Mayor Paul F. Rickenbach Jr. welcomed the members of the East Hampton Village Zoning Board of Appeals at the board’s meeting on Friday, saying that zoning “probably is the core issue with respect to the governance of a municipality,” and suggesting that they “be mindful that as the zoning code evolves and is applied and manifests itself, that’s how your community maintains its personality and aura of cooperation and embracement.”

    The new roster starts with Frank Newbold as chairman. He had been the vice chairman and a member since 2004. Lysbeth Marigold is now vice chairwoman. Craig Humphrey, previously an alternate, is now a full member, and Ray Harden has begun a five-year term as an alternate.

    “I thank you on behalf of the board for all your efforts and energy,” the mayor said.

    The meeting was otherwise brief and uneventful. An application from Katherine J. Rayner to lower a floor under part of her house at 85 West End Road, for which the board heard a lengthy and technically complex presentation on June 28, was adjourned until the board’s meeting next Friday, at the applicant’s request.

    The hand-painted “Clam Pies” sign in front of the dilapidated building on Pantigo Road in East Hampton that was once a restaurant called the Crystal Room is no longer there, and soon the building itself will disappear, to be replaced by six houses, if an initial site plan presented to the East Hampton Town Planning Board on July 10 is approved.

    The roughly rectangular parcel is slightly under an acre and a half and is zoned for multi-unit housing. “There are only four properties in the town that are eligible for multi-unit zoning,” Richard Whalen, attorney for the Crystal Mews Group, said at the meeting.

    Two of the properties with that zoning, according to Mr. Whalen as well as JoAnne Pahwul, of the East Hampton Planning Department, who prepared a 10-page memo on the proposal for the board, are Hampton Mews and the Townhouse East Condominium, both of which are just down the road. The third is the Oakview Highway mobile home complex in East Hampton.

    Named Crystal Mews, the subdivision calls for six 1,599-square-foot, two-story houses. Mr. Whalen said the plan targets older residents, requiring at least one person in each household to be at least 55. Aiming at an older population allows the developers to install a smaller septic system.

    According to Ms. Pahwul, legally, the property could have up to 11 units. Each of the six houses proposed are to have a garage and two additional parking spaces. While the houses would be individually owned, there would be a commonly held preserve.

    Overall, the board seemed to find much to like about the plan. One of the members, Patrick Schutte, suggested that the next time the owners come before the board they might consider changing the plan so that all six houses are not uniform in appearance. Rob Levi, the head of Crystal Mews Group, which has a contract to buy the land, promised they would do just that.

    The board also asked that an archeological survey be undertaken because the land may contain historic remains.

Northwest Lots

     An undeveloped 35-acre strip of land between Route 114 and Two Holes of Water Road was also before the board on July 10. It is about to be divided into seven house lots, ranging from one and a half to three acres.

    Because the property is zoned for three-acre lots, however, which would yield only six houses, the owners would buy and develop an affordable housing unit elsewhere in town, David Weaver of George Walbridge Surveyors, representing the Prand corporation, told the board.

    Under county law, the owners have that option, with town board approval. They also could develop an affordable house on one of the lots or pay into a fund in lieu of doing so.

     Fifty percent of the acreage will be preserved with  another swath set aside as a scenic easement running from Route 114 to Two Holes of Water Road. Three of the lots will use a common driveway to Route 114, with the other four accessing Two Holes of Water Road.

    Although only a preliminary review was done last week, it was clear that the board was enthusiastic about the subdivision’s prospects.

    A plan to limit access to the parking lot at Indian Wells Beach in Amagansett on busy days during the season, by staffing a checkpoint at the entrance where large vehicles and nonresidents would be stopped and asked to turn around, will be the subject of a hearing before the East Hampton Town Board next Thursday. The checkpoint booth has already been installed.

    The proposal is the work of a committee formed after use of the beach as well as reports of drunken and rowdy behavior increased sharply last year. It is made up of members of the town board, including Councilwoman Sylvia Overby, and staff from the planning department, highway, engineering, and parks departments, as well as police and East Hampton Town trustees.

    Parking at Indian Wells is already limited to town residents only, though numerous nonresidents appear to have made the spot their beach of choice. Large groups often arrive by taxi, van, or “party bus” to spend the day.

    Blogs and other Hamptons-centric media reporting on summer trends last year touted the party scene at Indian Wells, encouraging carousers to head there with beer or other drinks. Residents who view it as a family-oriented beach complained to the town board.

