East Hampton Town

A First for Northwest Roads

    The East Hampton Town Board will propose the creation of a special tax district to pay for road repairs in an area of Northwest that includes Wheelock Walk, Barnes Avenue, and Mulford Avenue, enabling the roads, now private subdivision roads, to be brought into the town highway system.

    The proposal will be put to a vote by the affected property owners, and if approved, will create the first road improvement district in the town — a model, Tom Talmage, the town engineer, said at a work session on Tuesday, for others, and an “exciting” precedent.

    Officials have acknowledged for years that an “urban renewal” system adopted by the town decades ago, whereby private roads are improved piecemeal as each property owner pays a “road improvement unit” fee when they develop their lot, was unsuccessful in bringing individual roads up to public highway standards, allowing the town to take over their upkeep. Property owners along such private roads have long complained of the lack of town services, such as snow removal.

    However, the town was precluded from creating road improvement districts until the recent passage of state legislation that authorized them.

    The town board decided Tuesday on a formula designed to fairly distribute the financial burden of the road improvements among the property owners in the Northwest neighborhood, which includes 150 developed lots and 30 undeveloped lots. They will receive a letter informing them of the cost, which can be paid up front or over a period of 15 years.

Code Enforcement Education

    Patrick Gunn, the head of East Hampton Town’s Division of Public Safety, is creating a series of information sheets that will provide residents with an overview of various zoning and other laws.

    The first two address what is permitted, and not permitted, to occur in single-family residences. The fliers are posted under the Ordinance Enforcement Department section of the town’s Web site, at town.east-hampton.ny.us, are available in the lobby of the Ordinance Enforcement Department offices at Pantigo Place, and will be distributed by code enforcement officers.

    Mr. Gunn said this week that he would create additional fliers on other topics, as necessary, in order to assist town officials and enforcement officers in educating the public about town laws and addressing violations.

Credits for Contractors

    Contractors who need continuing education credits to maintain their East Hampton Town licenses are being encouraged to take a four-hour course being offered by the town, which will discuss the state energy construction code and its standards for energy efficiency. Those who take the class will receive two years’ worth of the required credits, according to a vote of the town board last Thursday night.

    Information about the class can be obtained from Joel Halsey at the town Planning Department, [email protected]. 

Town Holding Online Auction

    East Hampton Town will sell surplus items in an online auction, at www.auctionsinternational.com, that will begin tomorrow and last for two weeks.

    The items for sale will include used cars and all-terrain vehicles, miscellaneous parts, and a window.

Farming Museum on the Way

    A resolution officially designating the town-owned Lester-Labrozzi property at the corner of North Main and Cedar Streets, which once was a farm, as the site of a farming museum, will allow members of a museum planning committee to locate and obtain items for display there.

    According to Town Councilwoman Theresa Quigley, who has been working with the group, the committee can now begin to collect farming implements and other artifacts for the museum, which will be created with the help of the East Hampton Historical Society.

    The interior of a house on the property will reflect that of a 1930s or ’40s-era farmhouse, and there will be permanent and rotating exhibits.

Bike Routes, Lanes, and Paths

    Members of a committee recently convened by Councilwoman Theresa Quigley to address bicycling in East Hampton are looking, hamlet by hamlet, for opportunities to create bike routes, lanes, and paths.

    The first proposal is for Amagansett, where a bicycle route from the railroad station, down Atlantic Avenue to the beach, and along Bluff Road to Indian Wells Beach, would be delineated using pavement markings — a universal symbol called a “sharrow” depicting a bike, that would be painted on the road to alert drivers that bicyclists are also using the lane. The state Department of Transportation will be contacted for permission to install a crosswalk across Montauk Highway from the train station.

    The proposal will be brought to the Amagansett Citizens Advisory Committee for discussion at its next meeting, and sent to East Hampton Town Police Chief Eddie Ecker for his comments.

