A South Fork railroad service that could accommodate those commuting into East Hampton Town for work, a service that has long been discussed and was instituted for a short-term trial in 2006, is feasible, Long Island Rail Road officials agreed at a meeting last week with the East End’s state, county, and local government officials. Agreement on new services and train schedules, and a plan for their implementation, could be finalized as soon as next month, with a target start date of 2018.

Increasing public transit options has long been a goal to reduce traffic in East Hampton and across the East End. After meeting with L.I.R.R. officials last summer to address the need for improved train service, in November officials from the five East End towns submitted specific proposals for that service to the railroad.

A South Fork Commuter Connection rail service put in place during 2006 and 2007 while work was being done on County Road 39 in Southampton provided two eastbound trains from Speonk to Montauk in the morning, an afternoon westbound train, and bus service from Montauk to Speonk in the late afternoon. Towns provided shuttle buses to transport commuters from train stations to hamlet centers.

The new service would mirror that trial, according to a press release from Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr., who attended the meeting last week, but with some modifications. The service would be provided year round, though summertime schedules would have to accommodate the L.I.R.R.’s existing train schedule during those months, and the late-afternoon bus service would be replaced with a train.

“The long-term goal for the South Fork,” according to Mr. Thiele’s release, is to provide service every half-hour eastbound during the morning commute and westbound during the afternoon commute.” However, a second track between Sayville and Montauk, or additional sidings, would be needed in order to provide the more frequent service.

During this year’s state budget process state legislators will seek funding for the creation of a long-term capital plan to include these items.

In order to make commuting by train a viable option, the individual towns would have to establish a transit service that workers could use to get from the train stations to their jobs.

East Hampton Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell broached that idea earlier this year, and preliminary planning is underway. Traffic on the East End “is a serious safety, environmental, convenience, and economic issue threatening both Southampton and East Hampton,” Mr. Cantwell said in his state of the town address at the start of this year.

The Peconic Land Trust will likely get approval from the East Hampton Town Planning Board for a 2,800-square-foot equipment barn at Quail Hill Farm in Amagansett. However, it may not get the access to the barn it had hoped for.

John Jilnicki, the board’s attorney, informed members that covenants and restrictions written into the subdivision that created the 11-acre farm property between Old Stone Highway, Deep Lane, and Side Hill Road preclude access from Side Hill Road or Deep Lane. Instead, tractors and other farm equipment may have to get to the barn via Old Stone Highway.

The barn is to be used for equipment that serves the whole of Quail Hill, a community supported farm with fields on the east and west side of Deep Lane and off Town Lane to the north. But at the board’s Jan. 25 meeting, the extent to which the barn could be used for equipment from another farm property was also called into question.

Ian Calder-Piedmonte, a member of the board and a farmer, himself, told the board that the practice of using equipment over several different properties is common on East Hampton farms. The discussion will continue at a future meeting.

In other matters, the board also had a prolonged discussion with Gordian Raacke of Renewable Energy Long Island, a member of the town’s energy sustainability committee, about the use of lithium ion battery facilities to store power during off-peak hours, then release that power back into the grid at peak hours. The board has two such facilities before it in site plan review, one on Cove Hollow Road in East Hampton, the other in Montauk south of the train tracks and Navy Road. The proposed facilities would be run by NextEra Energy Resources, a company partnering with National Grid and PSEG.

Mr. Raacke explained that PSEG’s updated power usage for East Hampton shows a critical gap between what is available and what is demanded during peak summer hours. Since the battery facilities cannot be put in place this year, PSEG plans to bring in two generators on flatbed trucks, one for the Montauk substation, the other to be located near the substation on Buell Lane Extension, to make up for the shortfall this summer.

While the proposal is not truly “green,” since it is not actually producing power but only storing it, Mr. Raacke said that the battery facilities would be far preferable to the generators in the future. He told the board that the generators being used this year will be run on compressed natural gas, which is cleaner than oil, but less preferable than the battery concept.

In the wake of yet another coastal storm, repairs will again be needed to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers project on the downtown Montauk beach.

