Independence Buffet

    Candidates running on the Independence Party line in East Hampton Town will meet voters tonight from 6 to 8 in the community hall at the St. Michael’s senior housing complex in Amagansett.

    Expected to attend are Jay Schneiderman, the incumbent county legislator, Larry Cantwell, running for supervisor, the town board candidates Fred Overton and Dominick Stanzione, Carl Irace for town justice, Carole Brennan for town clerk, Joe Bloecker for assessor, and Stephen Lynch for highway superintendent, as well as the trustee candidates Tim Bock, Brian Byrnes, Dennis Curles, Stephanie Talmage-Forsberg, Stephen Lester, Sean McCaffrey, Diane McNally, Nat Miller, and Brian Pardini. There will be a free buffet.

For Overton and Bloecker

    A Republican fund-raiser for Fred Overton and Joe Bloecker will be held tomorrow from 5 to 7 p.m. at the Harbor Grill on Three Mile Harbor Road in East Hampton. The candidates will be on hand to discuss their positions. Donations will be accepted at the door.

Supporters Line Up

    Carl Irace, the Republican and Independence Party candidate for East Hampton Town justice, has received endorsements from a number of prominent local Republicans, the party reported this week.

    Among those who have declared their support for Mr. Irace, a former deputy town attorney in East Hampton and former assistant district attorney in the Bronx, are Republican State Senator Kenneth P. LaValle, former East Hampton G.O.P. chairmen Perry B. Duryea III and John Behan, and former East Hampton Town Supervisor Mary Fallon.

    His opponent, Steven Tekulsky, meanwhile, has touted support from Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. and former East Hampton Town Justices James Ketcham and Roger Walker.

    At its meeting tonight, the East Hampton Town Board is expected to approve scheduling a hearing for Nov. 7 at 7 p.m. at Town Hall on a proposed $69.9 million budget for 2014.

    The tentative spending plan was amended this week following two budget discussions in which the board agreed to add several items totaling $62,000. They include $15,000 for the salary of an employee who will become the town’s deer management coordinator, $25,000 for a new full-time clerk position to aid the zoning board of appeals and the architecture review board, $2,000 to maintain the historic town-owned North End Cemetery, and $20,000 for health insurance costs for a town board member, which had been left out of the budget.

    Candidates for East Hampton Town and Suffolk County office will appear together at two major forums this week — a Concerned Citizens of Montauk meet-the-candidates event on Sunday and a League of Women Voters debate in East Hampton on Monday.

    The Montauk event, the group’s 43rd, will take place at the Montauk Firehouse starting at 1 p.m. Typically the only time when all candidates appear together in Montauk, it often draws a standing-room-only audience.

    Larry Cantwell, who is running unopposed for supervisor on the Democratic, Independence, and Working Families tickets, as well as Job Potter and Kathee Burke-Gonzalez, who are running for town board on the Democratic and Working Families tickets, and the opponents Dominick Stanzione and their opponents, Fred Overton, who are running on the Republican, Independence, and Conservative lines, are expected to attend.

    Also expected to attend are incumbent County Legislator Jay Schneiderman, who has the Independence and Democratic Party backing, and his Republican challenger, Chris Nuzzi; the incumbent town assessor, Eugene DePasquale, and his challenger, Joe Bloecker, the two candidates for town justice, Steve Tekulsky and Carl Irace, and all the candidates for town trustee.

    All of the candidates will have an opportunity to introduce themselves, state their positions, and ask a question of their opponent. The public will also have the opportunity to ask questions of the candidates.

    The candidates for town board and county legislator will meet again on Monday at 7 p.m. at the East Hampton Village Emergency Services Building.

    The League of Women Voters event will begin with a debate between Mr. Schneiderman and Mr. Nuzzi, who is  a Southampton Town councilman.

    Following that, Ms. Burke-Gonzalez and Mr. Potter will debate Mr. Stanzione and Mr. Overton.

     Mr. Cantwell will introduce himself but not take part in the debate. The league has also invited other candidates for town office to introduce themselves.

    The league’s voter services co-chairwoman, Anne Marshall, will moderate the debate, with the questions provided by the audience as well as a panel consisting of David Rattray, the editor of The East Hampton Star, Joseph Shaw, the executive editor of the Press News Group, and Estelle Gelman of the league.

