The East Hampton Town Trustees have designated Nov. 13 as the opening day for harvesting bay scallops in waters under their jurisdiction. The announcement was made in a resolution issued by the trustees’ office on Tuesday. The designation applies to both commercial and recreational scallopers.

Though the town code states that scallops may be taken from the third Monday in October, the trustees typically wait until one week after first Monday of November, when the harvest is authorized in state waters. The trustees expressed hope in the resolution that the Nov. 13 start would provide additional time for scallops to spawn.

As was the case last year, the hotly anticipated delicacy’s harvest is expected to be disappointing. “Scallop season is coming,” Francis Bock, clerk of the trustees, told his colleagues at their meeting on Friday. “We always hear that they’re thin.” He proposed that the harvest open in trustee waters on Nov. 13, a Sunday, rather than the following day because the town code prohibits the taking of scallops by use of a dredge or other powered device on Sundays. That, he said, “will give everybody a chance to go out and get a few before dredges hit them on Monday.”

Barley Dunne, director of the town’s shellfish hatchery, which seeds town waterways with new shellfish each year, gave a poor assessment of the scallop harvest yesterday. “It’s not looking real good,” he said. “It’s hard to say why, exactly. We know it’s cyclical, but there was a lot of rust tide” this year. “That could be part of it.” Rust tide, or Cochlodinium, is not harmful to humans, but can be harmful to shellfish and finfish.

There are signs of scallops’ spawning and survival this year, Mr. Dunne said, but a lack of safe habitat may be a factor. “A lot of these harbors are like desert — no submerged aquatic vegetation. . . . Predators are coming along and picking them off.”

Town residents over the age of 12 must possess a commercial or personal (noncommercial) permit to take shellfish. Permits can be obtained at the town clerk’s office. In trustee waters, the limit for commercial permitees is five bushels per day.

In the resolution, the trustees also called commerical harvesters’ attention to the fact that the bushel bags they sell must be utilized in harvesting all shellfish, including scallops. Bushel bags cost $1 and are available at the trustees’ office in the Donald Lamb Building on Bluff Road in Amagansett.

There may be changes afoot for the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals. During a prolonged discussion on Oct. 11, the board wrestled with implementing rules that have been in effect since 1989, but have not been followed.

Chief among them is a rule limiting applicants or their representatives to a maximum of 10 minutes to make their opening remarks. “These are the rules that are sent [to applicants]; they just have not been enforced,” Elizabeth Baldwin, the board’s attorney, told the members.

The discussion was sparked in part by two recent public hearings that ran until midnight. Board members agreed that such sessions were unfair to all concerned, including those whose hearings follow controversial applications.

David Lys, a board member, expressed concern that a strict limitation to 10 minutes might constrain a representative who needed more time. Other members mostly agreed. “The applicant can ask for more time,” Ms. Baldwin told the board. “Ten minutes will be the target,” John Whelan, the chairman, said.

Representatives sometimes dump volumes of documents on the Planning Department and the zoning board on the day of the hearing, which is another pet peeve for the board. Cate Rogers held up a five-inch-thick folder recently presented that way by an applicant. “I want to have as much information as possible, as soon as possible,” Mr. Lys said.

The board seemed to agree that 10 days in advance of the hearing would be a good deadline for documents to be submitted. That, Ms. Rogers said, would allow board members, as well as the Planning Department, upon whose memos the board relies, time to digest the matter at hand.

While 10 minutes would be a nominal limit for representatives’ initial presentation, the rebuttal would not have a time limit. However, Mr. Whelan said, the rebuttal would have to be narrowly focused on what had already been said at the hearing. “We need a better job of stopping the redundancy,” Mr. Lys said.

Also, experts brought along to testify, such as landscapers, contractors, or environmental experts, would be limited to three minutes apiece.

Ms. Rogers expressed concern that wealthy people can show up with an army of experts, an inequity as opposed to those less well off. “It is kind of skewed to those who can afford it,” she lamented.

One time concern problem is self-inflicted, Mr. Whelan acknowledged, taking a self-deprecating swipe, noting he occasionally can “ramble.”

Ms. Baldwin is working on a draft for a new set of rules, which will be taken up by the board in weeks to come.

Is it a bluff or is it not? The East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals will attempt to answer that question over the next few weeks.

The topological feature in dispute is in the northern portion of a rectangular lot at 80 Firestone Road in Montauk and runs from Fort Pond Bay inland, about halfway up the property. The Montauket hotel and restaurant is south of it; the bay is to its west, with one of the most beautiful sunset views on the East End.