Waves and wind from the northeaster earlier this week exposed sections of the sandbag seawall installed by contractors for the Army Corps last year as part of an $8.4-million beach stabilization project. Designed to keep waves from undermining shorefront hotels, the seawall has performed its function during several storms but has sustained damage and required rehabilitation each time.

After being re-covered with sand following a previous storm, the sandbag pile was again exposed this week. According to project specifications, it is supposed to have three feet of sand over it. The surf reached the sandbags, leaving no passable beach.

According to an agreement among the sponsors of the project — the Army Corps, New York State, Suffolk County, and East Hampton Town — maintaining sand atop the sandbag pile will become the responsibility, both financial and otherwise, of the town and the county once the project is deemed complete and is handed off by the federal agency, which bore the entire construction cost.

However, a final walk-through has not yet occurred, nor is there a final agreement on ongoing operation and maintenance.

Damages from a fall storm required the Army Corps contractors to reinstall fencing and beach grass, and there were several other outstanding items, including re-covering a mat of concrete blocks at the South Edison Street beach-vehicle access. The concrete remains exposed after this week’s storm.

Town officials also have questions about a 50-foot berm of sand that had been installed in front of the sandbags as part of the project; it was washed away in the earlier storm and has not been replaced.

Besides exposing the sandbags in particularly vulnerable spots along the downtown beach, this week’s rain and storm-surge waves took out the sand fencing along the entire length of the project.

The fight over whether PSEG-Long Island, the utility that provides electric service here, should be subject to East Hampton Town’s zoning laws — particularly whether the company’s reconstruction of a substation on Old Stone Highway in Amagansett should have been reviewed by the town planning board — will continue in a Brooklyn courtroom on Monday.

The case goes back to 2014, when town officials issued a stop-work order after PSEG began revamping the substation without having submitted plans to the planning board for site-plan approval or obtained a building permit. Vegetation around the site, which borders the Long Island Rail Road tracks near the Montauk Highway, was cleared, a building erected, and a chain-link fence installed.

The substation upgrade was the culmination of a controversial project — the installation of a six-mile, high-voltage electric line from the Buell Lane, East Hampton, electric substation to the Amagansett site. Two-hundred sixty-seven replacement poles were installed and 23 and 33-kilovolt lines strung. Once the work at the substation was completed, the system was put on line.

The town argued that site plan approval and a building permit were needed, while PSEG claimed that the company, a service provider for the Long Island Power Authority, was exempt from those requirements. The stop-work order was overturned in April 2015 by State Supreme Court Justice Thomas F. Whelan, who agreed that LIPA and PSEG are exempt from local zoning and other laws. The town appealed.

According to Michael Sendlenski, the East Hampton Town attorney, oral arguments before the Appellate Division of State Supreme Court will begin on Monday.

The controversial high-voltage lines, which run along residential streets to the Amagansett substation on poles larger than those they replaced, caused an outcry from residents concerned about safety and aesthetics. They asked to have the lines installed underground.

  PSEG had said the new lines were needed to upgrade service and help avoid outages. It refused, however, to carry the higher cost of underground installation. Subsequent discussions between the company and East End local and state officials about cost-sharing did not bear fruit.

Meanwhile, community groups prevailed on town officials to ask the utility to put plantings around the substation to soften its look, as well as a line of trees and shrubs. This was accomplished, but some Amagansett residents say the work falls short.

Several applicants cancelled their public hearings before the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals on Tuesday, resulting in an abbreviated meeting that proved time well spent for one applicant.

Dana Termini owns a 1,203-square-foot residence at 116 West Lake Drive in Montauk with a finished basement of 746 square feet that lacks access from the interior of the house, a violation of town code. The error, the board was told, was an oversight, and would cost $35,000 to correct.

Although the plans submitted to the Building Department reflected what was built, and the town had inspected the house several times, the error was never noticed until the final inspection before a certificate of occupancy was granted. Only then was it caught.