    “What we had is a clash of cultures, a little bit,” said Councilman Dominick Stanzione at a May 14 meeting of the board. The trendiness of the spot may be short-term, he said, while installing a checkpoint would be changing “the experience of accessing Indian Wells beach to something else. Now it’s going to be under police guidance.”

    The changes are being considered a “pilot safety plan” for this summer, East Hampton Town Police Capt. Mike Sarlo said, and their efficacy will be evaluated.

    While various proposals, such as banning drinking on the beach or limiting it to the hours after lifeguards have gone off duty, had been floated by residents, the committee focused on solving the tightly crowded and potentially dangerous situation in the parking lot.

    “It was becoming a taxi stand,” Ms. Overby said at the board meeting. “Safety issues” drove the committee’s proposal, she said, rather than behavior issues. But, she said, “I think [the new restrictions] might change the attitudes of the people who are there.”

    Despite having several traffic control officers and a Marine Patrol officer posted at Indian Wells during peak times, the parking lot, Captain Sarlo said at the May 14 meeting, “had reached a volume point on weekends in the summer when it was an unsafe condition.”

    Several food truck vendors park in the lot, which beachgoers must walk through to reach public bathrooms, and with the addition of taxicabs, vans, and buses passing through, it was viewed as a chaotic scene.

    Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. is sponsoring state legislation that would restore the right of local governments on Long Island to establish their own public utilities.

    State law allows municipalities to “construct, lease, purchase, own, acquire . . . or operate” their own utilities to service their residents, and more than 40 municipalities across the state have established municipal power companies, including several on Long Island, such as Greenport, Freeport, and Rockville Centre. However, under a 1985 law that established the Long Island Power Authority, a state agency, municipal power companies may not be set up within LIPA’s service area.

    One reason for the creation of LIPA, Mr. Thiele wrote in a press release — aside from keeping the Shoreham nuclear power plant, which was considered unsafe, from opening — was to eliminate the Long Island Lighting Company, a private utility, and replace it with a “true public utility governed by Long Islanders,” including a board elected by Long Island residents.

    That goal, Mr. Thiele asserted, has never been, and never will be, fulfilled. LIPA “has never been governed by Long Islanders, and it has never been a ‘real’ public utility. It has never been more than a ‘shell’ corporation operated by political appointees who then contracted out operations to another private company. The perversion of this intent has meant disaster for Long Island, most recently manifested by the LIPA response to Superstorm Sandy,” he wrote in the release.

    If approved, Mr. Thiele said, his bill would give Long Island residents the “ability to choose municipal power, if they believe it would be superior to the proposed near-privatization model. 

    East Hampton Town will receive a $536,425 state grant to renovate its former town hall building, town and New York State officials announced yesterday.

    The award was among $12 million in Local Government and Efficiency Program grants given to 13 municipalities based on a demonstration of model financial practices and in recognition of “significant and innovative actions that reduce the property tax burden confronting residents,” according to a State Department of State press release. The money is to be used for projects that will provide recurring savings.

    East Hampton received the maximum award amount per capita and was singled out for praise in the state press release.

     “The Town of East Hampton implemented a comprehensive organizational restructuring of town government, downsizing 26 separate departments into 13 departments through attrition, staff reduction, and consolidation of functions to create a more efficient and cost-effective government model. The Town of East Hampton realized a savings of $4.2 million dollars through this re-engineering initiative, representing an 18-percent drop in the tax levy,” the release read.

    At a news conference yesterday morning, Supervisor Bill Wilkinson, who took office in 2010 after the resignation of former supervisor Bill McGintee amid a financial mismanagement scandal, called the grant a “performance-based award given by an objective group of evaluators.”

     “What’s so rewarding about this grant,” he said, “is the fact that it’s validation of behavior.”

    In two terms of office, Mr. Wilkinson and his budget officer, Len Bernard, have presided over the completion of forensic accounting measures needed to ascertain amounts transferred between town funds, which have been identified and properly paid back, to pinpoint a more than $27 million deficit accumulated under the previous administration, and successfully lobbied the state legislature for permission to issue bonds to cover the shortfall.

    “We’ve delivered a brand of competencies that generated this brand of recognition,” Mr. Wilkinson said yesterday. “Think of that — it’s the only government in Suffolk County that’s been recognized.”

    Mr. Wilkinson credited the work of Mr. Bernard as well as Charlene Kagel, the town’s chief auditor, and Nicole Ficeto, the grants coordinator for the town, with the success of East Hampton’s grant application. The application, said a press release from the town, highlighted efforts in 2010 through 2012 to reduce and reorganize the town staff as well as “selected program reductions” and “the establishment of a myriad of internal control procedures.”