The town’s Natural Resources Department and Planning Department both classify this natural feature as a bluff, and Ann Glennon, principal building inspector, determined in August that the interpretation was correct. Marc Rowan, the owner of the property, disagrees, and appealed her determination.

Mr. Rowan is proposing to tear down the four cottages on the property and replace them with three larger buildings, each placed so as to optimize the sunset views. If the zoning board decides that the natural feature is a bluff, Mr. Rowan will need variances. Bluffs are considered a protected natural feature, with stringent rules as to how near a structure can come to them. Two of the proposed three resort buildings on the narrow property would violate the code if the board decides that the feature in dispute is indeed a bluff.

Andy Hammer led Mr. Rowan’s appeal on Tuesday. John Whelan, chairman of the zoning board, who is a project manager for Stelle Lomont Rouhani Architects, the firm designing Mr. Rowan’s project, recused himself from the matter and with Cate Rogers, the vice chairwoman, absent, asked David Lys to run the hearing. Of the three other members, Mr. Lys has been on the board the longest.

“Facts are often lost in passionate posturing,” Mr. Hammer told the board. He called on Mark Byrnes of Applied Coastal Research and Engineering, a Massachusetts company, to address the board.

Mr. Byrnes argued that the bluff was not created by water and therefore is not a bluff. “It is just a hillside feature, remnant from the last ice age,” he said. “Features come, and features go.”

Brian Frank, the town’s chief environmentalist, advised the board members that the feature being debated fell under the town’s definition of a bluff and asked them to read the specific section of the code calling for the protection of bluffs. He told the board that he and Mr. Byrnes had walked the property together, and had discussed the matter at length. Afterward, Mr. Frank said, he adjusted the expanse of the bluff to a more conservative, smaller length. But still, he said, it is a bluff. He pointed out that the definition of “bluff” in the code clearly states that a bluff “may extend across all or part of a parcel.”

“This is not an inland feature. This is not a slope,” he insisted.

Mr. Byrnes returned to the podium. Bluffs, he said, “always have beaches. They always have water around them.”

The code defines a bluff as “a bank or cliff with a precipitous or steeply sloped face lying landward of a beach or body of water, and having a bluff line at least two feet higher than its base or toe . . . For the purposes of this chapter, a ‘bluff’ shall not be considered to encompass barrier sand dunes.”

The board has 62 days to make a decision. Because there will be only four members voting, there is the possibility of a 2-2 deadlock, which would result in the appeal’s being “rejected without prejudice,” according to the town attorney’s office.

An expansion of Amagansett’s municipal parking lot could happen before next summer, East Hampton Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell told members of the Amagansett Citizens Advisory Committee on Monday. 

Mr. Cantwell, the committee’s liaison to the town board, said that the town would complete the purchase of one of two parcels this year and close on the other parcel in 2017. The land — two and a half acres of largely open space — is adjacent to the existing municipal lot, which is often filled to capacity in summer. Last month, the town board approved the purchase of the parcels owned by Herbert and Tom Field, both members of the advisory committee, for $1.1 million and $1.8 million. 

“We have hired an engineer to give us assistance to design a proposed parking lot on a portion of that property,” Mr. Cantwell said, “and to come up with some designs for using part of it for a park.” The goal, he said, is for the parking lot portion to be completed by next summer. The expansion would add around 80 spaces, or 50 percent of the existing lot’s capacity. 

Little else pertaining to the hamlet was discussed at the brief and sparsely attended meeting, held on Columbus Day. Mr. Cantwell told the gathering that work has commenced at the PSEG-Long Island electrical substation at the corner of Abram’s Landing Road and Old Stone Highway. 

A long project to upgrade the electricity transmission line has rankled Amagansett residents, with much of the vegetation around the substation stripped in 2013. A chain-link fence and the installation within that enclosure have remained highly visible to passers-by. 

Before the revegetation plan can be implemented, temporary poles must be removed. That removal has begun, Mr. Cantwell said. As reported here last week, landscaping is to begin no later than Nov. 1. The utility has pledged that lighting at the installation will also be changed, Mr. Cantwell said, “to something more dark-sky-compatible.” 

Construction of the public restrooms in the municipal parking lot was to resume three weeks ago, Mr. Cantwell said. The long-awaited restrooms, for which ground was broken earlier this year, are nearly completed but construction was halted during the summer, when the lot was most active. The supervisor promised to investigate the delay. 

Mr. Cantwell encouraged residents to attend the town board’s work session on Tuesday, at which officials from Southampton Hospital are to present their plans to build a stand-alone emergency room building in the town. The board, he said, will also report on a preliminary review of where it could be located, with sites on Pantigo Place and Stephen Hand’s Path under consideration.