    The league will also host a debate next Thursday at 7 p.m. at the Rogers Memorial Library among Southampton Town candidates and Mr. Schneiderman and Mr. Nuzzi.

    The Southampton debate will pit the incumbent town supervisor, Anna Throne-Holst, on the Democratic and Independence lines, against her challenger, Linda Kabot, with Republican and Conservative party backing. Also debating will be the four candidates for two openings on the town board, the Democrats Brad Bender and Frank Zappone and Republicans Stan Glinka and Jeff Mansfield. Other candidates will be invited to introduce themselves.

    The Southampton debate will be moderated by the league’s other voter services co-chairwoman, Carol Mellor. Questions will be provided by the audience as well as Mr. Shaw, Bryan Boyhan, editor of The Sag Harbor Express, and Judy Samuelson of the league.

    Both debates will be videotaped for later viewing on East Hampton’s LTV, channel 20, and Southampton Town’s SEA-TV, channel 22.

    Hearings will be held tonight by the East Hampton Town Board on two additions to the town code that are designed to help officials better enforce the law against running businesses in a residential zone.

    The first would regulate the parking of commercial vehicles on residential properties. According to the proposed law, two commercially registered vehicles, each with a gross vehicle weight of 14,000 pounds or less (excluding fuel trucks) would be allowed to regularly park on a residential lot.

    Until now, the code has only allowed “light trucks,” seeming to exclude large commercial vehicles, but, as the code lacked a definition of “light truck,” it has been difficult to enforce, Pat Gunn, the head of the town’s Division of Public Safety, has repeatedly told the town board. Mr. Gunn has been encouraging the board to revise the code for some time.

    However, according to some residents who have been complaining to the board about properties used to park work vehicles, the proposed revision would allow homeowners to park trucks that are too large for residential areas on their properties.

    In numerous discussions of the issue, town board members have talked about the effect of a limitation on small business owners and what alternatives exist for those who have relied on their residential properties as a business site.

    To prevent people from simply parking their commercial vehicles on the residential streets rather than on their lots, the board is also holding a hearing on a law that would prohibit the parking of all commercially registered vehicles on residential streets between midnight and 6 a.m.

    A hearing will also be held tonight on the assignment of the town’s lease of land at 77 Industrial Road in Wainscott, in the town industrial park, on which the privately owned East Hampton Studios building sits, to a new building occupant. Michael Wudyka, the owner of East Hampton Studios, has told the board that the film production business he had hoped to develop there has foundered, and asked to be allowed to turn his lease over to a storage company that wants to use the building. The East Hampton Storage Corporation has requested a new lease agreement.

    Also the subject of a hearing at tonight’s meeting will be a proposal to relax the rules regarding shoreline fencing, or sand fencing. At present, only wooden posts are allowed to be used. If the code is changed as proposed, use of metal or other materials for posts would be allowed in individual cases, with permission from the East Hampton Town Trustees or other officials.

    Shorefront property owners in Montauk, who install the fencing to catch sand that helps rebuild the beach, have complained that the wooden posts are impossible to place into hard surfaces underneath the sand. If metal or plastic posts are used, according to the proposed new law, they would have to be tagged to identify the installer, who would be held responsible for them should they come out of the sand.

    A storage facility on Goodfriend Drive in East Hampton that was said to be for one man’s car collection seemed to be traveling along a smooth road until last week when it hit a massive pothole. During preliminary site plan review by the East Hampton Town Planning Board back in July, the applicant, Derek Trulson, said, “I have a collection of muscle cars. I want to store my cars there. My cars are toys, but they are also investments.”

    The board voted in September to move ahead with a public hearing on the 7,370-square-foot building and its 40,000-square-foot parcel, and it was scheduled for 7 p.m. on Oct. 9.

    But when it came time for the hearing, Reed Jones, the board’s chairman was clearly unhappy. “An hour before the hearing, I was given something that confused me,” he said. What was troubling Mr. Jones was a Web site, which someone he wouldn’t identify had directed him to, which revealed other plans.