Music Festival Gets its Money Back

    The bulk of a $20,000 deposit given to East Hampton Town towards the town’s costs for police coverage and any other services that would have had to be provided for the MTK: Music to Know concert, a two-day festival that had been slated for Aug. 13 and 14 at East Hampton Airport, but was canceled, will be returned to the festival organizers. However, the refund will not include $2,000 that had already been spent by the Police Department on signs for traffic control, before the show was canceled.

Deer in Their Sights

    Councilman Dominick Stanzione reported at a town board meeting on Tuesday that a deer management committee with which he is working is crafting a “comprehensive, effective, and compassionate” plan to address the burgeoning deer population. The committee includes representatives from the state Department of Environmental Conservation, the county Parks Department, and the Peconic Land Trust, as well as from the East Hampton Group for Wildlife, which has advocated starting a deer contraceptive program here.

    Mr. Stanzione said the overall strategy will include culling the herd to deal with the “emergency” situation that exists, while planning for longer-range non-lethal population control.

    To pave the way for deer hunters during the season, which begins on Oct. 1 for bow hunting, Mr. Stanzione proposed allowing the town clerk to issue hunters “bonus tags” for taking deer, saving them a trip to a D.E.C. station in Ridge, and waiving the fee to deposit deer remains at the town recycling center.  

    An article in the July 21 issue of The Star about Anthony Petrello’s plans to demolish a cottage on Sagaponack land he purchased from the White family and build a larger guest house in its place contained several errors.

    While the article said that Mr. Petrello’s right of first refusal to purchase most of the remaining acreage of White farm was “in fine print,” both of Mr. Petrello’s legal counsels said that that portion of the contract was in 12-point print, as was everything else in the contract.

    The Petrellos signed a contract to purchase the land in 1998, not in 1995, but closing was to be delayed until the White family secured approval from Southampton Town to divide the farm into seven parcels, three of which were to go to the Petrellos.

    It is then that the legal dispute between the Petrellos and the White family began. In 2008, the Whites also sued their former attorney, Edward Reale, and his firm in connection with the rights of first refusal portion of the contract.

    At the Sagaponack Architectural and Historic Review Board’s July 15 meeting, a resolution approving the demolition of the cottage was read by the board’s secretary, not by Ann Sandford, the board chairman.

    Quoting from that resolution, the article said that the cottage had been “historically maintained”; however, the quote was incomplete and its meaning was therefore unclear. The full quote was: “The subject cottage is one of a number of cottages historically maintained and rented out by the White family.” The resolution goes on to note that the “cottage was altered at some point,” and that “neglect of maintenance of the cottage appears evident. . . .”

    Alison Cornish, who was identified in the article as being with the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation, had commented on the condition of the cottage as part of a report she prepared while engaged as a historic preservation consultant by Southampton Town prior to Sagaponack’s incorporation as a village.

    The Democratic candidates for East Hampton Town Board seats — Zachary Cohen for supervisor and Sylvia Overby and Peter Van Scoyoc for town board — announced this week that if elected they will reinstate the Highway Department’s fall leaf pickup.

    The program was suspended in 2010 by the sitting Republican administration headed by Supervisor Bill Wilkinson, who is running for re-election this year. It was done away with entirely in the 2011 budget.

    The elimination of the program, the Democratic candidates said in a press release, “has harmed those who can least afford it.” Cutting the cost of having Highway Department trucks vacuum piles of leaves from the roadsides in late fall “does not help the taxpayer to save $14 in taxes if he or she must spend $100 paying a landscaper to perform the same service,” they said.

    The town board’s suspension and then elimination of the program prompted a number of residents to plead for the service to be continued. Only a few applauded the idea.

    Nevertheless, a board majority moved to cut the program, citing a need for cost-cutting in light of the town’s multimillion-dollar  deficit.

    In their release this week the Democrats questioned the financial reasoning behind the cut.