    Mr. Wilkinson said that cautious financial practices must continue. “It’s a continual approach,” he said yesterday, “an objective set of principles that are here . . . and should be here in 2018.”

    The grant money will be used to help pay for renovations to the old town hall building to create an open floor plan described as a “European office landscape.” The design aesthetic, which originated in Germany, was “intended to provide a more collaborative and humane work environment.”

    “A more conducive work environment will create greater work flow efficiencies and positively impact employee confidence levels,” the town wrote in its grant request.

    Additional grant money, including grants targeted for creation of an environmentally friendly “green” building, may also be sought for the project.

     The East Hampton Town Board will hold a hearing next Thursday on revisions to the town noise ordinance.

    The changes are aimed at identifying potential violations according to how much they vary from an average ambient noise level in a particular area.

    Music from a commercial establishment that exceeds more than five decibels above the ambient noise level will be considered a violation. Also considered a violation would be “unreasonable noise” measuring 10 decibels or more above the ambient noise level when measured from a complainant’s property, or 15 feet or more from its source, on a public right of way, between 7 a.m. and 10 p.m., or sound that reaches seven decibels above the ambient noise level between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m.

    Among the noise that would be excluded from the maximum noise level provisions would be sound from construction between 7 a.m. and 8:30 p.m., from agricultural activities between 6 a.m. and 8 p.m., and from homeowners’ or workers’ use of light equipment such as leaf blowers or lawn mowers, as long as it did not exceed more than four hours a day or eight hours during any week. 

    Hearings will also be held next Thursday on an application to erect a wind energy turbine on farmland off of Route 114 in East Hampton and on accepting a facade easement protecting the historic Joshua B. Edwards house on Atlantic Avenue in Amagansett from Dr. Huntington Sheldon. There will be hearings on the purchase of a .46-acre parcel of land at 36 Oyster Shores Road in East Hampton from the Edward Virgilio Irrevocable Trust and the Louise Virgilio Irrevocable Trust, at a cost of $240,000 from the community preservation fund, to preserve open space; on the addition of that property to the town’s preservation fund management and stewardship plan, and on the purchase of a shy acre of land at 30 East Lake Drive in Montauk, owned by Kathryn McGeehan, for $60,000 from the preservation fund, also for open space, and its inclusion in the management and stewardship plan.

    The hearings will begin at 7 p.m. at Town Hall.

    Following a May 2 hearing, the town board voted last week to accept another facade easement from Dr. Sheldon, covering the Joshua B. Edwards barn on his property.

    Sagaponack Village has two seats on its board up for grabs, and residents can cast their votes tomorrow at Village Hall between noon and 9 p.m. According to Rhodi Cary-Winchell, the village clerk, the only petitions filed for the two-year terms were from two incumbents.

    It will be Joy Sieger’s fourth term if re-elected. One of the first members of the village board, she has served since December 2006. William Barbour won his seat in 2011 in a write-in campaign.

    According to election law, candidates in villages with fewer than 1,000 residents are required to gather signatures from 5 percent of the number of voters in the previous election. There were 78 voters last time, so candidates needed only 4 signatures. However, Ms. Winchell said, Ms. Sieger and Mr. Barbour gathered 25 each.

    At Monday’s board meeting, both incumbents weighed in on issues such as a new law restricting yard sales, beach parking, flooding, garbage, and speeding on village roads.

    A hearing was set for July 8 at 3 p.m. on reducing the speed limit from 30 miles per hour to 25 on Sagg Road north of Montauk Highway to the railroad tracks.

    Keith Grimes, a Montauk contractor, unleashed a torrent of frustration about the East Hampton Town Board and other town officials at a board meeting on June 11, saying they owed him “a ton of money.” The dispute now appears to have been resolved, but not before Mr. Grimes had spoken his piece.

    The contractor had stopped a paving job on West Drive in East Hampton over discrepancies, he said, between the  specifications for the approximately $430,000 job for which he had submitted a bid, and the final specs regarding curbing and other details. Town officials claimed that certain work was expected to be included in the bid price, while Mr. Grimes said the details had been revised and there should be an additional cost.

    At the end of the meeting, Robert Guido, an attorney for several neighborhood commercial property owners, who will be taxed to pay for the work (after the town pays for it up front), offered to work with Mr. Grimes, Tom Talmage, the town engineer, and town attorneys, to resolve the issue.