    The Web site spoke in glowing terms about a new commercial storage facility for high-end car collectors. Mr. Reed read a printout from the site:

    “Goodfriend Motors is a state of the art, auto storage facility built by and for collectors, slated to open in East Hampton in 2013. Goodfriend Motors was designed by Modern Green Home. There’s nothing like it on the East End. The facility is equipped with industry standard security with an entertainment lounge overlooking the gallery, a high-end AV system, temperature and humidity controlled, radiant heated concrete floors and outdoor space for events. Members will receive individual parking spaces.”

    Mr. Reed, a soft-spoken ex-Marine, continued to read the entire page. When he finished, he asked, “Is this accurate? I just want a straight answer. If the public hearing is for one thing and the facility is for another,” he said as a shook his head.

    The question had been directed to Walter Wirth, a friend of Mr. Trulson’s, who attended the Town Hall session in Mr. Trulson’s absence. “I can’t answer the question,” Mr. Wirth said.

    The page on Modern Green Home’s Web site in question has since been taken down, although its remnant link still turned up this week in a Google search. Also taken down, with a remnant still visible on Google, was a page for a contest to design a new logo for Goodfriend Motors. Mr. Trulson did not respond to a message left for him on his voice mail Tuesday.

    The building, which was vacant when Mr. Trulson purchased it, is zoned for commercial use and originally housed a print shop. What riled planning board members was that Mr. Trulson had described his plans for the building as solely for personal storage.

    Back in July, the board had quizzed Mr. Trulson, who is a major real estate developer with Jones Lang LaSalle in New York, about a sign already on the building reading Goodfriend Motors. He told the board that the sign was merely whimsical, a name for the building made up by his young daughter. The board had been supportive and encouraging.

    “This is a very light use of this property,” Patrick Schutte, one of the members, had said, while another member, Ian Calder-Piedmonte, said, “I think it is important that this board is approachable by people like you, who want to live here.”

    In a memo to the board earlier, JoAnne Pahwul, the town’s assistant planning director, had noted that Mr. Trulson said the use was for a “private collection” and that “there would be no employees or commercial traffic associated with the facility.”

    “These questions need to be answered,” Nancy Keeshan, the vice chairwoman, said, summing up the apparent feelings  of the entire board on Oct. 9.

    In another wrinkle, Kathryn Santiago, the planning board’s attorney, reported that Mr. Trulson had not properly notified the owners of adjacent properties about that night’s hearing, a legal requirement. She told the board it would have to be postponed. It was.

Dems’ Campaign Rally

    The East Hampton Democratic Party has invited people to an “old-fashioned campaign rally” on Saturday from 4:30 to 7 p.m. at the East Hampton Neighborhood House. There will be live music, free food and drinks for adults and children, and the Democratic candidates for town supervisor and town board, Larry Cantwell, Kathee Burke-Gonzalez, and Job Potter, will be on hand. The Neighborhood House is on Three Mile Harbor Road.

Gansett Gathering for G.O.P.

    Pete and Virginia Rana will host a meet-the-candidates gathering at their house in Amagansett tomorrow from 6 to 8 p.m. Republican candidates for East Hampton Town Board, town assessor, and town justice — Dominick Stanzione, Fred Overton, Joe Bloecker, and Carl Irace — are expected, among others. The Ranas live at 19 Katie Lane.

    Martin Drew of Springs, a political gadfly and frequent writer of letters to the editor, announced last Thursday that he would run a write-in campaign for East Hampton Town supervisor.

    A semi-retired contractor and real estate investor, Mr. Drew, 47, said he was undaunted by the prospect of trying to defeat Larry Cantwell, the popular former East Hampton Village administrator, whose name will be the only one on the ballot, under the Democratic, Independence, and Working Families lines.

    “This is a democracy,” he said. “I think my chances are excellent if the people who are concerned get off the couch.”

    Mr. Drew said that the number of unaffiliated voters in East Hampton outnumber registered Republicans. He suggested that the only way for Republicans and unaffiliated voters to stave off a de facto takeover by the Democrats would be for them to join forces to form a new coalition.

    Recently appointed to the Springs Citizens Advisory Committee, Mr. Drew announced his campaign during the public comment portion of last Thursday’s town board meeting.

    Mr. Drew, who offered a laundry list of problems in the town, said enforcement of the law would be a priority. “With 20 percent of the budget going to the police, I find it odd that enforcement is an issue in our town.”