    The Highway Department budget is separate from the town’s general fund, in which the deficits existed, and its money may not be used for other purposes. “Taxpayers were not honestly told that the Highway Department had large surpluses, and that any new Highway expenditures or savings would not affect the deficit,” the candidates said in their release.

    At the time the leaf pickup program was suspended in 2010, they noted, its cost had been included in that year’s Highway Department budget, for which taxes had already been collected. The department ended last year with a $700,000 surplus, according to the Democrats. “At most $300,000 of this surplus came from not doing the leaf pickup, meaning that even if we had done the leaf pickup the Highway Department would have had a $400,000 surplus in 2010. Also, the Highway Department started the year with over $2.7 million of surplus saved from prior years. The Highway Department had enough money to pay for leaf pickup for the next 10 years.”

    In 2013, the Democrats promised, leaf pickup will be returned to the budget as an annual item.

    “In sum, leaf pickup in 2010 should not have been eliminated on financial grounds,” the Democrats stated.

    To have done away with leaf pickup this year was “financial foolery” amounting to a “stealth tax,” they said, predicting that taxpayers will pay far more to landscapers to have dead leaves carted off than they save in taxes.

    “Leaf pickup is an example of government providing a service less expensively and more efficiently than the private sector,” said the candidates. “The public is well served when government can efficiently provide a service that helps a high percentage of taxpayers. In this case, people of all income levels can benefit, as those in large houses would still save money if they used the townwide program.”

    “We listen, and we believe that our taxpayers’ desires are important. If a large number of taxpayers want leaf pickup, if leaf pickup can benefit a diverse group of taxpayers in all hamlets, and if the townwide leaf pickup is significantly less expensive than any other option, then the taxpayer should receive what they want.”

    The three Democrats criticized the town board’s response to residents who said they weren’t physically able to rake and bag all their leaves themselves. “Not many volunteers materialized,” they said, to participate in the board’s promised program of free help for needy homeowners. The candidates also said that telling residents to mulch their leaves and compost them on-site was unrealistic.

    Mr. Cohen, Ms. Overby, and Mr. Van Scoyoc, promised that, if elected, they would develop and implement an efficient leaf removal program for next year, and pay for it using surplus Highway Department funds, provided they are not otherwise allocated in the 2012 budget soon to be prepared by the present board. In this year’s budget, a portion of the surplus was used for highway expenses. In 2013, the Democrats promised, leaf pickup will be returned to the budget as an annual item.

    Since almost all collected leaves are turned into compost, the candidates said townwide leaf removal was the best environmental alternative, second only to having property owners compost leaves themselves. Finally, they said, leaf removal is better than having uncollected leaf piles, which can harbor rodents and ticks.

East Hampton Town

Fort Pond Suit Will Proceed

    A lawsuit against East Hampton Town challenging the proposed sale of the Fort Pond House property in Montauk is scheduled to proceed after State Supreme Court Justice William B. Rebolini struck down a motion by the town to dismiss the case for the second time.

    The lawsuit brought by the Concerned Citizens of Montauk, Third House Nature Center, and two individuals involved in community groups, Edward Johann and Roger Feit, claims that the town violated the public trust doctrine, which requires authorization from the New York State Legislature when selling off public parkland.

    The 3.9-acre waterfront property was put on the market last year for $2 million, after a split vote of the town board, with the Republican majority presiding, prompting a public outcry against the sale. The site was subsequently closed to the public after an inspection by town officials resulted in a list of safety and maintenance issues.        

Federal Support for Small Farms

    Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, who serves on the Senate Agriculture Committee, introduced legislation last week to form a competitive grant program to help community-supported agriculture.

    The senator’s Community Supported Agriculture Promotion Act would offer federal grant money to nonprofit organizations, extension services, and state and local government agencies “to provide grower support ranging from marketing and business assistance to crop development” to new or existing community-supported agriculture farmers. It would also assist them in developing “innovative delivery and distribution programs,” according to a release from the senator’s office.

    Preference would be given to projects that work with family farms, that expand community-supported agriculture’s reach to low-income people who don’t have access to fresh food, or that employ veterans.