    “I’ll deal with you people on a handshake,” Mr. Grimes told Mr. Guido, who is the attorney for members of the Snyder family among others. The Snyders need the roadwork to complete development of a commercial subdivision.

    Asked by Councilman Peter Van Scoyoc if the work  could continue while the dispute was being resolved, Mr. Grimes wasn’t so eager. “If East Hampton Town wasn’t a delinquent account with me,” he said.

    At another board meeting, on Tuesday, John Jilnicki, the town attorney, reported that, after meeting with the parties involved, an understanding had been reached. The town board will be asked to approve paying the contractor an additional $5,200 for work that he had not anticipated.

     “I’ve been exasperated by this process with the town,” Mr. Grimes said. “This is what I do for a living. I’m working with other municipalities. . . . There’s a definite lack of leadership in this board.”

    “I’ve been a model contractor here; I’ve rolled with all your punches.” He challenged town representatives to show him where in the contract it had detailed the type of more expensive curbing being requested. “I only have one eye. If I’m overlooking something here, put your fat finger on it here, and I’ll go do it.”

    “If I’m going to go to jail, it’s going to be for something bigger than sidewalks and curbs,” Mr. Grimes said.

    The curbs must be constructed to county standards, Mr. Talmage said, and it is there that the details have been spelled out.

    “Your whole process has broken down,” Mr. Grimes told the town board. “You’ve probably got three weeks of work to finish this,” he said. “The rate we’re moving, my kids will be lucky to finish this.”

    “The fact of the matter is, we have to increase the pace of play,” Supervisor Bill Wilkinson said.

     “The same horseshit I’m dealing with here is the same horseshit I’m dealing with on 114,” Mr. Grimes complained, referring to a drainage basin he was hired to dig over a year ago on farmland where, it turned out, development rights are owned by Suffolk County. The project was stalled after the county protested and insisted that prime agricultural soils, which had been given to Mr. Grimes as part of the deal, be returned.

    “On 114, I gave you guys multiple-choice questions four months ago. Did you all see them?” Mr. Grimes asked the board. “Everything I know about 114 is from the county, and you know what they say? They say they’re waiting for the town to engage.”

    Even though Mr. Talmage and the town attorney had a different point of view about the West Drive contract, Mr. Talmage told the board that the Grimes company, which has done numerous jobs for the town and has also worked for private residents seeking to fortify shorelines with stone armor, is “a very capable contractor. They do very good work,” he said.

    The owners of two neighboring properties facing Gardiner’s Bay in Springs, part of the Clearwater Beach Association, would like to install a revetment that would span both sites, but must first obtain a variance from the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals. Their application for a natural resources special permit, the latest in a series related to beach erosion caused by Hurricane Sandy, came before the board on June 4.

    The contiguous properties, at 235 and 237 King’s Point Road, are owned by Virginia Schmidt and David Wagner respectively. The neighbors have worked together to design a 180-foot-long protective structure of pre-formed concrete panels and rebar, held in place by helical wall anchors. There would be a 20-foot backwash to the east, on Ms. Schmidt’s property, which, like Mr. Wagner’s, is just under 30,000 square feet in size. The special permit is required because the lands contain coastal bluffs and wetlands.

    According to a memo prepared for the board by Brian Frank, the East Hampton Town Planning Department’s chief environmental analyst, several surveys done on the area since 1992 show that erosion on the two properties has been minimal, at most, over the years, until Sandy. That single event, Mr. Frank said, would not justify what he called an overly aggressive approach to the problem.

    “I think everything in this area shows that this is a reasonable candidate for coastal restoration, as opposed to a hard revetment,” he told the members of the zoning board.

    In both his memo and his comments, Mr. Frank said the board needed to decide if the landowners had ever attempted restoration using softer, more natural protective structures — logs, for example — or tried bringing in more sand, and if not, whether such a radical approach as a concrete revetment was the only alternative. The planner indicated that there was no history, in the way of permits issued, to show that such simpler restoration had ever been tried.

    Mr. Wagner, the president of the Clearwater Property Development Association, saw things differently. “We’ve been trying for 17 years to use natural solutions,” he said. “I’m 73 years old. I’m getting tired. It’s easy to say we may not have another storm. The idea of soft soil is almost an absurdity.”

    A neighboring landowner had tried bringing in sand, he told the board, at the cost of $80,000, only to see it all washed out into the bay over the course of two years.

