum lot size to a one-acre minimum. The two voted against holding hearings on the requests.

    Putnam Bridge, the developers behind 555, have asked town officials to create a new zoning category, a senior citizens housing overlay district, and to place their land, the 24-acre former Principi farm on Montauk Highway, into it.

    John Talmage, through a limited partnership called Diamond T, has requested a zone change on his family’s Cedar Street land so that 16 house lots could be created, with 25 percent of the property to become an agricultural reserve. Under the current zoning and a farmland designation, the site could contain only four house lots, with 70 percent of it set aside as an agricultural reserve.

    Mr. Talmage has been appealing to the town board for months, arguing that  a classification of the farmland as “prime soils” — the basis for two upzonings to date — was erroneous. Therefore, he has said, the parcel should be returned to its original one-acre residential zoning.

    Town officials have expressed concern that doing so would set a precedent that could be applied to other East Hampton farmlands, resulting in the loss of those areas for farming.

    The third proposal scheduled for a hearing next Thursday is on a proposal to change the zoning classification on a property at the corner of Amagansett’s Main Street and Hedges Lane from a half-acre residential zone, with limited business uses allowed, to a central business designation, adding the potential for more commercial uses. The property, which is in the Amagansett Historic District, had until recently been the location of Balasses House Antiques.

    Yesterday, inconsistencies came to light in the language of the resolution passed unanimously by the town board setting the hearing on the rezoning, and it had not been determined by press time what course of action must legally be taken.

    As of early this week, close to 1,500 people had signed an online petition, at change.org, against all of the rezonings, and organizers were hoping to increase that number to 2,000, according to an e-mailed appeal.

    The petition calls the proposed zoning code changes a “last minute raid on our zoning code [that] increases overdevelopment,” being perpetrated by the outgoing town board Republicans’ “Wilkinson majority . . . as their last act before stepping down from power.”

    “They could immediately adopt zoning regulations contrary to the goals of our comprehensive plan,” the petition says.

    By far the deepest concern has centered on the so-called 555 project, which as proposed is not allowed under current zoning. The 79-unit complex would include both houses and apartments for persons aged 55 and up to be sold at market rates, except for eight apartments to be marketed as “affordable” housing, at $550,000.

    The county planning commissioners, in their 11 to 2 vote against the proposal on Dec. 4, said that the development is counter to several goals of the town comprehensive plan, echoing advice by town planners to the town board. Commissioners noted that the 555 plan lacked affordable housing, that appropriate environmental review of the proposals had not taken place, and that it would allow development on prime agricultural soil, saving virtually none of it. The allowable development of the site under current zoning would require preservation of 70 percent of the farmland.

    Residents opposed to the large-scale development feared that the outgoing Republican majority might vote after the hearings, which are set for the board’s last scheduled meeting of the year, to approve the developer’s request.

    A new Democratic board majority will take office next year, which would make approval of the controversial zone changes highly unlikely.

    According to David L. Calone, the planning commission chairman, the entire incoming town board – four Democrats and a Republican — wrote to the commission asking it to reject the project.

    East Hampton Town property tax bills for 2013-14 will be mailed tomorrow, with the first half  due on Jan. 10. The second half will be due by the end of May.

    Property owners who wish to pay their taxes before receiving the bill may do so by visiting the office of the town tax receiver at 300 Pantigo Place, or by calling that office. Payments may also be made by phone or online using a credit card.  The address is officialpayments.com and the phone number is 800-487-4567. Those doing so will be asked to enter a jurisdiction code, which is 4216.

    The company providing these services will charge a fee based on the amount of taxes paid. The taxpayer will be advised of the amount before finalizing the payment, and a confirmation number will be issued.

       A pool patio on Cove Hollow Road was given an okay by the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals on Nov. 19, but an adjoining pool house got an emphatic no. James and Christine Weinberg bought their half-acre property, which contained a 3,800-square-foot house, a 648-square-foot pool, and a 592-square-foot pool house, in 2002. The latter structure pre-existed zoning and was allowed to remain in place. The Weinbergs’ application, which was heard on Oct. 1, was for a two-foot variance for the patio, and an okay for the pool house, which was described as a combination pool house, garage, and shed in 2002. The building has had interior plumbing added at some point, however, forbidden for an accessory structure that is over 200 square feet.

       Tyler Borsack of the Planning Department told the board, in a memo, that because of the changes made to the structure, including removing the garage doors and the interior walls, the structure had lost its exempt status. Mr. Borsack also pointed out that the driveway on the property no longer led to the garage.

       Mr. Weinberg tried to explain some of the changes. “When we took possession, there were two garage doors. The doors were in bad shape so we took them off,” he said. David Lys, a board member, pressed Mr. Weinberg about furniture, including an armoire and a bed, inside the building. “We use it for dead furniture space,” Mr. Weinberg replied.

       A letter to the board from a neighbor, however, said that the previous owner had rented the property out, with the accessory building possibly used as living quarters.

       Alex Walter, the board’s chairman, noted, as he began the discussion on Nov. 19 that variances to allow a pool house of over 200 square feet were extremely rare; Mr. Borsack’s memo had said that he could only find three such cases. Mr. Walter said that, on its face, he was opposed. Board members weighed in: “The stumbling block is the garage that was converted, illegally,” Don Cirillo said. “To me, that is a show stopper.” 

       “When you buy a house, you should go by the C of O,” Bryan Gosman said. “This was not on the C of O.”

       The board voted unanimously to allow a variance for the patio, but to deep-six the variance requested for the pool house. It was unclear whether the couple would have to remove its plumbing.