    Generally members of C.S.A.s pay an up-front fee at the beginning of the growing season and then receive a share of the farm’s produce harvest weekly throughout the season.

    According to the release, there are more than 12,000 C.S.A.s in the country and about 350 in New York State. Among them are two in Amagansett, the Amber Waves Farm and the Quail Hill Farm. The senator will be at Quail Hill on Sunday morning to talk to farm members about her work on the Farm Bill, national nutrition policy, and farmers markets, among other things.

    Is it wrong for members of appointed boards, such as the planning or zoning boards, to remain on those boards while running for office? The question may prompt a town board discussion of East Hampton’s ethics code.

    “I believe the situation is rife with conflict,” said Beverly Bond, an East Hampton resident, at the board’s work session on Saturday. She also questioned whether candidates should be required to step down from citizens advisory committees.

    Peter Van Scoyoc, a Democratic candidate for town board, is presently on the planning board. He would probably be unaffected by any new regulations, which would likely apply only in future scenarios.

    “Now that the question is before us, we have to look at the code,” said Republican Town Councilwoman Theresa Quigley, who has suggested several changes to the town code and is engaged in an overall review of it. She has said she wants to clarify certain sections of the code and eliminate inconsistencies.

    The ethics code prohibits appointed board members from holding simultaneous membership on political party committees, and enjoins elected members of the town board from serving as the chair or vice-chair of political committees. It does not address members of appointed boards who choose to run for office.

    Ms. Bond, an active supporter of the Republican-majority administration, said her comments were “not coming from a political motivation at all.”

    Jeanne Frankl, head of the town Democratic Committee, who was in attendance at Saturday’s meeting, responded.    “There is a tradition in the town of people who are on the planning or zoning board running for office,” she said. “We think it’s a good thing,” because, she said, candidates bring that experience to the table, and because voters can see how they handle themselves in positions of responsibility before going to the polls. “I don’t see where the conflict would be,” Ms. Frankl said.

    Ms. Bond maintained that those on appointed boards “have a political advantage” over their opponents, since they appear on public television when their meetings are broadcast.  Not only that, she said, but also, while campaigning, candidates are constantly making political statements.

    “Every incumbent is in the same position,” Ms. Frankl said. “We think it’s actually beneficial to the public.”

    “A political advantage is different than the appearance of a conflict of interest,” Councilman Dominick Stanzione commented. 

    Sylvia Overby, another Democrat now running for town board, who has served on the planning board, noted that members of the zoning and planning boards are politically appointed — the elected majority on the town board typically fills expiring terms or empty seats with its own hand-picked supporters. However, she said, “You should check your political affiliation when you get on those boards. You represent the community.” She said Ms. Bond’s comments questioned the integrity of those boards.

    “I’m absolutely comfortable with planning and zoning board members running and continuing to hold their seats,” said Democratic Town Councilwoman Julia Prince.

    It appeared, when the board turned to other matters, that the ethics question had not been heard the last of.

East Hampton Town

Wainscott Land Preserved

    After a hearing last Thursday night, the East Hampton Town Board approved the purchase of 26 acres on Six Pole Highway in Wainscott. The land will be bought with $3.2 million from the community preservation fund.

    Speaking at the hearing, Nancy LaGarenne of Tryworks, East Hampton, said she was not opposed to the purchase, but questioned why the town had not bought the Webb property as well, acreage in her Middle Highway neighborhood that residents have asked the board to preserve.

    The town had made an offer to the property owner, she was told, but it was turned down. A second speaker urged the board to revisit the issue and contact the owner once more, and the board agreed. The purchase price, however, may not be increased from the amount determined by a survey.

No to Rezonings

    With a vote last Thursday night, the town board formally denied two property owners’ requests for rezonings.

    Wainscott Pooh, a limited-liability corporation that owns the parcel where the Wainscott Post Office is located, had asked for the site to be rezoned from residential to central business zoning.