    It was mostly quality-of-life issues in Montauk that were discussed at a candidates forum hosted by the Concerned Citizens of Montauk on Sunday at the Montauk Firehouse. The current East Hampton Town Board administration was harshly criticized for everything from approving the Shark Attack Sounds party permit for almost 4,000 people at the Montauk Yacht Club over July Fourth weekend to not hiring a coastal engineer to analyze the erosion issue in downtown Montauk.

    Larry Cantwell, who is running unopposed for town supervisor, said that the current town board has hastened the hamlet’s degradation. “When you issue a permit for 4,000 people you’re contributing to the problem. We have to establish limits and that hasn’t been done. These things have got to come to an end,” he said, and received several rounds of applause from a sometimes-angry crowd.

    Through it all, outgoing East Hampton Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson sat quietly in the back row with a stern look on his face.

    One by one the candidates, who included Suffolk County Legislator Jay Schneiderman and his opponent, Chris Nuzzi; Mr. Cantwell; Town Councilman Dominick Stanzione; the town board hopefuls, Job Potter, Fred Overton, and Kathee Burke-Gonzalez; the town justice candidates, Carl Irace and Steven Tekulsky; the incumbent town assessor, Eugene DePasquale, and his opponent Joe Bloecker, both from Montauk; and Diane McNally, who is running for re-election to the town trustees, touted their accomplishments and plans for the future.

    Mr. Schneiderman, who has served five terms as a legislator, said he hopes to serve a sixth and final term. Mr. Nuzzi said it was time for new leadership.

    Outlining all the places he has been campaigning, Mr. Cantwell said, “I’m not taking this for granted. One of the most important things you can do in a campaign is listen to the people.” He said that the town is facing some very serious issues moving forward, with coastal erosion the most pre-eminent.

    He is disappointed that the current administration has not engaged a coastal engineer and said — to a round of applause — that it is something he would have done a while ago. He said it would be a tragic injustice if downtown Montauk is not maintained and worried about the time frame of the Army Corps of Engineers federal funding. “Do we want a beach under construction next summer?” he asked.

    He also said that the town should be focusing on erosion on the north side of the hamlet, and added that a conversation about climate change, sea-level rise, and a catastrophic event must be considered. “We should be thinking about mitigation and restoration, and we haven’t done that yet,” he said.

    Mr. Stanzione said he has worked on deer management, wastewater management, and taxi legislation. An audience member stood and asked Mr. Stanzione to pledge not to support rezoning a high-priced multiple housing development called 555 in Amagansett, not to agree to support a plan for the Montauk shoreline unless he has the support of the rest of the community, and not to accept Federal Aviation Administration money for the East Hampton Airport along with his “lame duck” administration.

    “Those are three great questions and I’m going to answer no. I’m not going to sit on my hands for the next few months. I am a supporter of F.A.A. funding and I am not going to sit on my hands to wreck that project,” he said.

    Mr. Stanzione was asked by Jeremy Samuelson, the executive director of the Concerned Citizens of Montauk, if he thinks the Beach House, a new boutique hotel in Montauk, should have required site plan review. “I don’t know,” Mr. Stanzione said.

    A woman in the audience asked him why the town board has not taken action on all the alleged illegal club expansions that have recently gone on in the hamlet. She cited the Memory Motel’s outdoor beer garden and a V.I.P. motel room and other issues at Ruschmeyer’s and the Surf Lodge.

    Mr. Stanzione said the board was using a tool — pre-existing nonconforming status — in which these types of businesses usually go away. “But it failed; they didn’t go away,” he said.

    He announced at the forum that he wants to create a capital fund for restoration of the Ditch Plain beach, which the Army Corps seemed unwilling to include in the major downtown beach restoration project it is planning for the hamlet. If his proposal is approved after being vetted by the full town board and the public, it could be added to next year’s capital budget.

    Mr. Potter, who previously served eight years on the town board before stepping down, said that the Beach House should probably have required site plan review but, he said, there are many places that have opened without town review. He spoke of his involvement with the town’s preservation fund during his earlier tenure on the town board, saying that 23 parcels had been saved. He held up charts of the parcels that are now undeveloped, and said there is unspent money in the fund that needs to be spent to preserve them.