In Beach Hampton

       A proposed house at 142 Central Avenue in the Beach Hampton neighborhood of Amagansett containing wetlands sailed through the approval process of the Z.B.A. the same night, effectively ending litigation by the applicant, Steve Dubb. Mr. Dubb’s first application had been denied in April following stiff opposition from neighbors and an assessment of flooding problems by the town’s Highway Department.

       “This is not the same application. It is entirely new and redesigned,” Mr. Cirillo said at last week’s session. As it did before, the application calls for tearing down an existing house, which all agreed was rundown and decrepit, but this time the size  had been reduced. Mr. Dubb was represented by Eric Bregman, an attorney with Farrell Fritz, a law firm based in Bridgehampton.

       Mr. Dubb had purchased the property last year for a bit over a million dollars, after eyeing it for several years. Initially, he wanted to build an over 3,000-square-foot house on the 12,000-square-foot lot. The redesigned structure is a bit over 2,500 square feet.

       The original size, along with the potential for flooding and construction of a retaining wall, prompted the board to vote against the application 4 to 0 in April, with the lawsuit a result. Neighbors had shown up at the time, en masse, armed with photographs and surveys of flooding conditions. None attended the hearing last month, on Nov. 19, when it became clear that Mr. Dubb had offered several olive branches, if not whole olive trees, to the neighbors as well as the town.

       He told the board that he’d met with his neighbors several times. “I’ve reached out . . . and I haven’t had any negative comments on it,” he said.

       In a memo to the board, Mr. Frank, the Planning Department environmentalist, said, “The scale of the new residence has been reduced to be more compatible with the size and the constraints of the property,” making it a stronger candidate for a special permit to allow it to be built in a wetlands area.

       Mr. Bregman told the board that Mr. Dubb would be happy to agree to a covenant swapping out the impermeable patio around the swimming pool with a permeable one, allowing for better drainage. He also agreed to several other covenants, including a drywell for pool drainage, and other efforts to contain flood water on the property.

       The board voted 5 to 0 to approve the new application. As far as the suit against the board, Mr. Bregman, although not involved with the litigation, said, “My suspicion is, unless there are some slips twixt the cup and the lip,” it will probably just fade away.

       Good fences make good neighbors, wrote the poet Robert Frost — but when the fence is built on a neighbor’s property, not so good, according to the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals.

       The 5-acre-plus property in question, at 143 Town Lane in East Hampton, is owned by Caroline Lloyd, an equestrian who, according to her attorney, spends most of her time in West Palm Beach, Fla., when she is in the United States. But for three months a year the horse season moves to the Hamptons, and so does Ms. Lloyd.

       The Lloyd property contains a 3,481-square-foot house, a pool, and a 2,283-square-foot horse barn. It also has a 1,815-square-foot exercise ring and an 8,739-square-foot horse arena, both of which were constructed without benefit of a building permit and each of which is too close to the property line.

       The owner applied for variances to legalize the exercise ring, said in the application to be .3 feet from the lot line where the requirement is 10 feet, and the arena, which is 6.7 feet from the line, 3.3 feet short of the standard. The arena variance was needed for one corner only, most of the grounds being conforming, according to a memo to the zoning board from Tyler Borsack, an environmental technician with the East Hampton Town Planning Department. Mr. Borsack noted in his memo that the exercise ring could have been placed elsewhere on the property.

       At the September hearing, David Lys, a board member, called the exercise ring “a self-created hardship.”

       During that hearing, it became evident from a new survey that there was yet another problem: a fence by the exercise ring stands four inches on the wrong side of the Lloyd property, on land owned by the East Hampton Housing Authority. Not only that, but it stands on an easement on the housing authority land. 

       Building on a scenic easement requires approval via a townwide referendum. “When she purchased the property, the fence was already in place,” Mr. Lloyd’s attorney, Dianne Le Verrier, told the board at the time.

       On Tuesday, the board rendered its verdict. Alex Walter, the chairman, made it clear from the beginning that the exercise ring had a steep hill to climb before he would approve it. The arena, though, was more in keeping with the town code, he said.

       Lee White agreed, adding that the corner of the arena in question was very well screened and barely visible from outside the property.

       As for the ring, though, “It is not in the best interest of this town,” said Don Cirillo. “Why was this placed on and over the property line?”

       In the end, the board voted 5-0 to allow the arena the variance it needs, but to deny a variance for the exercise ring. A site plan for the property, which has been held in abeyance by the town planning board pending the Z.B.A. decision, will now have to be revisited.

       The board also voted, in a split decision, to deny variances requested for a constrained Amagansett property. The applicant, Stuart Grannen, wanted to tear down a house at 21 Fresh Pond Road and replace it with a house about 20 feet from the front-yard line, where 40 feet is normally required. The present house,  though it has a slightly different footprint from the proposed new one, is about the same distance from the line.

       The problem for Mr. Grannen is that by tearing down the old building he would lose its pre-zoning-code protection. Both Mr. White and Mr. Lys argued that the property would then have to be treated essentially as a vacant lot, saying that there were other places on the land to build that would be more in keeping with the zoning laws. Mr. Borsack made the same point in a memo written before the Nov. 19 hearing.

       Bryan Gosman, however, said the proposal would have little impact on the neighborhood, and Mr. Cirillo told his fellow members that by denying the application they would be forcing the applicant to do a lot of back-filling on the sloping property, raising the costs substantially.

       Mr. Walter, who is a member of a golf club that owns a neighboring parcel, recused himself from the matter, and the board then deadlocked 2-2 on the application. Since a majority is needed to approve a variance, Mr. Grannen will likely have to submit a new proposal.