    Tom and Rebekah Burke had asked the board to restore a limited-business zoning designation on their residential property on Amagansett’s Main Street.

For Gansett Parking

    Councilman Dominick Stanzione reported on Tuesday that, in response to a discussion at the Amagansett Citizens Advisory Committee meeting, he would look into a possible purchase of farmland adjacent to the municipal parking lot in Amagansett, in order to create 200 more public parking spaces.   

    Arnold Leo, secretary of the East Hampton Town Baymen’s Association and former town fisheries consultant, returned from an Aug. 1 Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission meeting in Virginia with some good news — striped bass and lobster fishermen might have dodged a bullet — and some bad — East Hampton Town was not represented at the important meeting.

    East Hampton Town’s fisheries advisory committee “was never called to meet before this incredibly important meeting,” Mr. Leo said Friday. “Not only were lobster and bass on the chopping block, but during a Tuesday morning meeting, there was a lot of debate about how much New York will have to reduce blackfish landings.”

    “The fishery advisory committee never called for a position on what action to take on any of these issues,” Mr. Leo said.

    Mr. Leo served as the town’s fisheries consultant for four years until he was fired by a 3-to-2 vote of the town board earlier this year and replaced by Eric Braun. The previous year, his annual $40,000 budgeted stipend — never used in its entirety — had been reduced to $15,000.

    As the town’s consultant, he attended numerous management meetings and reported back to an advisory board including representatives of commercial and recreational fishing, aquaculture, and marina interests.

    At the time of Mr. Leo’s firing, Supervisor Bill Wilkinson said the consultant’s advocacy at state and federal management meetings had not borne fruit, and that Mr. Leo had a commercial fishing bias. Members of the fishing industry criticized the firing and claimed that fish stocks important to local fishermen, as well as access to them, had actually improved during Mr. Leo’s tenure.

    On Friday, Mr. Leo spoke about the Atlantic States Commission’s meeting, which he attended on the Baymen’s Association’s dime.

    Lobster landings in the southern New England region have been lackluster in recent years. Managers have sought to dramatically restrict fishing, even threatening a five-year moratorium that lobstermen said would put them out of business.

    “They had three options, status quo, a five-year moratorium, or a combination of ways to reduce the harvest by 50 to 75 percent,” Mr. Leo said. “The status quo was not going to fly and lobstermen said both the moratorium and 50 percent reduction would put them out of business.” The draconian approaches were being pushed by the states of Maine and New Hampshire, big lobster producers whose motives were therefore suspect, he said. 

    The commission represents 15 coastal states and manages species found within their territorial waters.

    Mr. Leo said there was an alternative that Connecticut and Rhode Island managers had been working on “to reduce the harvest by 10 percent in each of the conservation areas to rebuild stocks [using higher minimum size limits and shorter season closures] to prepare the industry for more substantive reductions in the future,” in other words, to buy the industries time.

    Lobster landings in the southern New England region have been lackluster in recent years.

    This alternative was adopted by the commission’s advisory board, and although the threat of a total moratorium would remain hanging above their heads, lobstermen were given a chance, Mr. Leo said.

    On to striped bass. Once again, Maine and New Hampshire pressed for reductions in the coastwide striped bass harvest, especially for commercial fishermen. Mr. Leo said that the summer migration of striped bass often did not reach the northernmost states, which was no indication of the overall population.

    The curtailment measure, Amendment Three to the striped bass plan, “basically said that if any trigger was reached that indicated the stock was in poor condition, then things would be done to reduce landings by 40 percent.”

    “For the past 12 years, since the bass fishery reopened, these triggers have never been approached. The spawning biomass is 189 percent above the threshold. There are almost twice as many adult bass capable of spawning before the stock needs protection.”