    Ms. Burke-Gonzalez said that from listening to constituents she is aware of the proliferation of quality of life issues in Montauk. “Montauk has really changed and we have to rectify that and do something about it,” she said. Asked later in the forum if she would agree to a sand-covered stone wall on the beach if the Army Corps recommended one or would let the available funding pass, she said, “I would agree to it. I would not lose out on the funding.”

    Mr. Overton said Sunday that he thinks the best solution for shoring up the downtown beaches would be by using movable sand-filled geotextile tubes, and it is a project that should get moving as quickly as possible, he said. He had earlier favored the sand-covered stone approach.

    He added that code enforcement in Montauk must be “beefed up” and that town officials must think outside the box to find the funding to do so. “If it requires new legislation then I’m willing to do that,” he said.

    Almost all of the candidates agreed that more code enforcement officers must be hired. Ms. Burke-Gonzalez said they should be equipped with investigative skills to work closely with the Police Department. “It needs to be a priority and you have that commitment from us,” she said.

    A house can be built at 85 South Edgemere Street in Montauk on a controversial vacant lot at the edge of  Fort Pond,  just not the exact house the owners had wanted, according to a 3-2 vote Tuesday by the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals. The lot is slightly over an acre, but with a very small building envelope due to surrounding wetlands.

    The application has a checkered history. When the first public hearing on the site was held in 2011, board members noted, there was no public opposition. Variances were needed, and they appeared to have been approved in February 2012, making it possible for construction of a 2,437-square-foot house with a 410-square-foot carport to begin.

     Between then and last October, however, the property changed hands. The new owners, Timothy and Noell Twiggs, seeking to modify the original proposal, applied to fold the carport into the square footage of the house, which would then be two stories and 2,950 square feet, with a deck the same size as had been approved in February, 1,195 square feet. On Oct. 10, 2012, the board approved their plan to fold in the carport.

    “A couple of months go by, and neighbors notice the property being cleared,” Brian Gosman, board member and Montauk resident, told the board on Tuesday. Meanwhile, it had emerged that two essential setback variances had been overlooked in the original application. On March 7,  the building department revoked the building permit, citing the missing variances.

    The quest for those two variances — 5 feet and 8.4 feet — brought the project back before the board on June 11, when a new hearing led to an outpouring of local opposition. Jeremy Samuelson, the executive director of the Concerned Citizens of Montauk, told the board then that the growth of the proposed house was responsible.

     Alex Walter, the board chairman, said on Tuesday that while both the applicants and the board had overlooked the needed variances when the October modification was made, the onus was on the applicant to submit an accurate survey. The variances may seem small, he told the board, but they were large for such a constrained lot, at 25 and 45 percent.

    Mr. Gosman and Don Cirillo argued that the project should be approved in its entirety, but the other members disagreed, on the grounds that, as Mr. Walter had said, the variances were substantial enough to change their view of the entire proposal.

    “This thing has to be cleaned up, and we can do it now,” Mr. Walter said.

    Mr. Walter said he was all in favor of the 50-foot variance previously granted for a septic system, which, he pointed out, will be superior to those in surrounding properties. He also supported the special permits needed to build in such an ecologically fragile area, but suggested that the owners be encouraged to redesign the house so it would not need the two new variances.

    Mr. Cirillo asked if Mr. Walter was saying that the house would have to be smaller.

    “I’m not saying smaller,” Mr. Walter said. The Twiggses could build their 2,950-square-foot house, he said, if they could design it so it would not need the variances.

    “They can build a larger house than mine,” David Lys said, siding with Mr. Walter.

    “I think it would be larger than all of ours,” Mr. Walter said.

    Lee White, also a Montauk resident, joined with Mr. Walter and Mr. Lys to reapprove the permits and the septic system, but not the new variances. Mr. Cirillo and Mr. Gosman voted to approve the application in its entirety.

    In a memo to the board written before the June hearing, Brian Frank, the Planning Department’s head environmentalist, described the archaeological significance of the site, one of the last undeveloped parcels on Fort Pond. Archaeological investigations there revealed many artifacts, he wrote, with the property deemed potentially worthy of listing in the National Register of Historic Places. The surveys concluded that the lot held “a treasure trove of archaeological information of prehistoric life and ways of Native Americans, their land use, and cultural history.”