A public hearing on the proposed expansion of Damark’s Deli at the intersection of Three Mile Harbor and Soak Hides Roads in East Hampton is scheduled for Wednesday at 7 p.m. during the East Hampton Town Planning Board meeting at Town Hall. 

Bruce Damark had received site plan approval in March of 2012 to increase the size of the popular and cramped deli to 4,571 square feet on the first floor and create a basement of 3,907 square feet and a 1,770-square-foot second-floor apartment. Now, in what has been deemed by the board as a modification of the 2012 plan, the second-floor apartment is gone, the basement has ballooned to 6,000 square feet, and the first floor to 5,400 square feet. 

According to the town’s head building inspector, Ann Glennon, most of the basement will be used for storage rather than a catering business as originally planned, and therefore does not have to be counted in the total floor area.  

 A few planning board members have found the expansion of the basement  problematic. As reported on Aug. 30, Kathleen Cunningham is concerned about the relationship of the basement to groundwater. “I have several serious concerns regarding the cellar, as it will be built only three inches above groundwater, which, as a practical matter, is in groundwater,” she said in a memo to fellow board members. Job Potter also questioned the distance from the basement floor to groundwater. The site is in a harbor recharge district and is prone to flooding

An application for permission to build a 3,602-square-foot house in and on top of the dunes on the last undeveloped oceanfront lot on Shore Road near Marlin Drive on Napeague was the focus of a two-and-a-half-hour hearing before the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals on Sept. 20.

The applicant, represented by Eric Bregman of Farrell Fritz, a Long Island law firm with an office in Water Mill, is a limited liability corporation called East Hampton Gerard Point. Its address is that of Heatherwood Luxury Rentals of Commack.

It is the second time in a little over a year the property, which is between the White Sands Motel and a private house, has been before the board. Last year, the board held a hearing on an application for a 4,320-square-foot house there, but it was withdrawn after members indicated it would be denied.

The property is long and narrow and runs from Shore Road through the dunes to the beach. It is in a Federal Emergency Management Agency high velocity flood zone, which means the house would have to be raised over 12 feet above grade.

The dune closest to the road rises on a fairly sharp angle almost from the pavement, and the house would cover 2,975 square feet of dune. The lower level of the structure would contain only an entrance or foyer and a garage, which would have knock-away walls in case of flooding. The living space would be on the first full floor.

“Why can’t the design be reconfigured to put square footage into a second floor?”  John Whelan, chairman of the board, asked Mr. Bregman, who responded by pointing to what he called proposed improvements since 2015. There would be minimal excavation, he said, because there no longer was a foundation.

“The house has been moved back, substantially,” he said about the location on the dune. “There is no erosion of the dune’s benefits,” he said.

Mr. Whelan, however, apparently was not convinced. “I would love to have seen from the architect why this project could not have a smaller footprint,” he said. The architect, Andrew Glambertone, then said his client had originally asked for a two-story house, but was concerned about having to apply for pyramid variances, due to the narrowness of the lot.

The proposed configuration of the house clearly troubled Jeffrey L. Bragman, an attorney speaking for the opposition. He said the living space would be about six feet higher than the Federal Emergency Management Agency requires, which neighbors objected to.

“They are reaching for a view,” he said. “My ears perked up when I heard the chair say this is an awfully large footprint. It makes it a very imposing house.” He also said that if the house were moved closer to the street, its flood zone status would change, and it would not have to be raised so high. The plan appeared to include about two and a half stories, he said, with a dormer offering the possibility of another floor being added in the future.

“Under town law, a dune is a protected feature. A big footprint is bad for the dunes,” he said. He presented an illustration of a proposed alternate site for the footprint closer to the road. He also presented the board with a sketch of the house to the west of the property to provide a sense of scale.

Nick Gregory, one of the neighbors, addressed the board. He said the dunes were fragile and pointed to the potential for flooding. “We don’t have anything against a house being built, but all houses built since the 1980s have been two stories with a smaller footprint,” he said.

Mr. Bregman then responded to Mr. Bragman’s points. “Jeff is always very eloquent. Sometimes it is a little off-base.” He reiterated that the excavation would be minimal.

Finally, the board, clearly weary, voted to close the hearing, and the participants left the room. A few minutes later, however, both attorneys returned.

Mr. Bregman complained that his architect had not gotten a look at the sketch of the neighboring house presented to the board by Mr. Bragman as an illustration of scale. Mr. Bragman asked for the right to respond. But Mr. Whelan said he did not want a back and forth, and the board instead gave Mr. Bragman one week to confirm the accuracy of the sketch and closed the record.