Tyler Borsack, a town planner, pointed out that the board had granted a similar application in 2012, submitted by Glen Pushelberg and George Yabu of 90 Shore Road in Amagansett. Their house was built with all needed approvals, but the final inspection found a code violation, in that the second floor had an exterior staircase only.

When the hearing was over, the board’s business was as well, until members decided to look at the issue they had just discussed. Their attorney, Elizabeth Baldwin, assured them that quick action was allowable if they so decided.

“It was done in good faith,” Theresa Berger told her fellow board members as they began to deliberate. All agreed with the goal of the town code, which is to prevent illegal apartments from being created. However, they determined that in this case, it was the town that had erred.

With the caveat that no kitchen ever be added, the board voted 5-0 to approve the application. Mr. Termini can keep his basement as is.

The owners of a 2,529-square-foot vacation house on Cranberry Hole Road in Amagansett, which is on a lot identified by the East Hampton Town Planning Department as “pristine dune land,” sought a permit Tuesday before the town’s Zoning Board of Appeals to add another 1,464 square feet plus decking.

The board was told that Bernal J. Vargas III, a British national, and his wife, Alexandra, who bought the property in 2009, need more room for their two young boys. Their architect, Bailey Heck of BHH, a Brooklyn firm that has designed a number of South Fork residences, told board members that the couple also want a garage to protect their cars. They propose to move and replace their septic system, which is currently located where the expansion would take place, he said.

Laurie Wiltshire of Land Planning Services also addressed the board in support of the project.

The house was built in the 1980s, on just under an acre of land that borders Napeague State Park. Mr. Heck told board members that 61 percent of the property was not buildable.

Brian Frank, East Hampton Town’s chief environmentalist, described the lot as “characterized by pristine, secondary dune land beyond the existing clearing limits.” If the application is granted, he said, it would increase building coverage on the property by 68 percent.

“The board should note that existing clearing limits and area calculations do not appear to be accurate,” he wrote in a memo. He told the board it was impossible to recreate the undulating dune through landscaping, adding that the only way to protect it was to “limit land clearing to the minimum area practical.” Should the board grant the requested approval, he said, it should do so only with extensive mitigation attached. “I would describe this redevelopment as aggressive,” he said.

Ms. Wiltshire argued that the clearing proposed was minimal, and compared the proposal to development on neighboring properties. She pointed out that the applicants were not asking for variances, only a permit to build the extension.

Mr. Frank, in turn, advised the board to consider the town code’s section regarding “natural resources special permits,” stressing that dunes are considered a protected resource.

David Lys, a board member, questioned the location and amount of clearing. John Whelan agreed, saying that the survey submitted for consideration was unclear as to the exact location of the clearing. He asked that an updated survey be presented before any deliberations are held, and the board agreed to keep the record open for that purpose.

East Hampton Town

Launch-Site Parking at Issue

Parking along Landing Lane in Springs, which leads to an Accabonac Harbor access used by paddleboarding and kayaking businesses, could be restricted to those with town parking permits, both resident and nonresident, according to an East Hampton Town Board discussion this week. The restriction, board members explained, is designed to balance the rights of the businesses issued town permits to use the site and residents who might seek to use it for water access themselves and need a place to park.

David Lys, the proprietor of Weekend Warrior Tours and Outfitters, who is also a member of the town planning board, raised questions about the need for the restriction and said it would negatively impact his business if out-of-town clients were unable to park at the launch site. The topic will be taken up again at a future meeting.

Eye Photo-Shoot Permits

A town board discussion on Tuesday of legislation that would require town permits for film and photography shoots on private property in East Hampton, which are currently exempt from the permit requirement for shoots on public property, drew comments from two East Hampton business owners who arrange and produce still-photography sessions.

Jenny Landey and Holly Li, who each have 25 years in the business, told the board that the permit requirement and fees would be onerous and hurt their businesses. As still-photography shoots are typically smaller, with less potential for neighborhood disruption, than film or TV sessions, the women suggested the board establish separate categories of permit requirements. A proposed requirement that permit applications be submitted at least 14 days in advance would also present difficulties, they said, as they are often not given that much lead time by clients.