    Mr. Leo said a new stock assessement was due in September. “I was speaking for the baymen’s association. I addressed the board and said, ‘I’m talking to you as a taxpayer too. Why are the states holding public meetings on this addendum when there is no indication that the adendum is needed, and a new assessment is due in September that will tell us if there’s any need for curtailment of harvest?’ ”

    The commission voted to suspend public discussion of the proposed addendum.

    According to members of town’s fisheries committee, East Hampton was not represented at the Virginia meeting because too much of the money budgeted for the purpose after Mr. Leo was fired as the town’s consultant had already been spent.

    “There was no sign of Eric Braun, and there’s no sign there’s any money left” in the committee’s travel budget for him to attend future meetings, Mr. Leo said.

    Several members of the committee confirmed anonymously that Mr. Braun had charged the town over $7,000 — more than half the entire year’s budget — for attending one three-day meeting of the Atlantic States Commission last spring. After submitting his bill, committee members said, Mr. Braun was told to stay close to home. The committee has remained virtually dormant since then, one member said.

    Mr. Braun said yesterday that the fisheries committee was “very much alive.” He said he did not attend the Atlantic States Commission meeting because the committee had decided it was better to send industry reps instead of him. “If it’s lobsters, Al Schaefer might go, if it’s whiting, Dan Farnham.” 

    Mr. Leo said a Wednesday meeting of the Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council in Wilmington, Del., is “of importance to the recreational guys.”

    The council will meet jointly with the Atlantic States Commission to determine the harvest levels of both commercial and recreational scup, black sea bass, fluke, and bluefish. “The rec fishery had an overage in scup, so there might be a fight over that. Nobody’s paying attention on the town level. If they lose 60 percent of tautog (blackfish) and 60 percent of black sea bass, what are they going to fish for?”

    Mr. Leo said on Tuesday that he planned to ask the town board the same question at its next meeting. 

    “As a result of complaints . . . I thought we should pursue shutting the airport down from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m.,” East Hampton Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson said at a town board meeting on Tuesday. “We’re running into — no pun intended — some headwinds on that.”

    Because the town is limited by the Federal Aviation Administration as to what restrictions it can place on the use of the airport, the board sought advice from the law firm of Kaplan Kirsch & Rockwell, the specialties of which include transportation and aviation law.

    A letter from the firm, which Councilwoman Theresa Quigley said was a privileged attorney-client communication, contained “no surprises,” Councilman Dominick Stanzione, the board’s airport liaison, said.

    The letter, he said, details the procedure the town could follow to appeal to the F.A.A. for the ability to regulate the landings of certain aircraft. The procedure, referred to as a Part 161 application in reference to F.A.A. regulations, requires the submission of detailed studies and documentation for the town to prove its case.

    “That’s the one everyone was pushing us to do for this express purpose, at a tremendous amount of money, with no guaranteed results,” said Councilman Pete Hammerle, during whose long tenure on the board the airport issue has been repeatedly discussed.

    Meanwhile, Mr. Stanzione said, the town will begin to publish the names of companies and individuals whose aircraft flout a voluntary curfew on takeoffs or landings at the airport between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m. in an effort to shame them into compliance.

    “We have received, at times, 10 e-mails a day from people seriously affected by aircraft. There was one that referenced four violations in one night, and that’s not minimal,” Ms. Quigley said at the meeting. “So if we have the ability, and I’m reading from this memo that we do, to restrict some helicopters, I’d like to pursue whatever we can.”

    Mr. Stanzione said the town board must weigh the costs of mounting a Part 161 proceeding. While numerous other municipalities have chosen such a route, few have resulted in an F.A.A. decision to grant local authority over, for instance, a mandatory nighttime curfew. However, should the town succeed, it could continue to apply for and receive F.A.A. grants while achieving some autonomy regarding airport operating decisions.

    At present, the town is bound to certain restrictions on airport decision making based on “grant assurances” that are the strings attached to the acceptance of F.A.A. money. Each new grant accepted extends that contract by 20 years.