    The East Hampton Town Board held hearings last Thursday on legislation designed to address complaints  about commercial vehicles — work trucks and other equipment — parked on residential lots, largely in Springs. The board found, however, that its proposed solution — to allow two commercially registered vehicles of up to 14,000 pounds gross vehicle weight — did not sit well with a number of speakers.

    A second proposed law would prohibit the parking of commercially registered vehicles on residential streets between midnight and 6 a.m.

    Councilman Peter Van Scoyoc, who originally introduced the parking proposal, said he had asked to withdraw it but had been overruled by a board majority. He said he had realized that “one size doesn’t fit all,” in terms of what might be appropriate on properties of different sizes, and called for a study group to examine the issue further and return to the board with suggestions.

    There is a law on the books excluding most businesses from residential areas, but it has been difficult to enforce as far as the parking of commercial vehicles, according to Pat Gunn, the head of the town’s Public Safety Division. Mr. Gunn has been telling the town board for two years that the law, which allows only parking of “light trucks” on residential lots, lacks a definition of that term.

    Regardless of the law, Supervisor Bill Wilkinson said that “we had never put the people that use their driveways on notice that this is unacceptable . . . so I think it’s an obligation on our part” to offer business owners another place to park their trucks, “because what had been acceptable is no longer acceptable.”

    “I stress ‘residential,’ ” said Connie Kenney, a Springs resident. Some professional home-based businesses are allowed under the town code, she noted, “but running a masonry business or a landscaping business that requires large trucks is unacceptable in a residential neighborhood.”

    Parking “anything more than what we would all refer to as a pickup truck” should not be allowed, she said. “The people of Springs need immediate relief from what we consider to be a flagrant lack of concern to the rights of homeowners.”

     She displayed photos of equipment, such as a wood chipper, that she said was regularly stored on roadsides and on dead-end roads.

    Neil Zelenetz, also of Springs, told the board that “we have high taxes . . . reduced services . . . overcrowding . . . a lack of code enforcement. Various town boards over the years have been ineffective at limiting or reversing these trends . . . it’s a no-brainer to not have large vehicles, or even medium-size vehicles on the streets or in driveways. If they’re in business, they’re in business. They should have a place to operate their business.”

    Fred Weinberg agreed. “The storage of trucks and equipment is a standard cost of doing business,” he said. “We  the homeowners are in essence paying for what they’re not paying for, and at a much larger cost,” in declining property values.

    When there is no more room in driveways or on lawns, David Buda said, people use the streets nearby. “They simply appropriate the public’s right of way to park their vehicles.”

    “I’m not saying that there should be no commercial vehicles” at residences, said Mr. Buda. “It’s a question of size, and what is excessive.” In his opinion, he said, “a dump truck is beyond the pale. A van and a pickup truck should be allowed. But the business grows; the trucks grow.”

    He said the town’s legislation should also apply to trailers.

    The 14,500-pound maximum is “way too much,” according to Martin Drew of Springs, who said commercial vehicle parking is “becoming a blight.”

    “When it’s registered as a commercial vehicle . . . it doesn’t belong in a residential neighborhood,” he said, suggesting instead that there should be “truck farms” in every hamlet. The issue, he said, is the number and activity of workers coming and going in residential areas.

    Rita Wasserman of Springs also said the proposed rule was too liberal. “I’m thinking no trucks,” she said.

    Carol Buda said the limit under discussion was “an ill-conceived resolution in response to our complaints.” Because of the “board’s lack of action,” she said, “the truck issue has become noticeably worse.” The town board, she said, “has failed to put the residential code first.”

    But Iris Osborne, a Wainscott resident, told the board that “you have to consider the working people.”

    “These working people are not rich; they don’t have a lot of money. Maybe they can’t afford to rent a place to keep their trucks. Because they have a commercial license, you’re going to say they can’t park in their own driveway?”

    Ms. Osborne agreed, however, that a ban on street parking was reasonable, and that parking “lots and lots” of vehicles and equipment at a residence could be unacceptable.

    One issue, she said, with centralized parking lots for work vehicles, could be security. People park their equipment close to their houses, she said, to guard against theft.

    Rather than trying to change the relevant section of the town code completely, Ms. Buda suggested that the board should perhaps have stuck to the simpler solution originally suggested by Mr. Gunn: simply provide a definition of “light truck.”