At present, shoots involving six people or fewer are exempt from getting permits; the draft legislation would include even those smaller shoots in the permit requirement. The proposed law changes, Supervisor Larry Cantwell said, would provide a way for officials to track when a private property might be too often used for commercial activities such as filming. The board will discuss the issue further. J.P.

Federal

Aid Request for Sag Harbor

Representative Lee Zeldin has issued a statement of support to grant federal aid for Sag Harbor Village through the Small Business Administration Disaster Recovery Program following the Dec. 16 fire that affected many businesses there. Other businesses are also suffering from the ongoing limitations imposed by the subsequent demolition and cleanup efforts.

State Senator Kenneth P. LaValle and Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. have led the effort to secure a disaster declaration through the S.B.A. A request from Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo is also required. 

In an unusually lively first meeting of the year, the East Hampton Town Trustees heard an appeal from Sara Davison, executive director of the Friends of Georgica Pond Foundation, for permission to conduct a survey of the pond’s marine life. The trustees also reappointed Francis Bock as clerk, or presiding officer, without dissent. Mr. Bock, a Democrat, became the clerk a year ago, following his election in November.

However, it took a 7-to-2 vote for the trustees to reappoint Bill Taylor, a Democrat, and Rick Drew, a first-term Democratic trustee, as the body’s two deputy clerks. Mr. Drew replaces Pat Mansir, another first-term Democrat, who was not renominated. Ms. Mansir said on Tuesday that she was not upset about failing to be reappointed. “It’s politics. Rick Drew is a really hard worker, and I’m glad that he got it,” she said.

Diane McNally and Tim Bock, Republicans, opposed both deputy clerk appointments. Mr. Bock had nominated Ms. McNally, the body’s former longtime clerk, for a deputy position. However, she declined the nomination. “Thank you very much,” she said.

Georgica Pond has experienced toxic algal blooms over the past several summers, prompting the trustees to close it to the harvesting of crabs and the foundation to be established by pond-front property owners in an effort to improve its ecological condition. 

Ms. Davison proposed a survey of fish and crabs to be conducted by Bradley Peterson and Christopher Gobler, both of Stony Brook University’s School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences. Dr. Gobler has been monitoring the pond’s quality for the trustees for the past few years, and more recently for the foundation.

The plan calls for one winter survey, possibly in early March, and two or three daylong surveys in the summer. A 12-foot aluminum boat with a 9.9-horsepower motor would be used as well as a crab dredge, allowing evaluation of the number of crabs in different areas of the pond. The trustees would have to grant permission and the town board authorize trawls since motorized boats and trawls are not now permitted on the pond.

In the summer, traps and crab pots would be set, the traps baited and left overnight. A small trawl would do brief tows at multiple locations, and its contents and the contents of the traps processed on the boat. Densities of crab and other larvae would also be quantified, and all marine life would be returned to the pond, Ms. Davison said.

Dr. Peterson would also interview baymen working on the pond, and information from the town’s Natural Resources Department would be solicited. Survey results would be summarized in a report to the trustees.

Ms. McNally asked for specific dates and prior notice, as well as detailed information in the final report on where traps and pots were set and trawls conducted. Overall, however, the trustees were amenable to Ms. Davison’s proposal.

Also at the meeting, the trustees set the cost of an annual lease for a trustee-owned house lot at Lazy Point in Amagansett at $1,716.66, a 2-percent increase over last year. 

East Hampton Town

Building Code Revisions

After holding hearings on changes to the town building code, the East Hampton Town Board last Thursday approved several revisions, including one that would reduce the size of houses that can be built throughout the town.

The maximum gross floor area of a residence will be reduced to 10 percent of its lot area, plus 1,600 square feet. Current law allows houses to be as large as 12 percent, plus 1,600 square feet, of the size of the parcels they are on. A provision that precludes any house from being larger than 20,000 square feet, regardless of its property size, will remain in place.