    The town had already engaged Kaplan Kirsch & Rockwell, under the former McGintee administration, to weigh in on how to gain more local control over the airport and received similar advice about the Part 161 procedure, Kathleen Cunningham, who headed the town’s now-defunct airport noise abatement advisory committee, said yesterday.

    She said, however, that the law firm had apparently not taken into account a lawsuit settlement in favor of the Committee to Stop Airport Expansion that calls for the expiration of some of the grant assurances limiting the town’s authority over the airport at the end of 2014.

    The noise abatement advisory committee had pushed for the town to pursue the Part 161 application, and to consider not taking any more F.A.A. money, in an effort to increase local control in any way possible.

    Ms. Cunningham said that the environmental impact statement prepared prior to the recent adoption of an updated airport master plan covered much of the same ground as a Part 161 application would require. “Much of that data has already been collected,” she said.

    “If the political will exists, they will hire an attorney to do what they want,” she said of the board.

    The airport noise abatement advisory committee, which was disbanded by the current administration in favor of a multitown committee formed by Mr. Stanzione, had objected to sections of the environmental impact statement for the master plan dealing with noise.

    Basing the evaluation of the airport’s noise impact on an averaging system of “noise events,” the study had concluded that the noise impact was minimal.

    In the real world, the committee had said, a single noise event — e.g., a helicopter coming in for a landing over a residence — has a considerable effect. The group argued that the town’s evaluation of the effect of aircraft noise on residents should reflect what actually occurs, perhaps leading to different future decisions about the airport. But the town board currently in office approved the impact statement and master plan as prepared.

    Meanwhile, Mr. Stanzione said, as he had asserted during a discussion of the airport last week, the F.A.A. appears to be moving ahead with the enactment of policies that would route more helicopters on a southern path between Manhattan and points east on Long Island. Doing so would not only alleviate traffic that’s headed to East Hampton over North Shore communities, it would also eliminate flights over East Hampton that have as destinations Gabreski Airport in Westhampton Beach or a heliport in Southampton.

    And, he said, because of advances in global positioning system technology, “there will be more and more controls over the altitude and routes of helicopters.”

East Hampton Town

Bonding Approved

     Governor Andrew Cuomo has signed legislation that will allow East Hampton Town to borrow money, by issuing bonds repayable over 10 years, to fund an employee separation program, offering town workers an incentive to step down.

    Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson has said implementing the program is part of a package of cost-saving initiatives designed to return the town to sound financial status. He noted that it could help avoid layoffs.

    State approval was not needed to begin the separation program, but only to issue bonds. Zachary Cohen, the Democratic candidate for town supervisor and a former member of the town’s budget and finance advisory committee, has taken issue with the way the program is to be funded, arguing that the town could include the cost of separation incentives in its budget, avoiding additional debt and interest costs.

    When state lawmakers failed last year to vote on the bonding legislation, sponsored by Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. and State Senator Kenneth J. LaValle, Mr. Wilkinson said the separation incentive program could not go forward. Mr. Thiele said yesterday that he supported the legislation as a home rule issue, giving the town a choice of how to proceed. Similar legislation has been adopted for Nassau County in the past.

    The State Legislature previously gave East Hampton Town the authority to issue up to $30 million in bonds to raise money to cover a $27 million deficit. 

Turbine Support

    A town board hearing last Thursday on a proposal to erect a wind turbine at the Iacono farm on Long Lane drew comments from only one speaker — Patrick Schutte, a member of the planning board. Mr. Schutte supported the idea, saying wind power “fits in with the character of our community.” Traditional power plants on Long Island, he said, are “antiquated,” and not energy-efficient, while wind power represents a better option for the environment.    

     The Iacono proposal is for the second wind turbine on a Long Lane farm. The town board issued a permit for the turbine now operating on the Mahoney farm, though a number of neighbors expressed concerns about noise and other disruptions. The board has not received complaints since the turbine went up.

    Although the town code requires a permit from the town board for a wind energy system, both Long Lane town permits may actually be unnecessary, as the state Agriculture and Markets Law governing what farmers may do allows wind energy systems on farms.