    Mr. Wagner described his experience during Sandy, saying that he and his wife ran from the house and fled in their car. “The roof was shattering. Three rooms flooded. I really don’t want to go through this again,” he said, adding that the beach had lost 17 feet in the storm.

    The East Hampton Town Trustees, like the Planning Department, opposed the application, though it is uncertain whether that board has jurisdiction in the matter. Diane E. McNally, the trustee clerk, suggested that the 17 feet of erosion may mean that the mean high water mark is now where the revetment would be built; in other words it is now public land. The trustees do have a say over public beach access.

    “The homeowners came to us first,” she told the zoning board. “They are going from a pristine shoreline to an eight-foot wall.”

    Mr. Frank cautioned the board against the possible consequences of a hardened structure, including “loss of beach, loss of public access to the beach, and possible coastal erosion to unprotected properties to the east.”

    The Montauk Beach House, a motel and club in downtown Montauk, received a certificate of occupancy from the East Hampton Town Building Department on Tuesday, after the head building inspector agreed that the key issue — whether it was operating two different businesses — was a matter for the town’s Ordinance Enforcement Department.

    “I look at it, and it looks like a duck,” Tom Preiato, the building inspector, said Tuesday. Although he had previously said two businesses were at the site, which would trigger full site plan review by the planning board, he said on Tuesday that the fact that the club offers memberships for $1,100, in addition to 33 rooms for rent, is irrelevant unless actual invoices for club transactions can be produced.

    The planning board gave the Beach House unanimous site plan approval for a bar and gift shop without considering the overall site, following a public hearing on May 8. The conditions of approval, which were written by Kathryn Santiago, the attorney for the planning board, include a statement that the Beach House “shall not conduct said activities without proper approval,” referring to those activities offered by the club.

    There is no question that the motel at the Beach House is legal, even though the property is zoned for business rather than motel use, because it pre-exists that zoning. Mr. Preiato had previously said that the ownership team, Larry Siedlick and Chris Jones, could expand the use and run a nightclub or music venue, but only if they received approval after undergoing full review.

    In a memo to Ms. Santiago on May 10, he wrote, “It appears that is an additional use on the property, even though it is not clearly defined in the code.” He goes on to say allowing persons who are not motel guests to use the facilities, “would be a burden on the public” because it already has inadequate parking. Besides the parking issue, he wrote that allowing such expanded use would strain the septic system.

    Had the Beach House been required after undergoing full review to provide additional parking or pay into a town parking fund, the stakes would have been high. The Montauk Brewery, for example, which is nearby, had been asked to kick $45,000 into the fund, although the town board eventually voted to allow the brewery to count three spaces in an adjoining lot.

    Patrick Schutte, who along with Robert Schaeffer is the longest serving member of the planning board, addressed the issue at a meeting in January. “I can name 10 other applicants who had to pay into it. . . . I don’t think the town board or we can grant an easement on this.”

    The $45,000 fee the brewery faced would seem dwarfed by the potential fee for the Montauk Beach House. According to the town code, a “nightclub, disco, tavern, bar, or dance hall” is required to either have on site, or else to pay into the parking fund for, “two [spaces] for each three persons of rated capacity, plus one per employee.” Using that formula, the total number of spaces needed to be provided or paid for by the Beach House would be about 290, including the motel side of the business, which would trigger another 1.25 for each of the 33 bedrooms.

    None of the spaces surrounding the site would count toward that number, according to the Planning Department, because they are in the public right of way. Using a $15,000 per space estimate for the Montauk Brewery, the Beach House fee could be as high as $4.35 million.

    Meanwhile, heated rhetoric has continued to be exchanged among the Beach House’s detractors and supporters. Terry Casey, who said he was responsible for booking live music and D.J.’s during the club’s initial season, and who said he was dissuaded from speaking at the May 8 hearing, has posted a recording of a phone message he alleges is from Mr. Jones on YouTube.

    In it, the speaker says, “You’re going to be in trouble. If you wish to discuss this, please give me a call, otherwise, good luck. You’re [inaudible] two partners with $200 million behind them. You have taken this to a position that is untenable.”

    Told about the recording last month, Mr. Jones said it was not his voice and pointed out that Mr. Casey is a D.J. and undoubtedly familiar with mixing and looping recordings.

    After the May 8 hearing, Mr. Casey said he wrote a letter to the board, detailing his allegations about the numbers of people who had come to the Beach House when he worked there. Because the letter was submitted after the hearing was closed, it was not considered part of the record.