The board also adopted a law that restricts the size of cellars, limiting how far they can extend beyond the exterior wall of a first story to 10 percent of the first floor’s gross floor area. The law will also prohibit cellars from being more than 12 feet below ground.

Another law approved last week will revise the town code’s definition of gross floor area, calling for measurement to be taken to the exterior face of the frame or masonry wall. It will exclude cellars, attics, or spaces with ceilings lower than five feet and calls for stairwells and interior spaces where ceilings are higher than 15 feet to be counted twice.

Also approved were changes to the town code governing home contractors’ licenses, allowing companies to designate one person to complete required continuing education training.

Regarding a C.P.F. Purchase

The town board will take comments next Thursday on the purchase of a .81-acre property at 142 Waterhole Road in Springs for $900,000 from the community preservation fund. Owned by the Hamilton Family Trust, the parcel has a house and outbuildings on it; they would be removed at the seller’s expense before the property changes hands. The land would be returned to a natural state. The hearing will begin at 6:30 p.m. at Town Hall.

Four Merit-Based Raises

After recently instituting a system through which town employees can be granted merit-based salary increases, the town board last Thursday approved the first of those pay hikes for four union employees. The board awarded raises ranging from $2,104 to $2,832 to Andrew Gaites, an environmental analyst in the Department of Land Acquisitions and Management, Rosemary Berti, a Finance Department clerk, Evelyn Calderon, a clerk in the Building Department, and Cindy Graboski, who is a clerk at the Highway Department. J.P.

New York State

For Ag Property Tax Help

Legislation recently introduced by Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. would free agricultural property owners from paying state estate tax, as long as their land is protected by an easement, covenant, or other legal restriction that limits its use to farming and bars its development.

Current estate tax policy, which levies taxes based on the “highest and best use” of land rather than its current use, “results in the conversion of valuable farmland to development” when property owners are faced with a need to raise money to pay the tax, Mr. Thiele said in a press release.

“The high value of real estate in places like Long Island, the Hudson Valley, and other agricultural areas near urban fringes and metropolitan areas threatens the future economic viability of agriculture. This legislation instead would make state tax policy an incentive promoting secure regional sources of food as well as protecting our rural quality of life and economic traditions,” he said in the release.

Jay Jacobs, chairman of the Nassau County Democratic Committee and an owner of the Hampton Country Day Camp in East Hampton, who had challenged the East Hampton Town Code’s limits on the number of people sharing a house as unconstitutional, lost his motion to dismiss a town case against the camp in State Supreme Court, Riverhead, last month.

Code enforcement officers issued 61 citations in August 2015 against a house at 17 Ocean Boulevard in East Hampton, saying it was being used as a dormitory for 25 camp counselors, citing the zoning code’s provision that no more than four unrelated people may share a house. Town officials sought a preliminary injunction to shut down the camp’s use of the house, and lawyers for Mr. Jacobs moved to have the motion dismissed.

In a 10-page decision, Judge W. Gerard Asher granted the injunction and upheld the town’s zoning restrictions.

In a release issued yesterday, Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell said, “This decision upholds the Town’s Zoning Code and protects the integrity of our single-family neighborhoods.”

 “The court found that there were ‘enhanced risks to the health, safety, and welfare of occupants and nearby residents in the event such violations were to continue.’ Such a finding by the court illustrates the necessity for the strong provisions in our zoning code protecting the character of our single-family residences and the good work done by our Building and Code Enforcement Departments in enforcing the Town Code,” the supervisor said.

The judge had issued a temporary restraining order in 2015. The preliminary injunction now issued will remain in place while litigation continues. A trial with regard to the numerous charges involving town code violations is scheduled to take place in East Hampton Town Justice Court on Jan. 31.

After hearing from code enforcement, Mr. Jacobs indicated he was prepared to take the issue of the legality of the town’s four-person limit all the way to federal court. The number was “arbitrary,” he said at the time, calling the limit “an unconstitutional taking of my property.” He also called it an “unequal enforcement of the law,” citing a town decision that allowed the Ross School to house boarding students in residences as a functioning “family.”