CfAR Asks for Action

    Citizens for Access Rights, a group known as CfAR, which was formed in response to a lawsuit by Napeague homeowners against the town and town trustees seeking to stop beach driving along two Atlantic-front stretches, delivered a resolution to the town board last Thursday night, which it asked board members to adopt.

    The resolution pledges the town board to fully support the town trustees in defending the lawsuit and to authorize spending on the legal expenses. It also outlines the town board’s commitment to take any steps necessary to maintain public ownership of the beach, including purchase by eminent domain, and to use all legal means to support continued vehicular and non-vehicular access.

    A similar resolution was submitted by CfAR to the board in April, but not acted on. Tim Taylor, a spokesman for the group, said he hoped that the board would enact the most recent resolution at its meeting next Thursday. CfAR members, he said, would attend that meeting en masse.

    “This board has had our previous resolution for the past four months and we feel that this has been a more than adequate time for the board to act on the resolution,” he said. “Any attempt to delay or table this resolution will be considered by CfAR and its members as a no vote on the resolution.”

Tennis Fee

    Tennis players who use the town-owned courts on West Lake Drive in Montauk, which are being operated by the Village Tennis Company, will see their costs rise.

    Last Thursday, the town board approved a modification of its license agreement with the company, allowing the fee to be increased from $16 per court per hour to $22 per hour.

Bids on Solar

    East Hampton Town is seeking bids on the design and installation of a solar energy system to be installed at the town police office on South Embassy Drive in Montauk. The project will be financed by money left over from a green energy grant.

    The town purchasing agent will accept bids until 3 p.m. on Sept. 8. Specifications are available at the Purchasing Department office at Town Hall.

    The terms of an agreement between the Springs School District and East Hampton Town, allowing the school to use a town youth building on the school campus for several classes this school year, will be the subject of a special meeting of the town board tomorrow morning at 10 at Town Hall.

    In recent discussions of the lease, Town Councilwoman Theresa Quigley, who is an attorney, had questioned whether it adequately spelled out the terms — in particular, who has dibs on use of the building after school hours.

    Though she said she supports the idea of having the building put to use during the school day — as does the rest of the board — she said she does not want to cede control of the building to the school, and that the lease should make it clear that decisions about its use after school hours would be left in the hands of a town entity, probably the Human Services Department, which runs some youth programs there.

    Town Councilman Dominick Stanzione, who has been working on the agreement between the town and the school, said the school wants use of the building at night for parent-teacher conferences, which take place several times a year.  At those times, or others when school activities might be in the building at night, he said school officials agreed to provide space for community groups in the school itself, if needed. Ms. Quigley expressed concern, however, that those terms were not specified in the lease, and said e-mails she had received from school officials indicated otherwise.

    Town Councilman Pete Hammerle, who oversaw the building project for the town, asked for a requirement that cleanup of the building, the school’s responsibility, be completed immediately after school so that the rooms would be in order if other groups were to use them at night.

    Questions also arose about who would be responsible for the cost of things like snow removal and modifications to the building that the school needs to make, such as installing a wall to make two classrooms out of one.

    The town spent $3.5 million to construct the building several years ago, with an eye to providing not only a home for the Springs Youth Association but a place for other community organizations and activities. It has been used for town-sponsored youth activities as well as by Project MOST, an independent after-school program.

    The school is to pay the town approximately $2,000 per month to lease the building. Mr. Stanzione said the agreement is a win-win, especially for Springs taxpayers who might have been asked to shoulder the burden of paying for a school expansion if the additional classroom space in the town building had not been provided.    

    Yesterday, Michael Hartner, the Springs School superintendent, expressed concern about getting the agreement executed immediately, as the start of school is nigh and the building must be readied for students. In a phone call to The Star, he said that he wants both entities to feel comfortable with the lease agreement, but that it is only a one-year agreement, and so could be modified or abandoned if problematic.