The attorneys then left the room for a second time. After a minute, Mr. Whelan looked at the vice chairwoman, Cate Rogers, and quietly said, “We should have locked the doors.”

Jay Schneiderman has completed his first proposed Southampton Town budget since becoming supervisor, a $94.7 million operating budget for 2017 that falls below the allowed 1-percent cap. The budget calls for a 1.6-percent reduction in the property tax rate, the largest tax rate reduction in recent history, despite a 3.9-percent increase in spending over the current year.

“We went back 10 years, there wasn’t anything like it,” Mr. Schneiderman said as he presented the spending plan to the town board last Thursday.

While the supervisor is looking to raise the budget by $3.6 million next year, the tax rate will go down due to a $5 billion increase in assessed valuation, according to Leonard J. Marchese, the town comptroller, who crafted the budget with Mr. Schneiderman. As of May, the assessed valuation townwide increased to roughly $60 billion due to new houses or the increased value in others, he said.

The proposed budget offers $3.2 million for road and highway infrastructure improvements. Also, there is $1.4 million for improvements to the beaches and park facilities, and $1.3 million for upgrades to the emergency services networks. There is $1 million set aside to upgrade the town’s fueling facilities, which the supervisor said are “aging out,” and $1 million for various land management studies, including supporting the Riverside Revitalization Action Plan.

Included in the supervisor’s budget is the consolidation of code enforcement, animal control, and emergency preparedness into a newly formed division of public safety. The Code Enforcement Department reports to the town attorney’s office, but there is no head of code enforcement. East Hampton Town saw a similar consolidation under Supervisor Bill Wilkinson. “I would like there to be a director of public safety that would oversee that code enforcement unit,” Mr. Schneiderman said. In addition to that position, he budgeted for an additional part-time code enforcement officer.

To address Southampton’s “crisis in terms of housing availability,” he proposed the creation of the office of housing and community development, which he said most other towns have. The housing authority manages the federal Section 8 program, but the new office, in a division under land management, would oversee housing registries, lotteries, buyer-benefit programs, and grants. The new office would work with an accessory apartment amendment he will propose in the coming months.

Under his proposed budget, he will increase the number of town employees by 7 to 518. The figure is still a far cry from the 554 people employed by the town in 2008. The additional positions include a police officer and public safety dispatcher — paid for with the more than $300,000 in extra sales tax money from the county for which Mr. Schneiderman negotiated — and the part-time code enforcement officers and director of public safety. Also, two parks maintenance mechanics would be added. He said there are not enough personnel and with the addition of Good Ground Park, “it wouldn’t be fair to the residents of Hampton Bays not to provide adequate funding for this park.”

A capital budget of $9.3 million is also proposed. East of the Shinnecock Canal, that budget calls for installing new restrooms and a lifeguard office at Scott Cameron Beach in Bridgehampton, where the current modular restrooms and office are “falling apart as they cannot withstand the elements of the ocean beach,” the proposal said. Also, the bridge on Job’s Lane will be replaced. The work at the Bridgehampton Community Center will continue, with the next phase being the replacement of plumbing, flooring, and fixtures in the restrooms.

For the additional capital expenditures, Mr. Schneiderman proposed the town borrow $8 million. The rest will be raised through state aid or grants, Mr. Marchese said. Even so, the town is reducing the overall debt by $7 million. 

About $2.6 million was appropriated from the fund balance, but the town will still have $30.4 million, more than 30 percent, in surplus for 2017, Mr. Schneiderman said, adding that the surplus is much of the reason why the town has its AAA credit rating.

Work sessions on the budget are slated for Oct. 6 and Oct. 20. The first hearing on the budget will be held on Oct. 25 at 6 p.m. at a town board meeting that will be held at the Hampton Bays Senior Center. Another will be held at Town Hall on Nov. 9 at 1 p.m. By state law, the budget must be adopted by Nov. 20.

A preliminary report to the town board on East Hampton Airport operations says that noise complaints from Jan. 1 through August were down by 53 percent from the same period last year.

Complaints specifically about helicopters decreased by a similar percentage (56 percent) from 2015. There were 12,456 complaints lodged between January and August 2016, about half the amount (26,243) that were received during that time last year.

East Hampton Town Councilwoman Kathee Burke-Gonzalez, the town board’s liaison to the airport, presented the figures to the board on Tuesday. The report, issued this week, also summarizes results from 2014.

Overall traffic at the airport increased slightly this year, though the mix of aircraft following the onset of curfew restrictions changed slightly. Flights in and out by helicopters, many of which are included in a “noisy aircraft” designation that requires adherence to an extended curfew between 8 p.m. and 9 a.m., totaled 27 percent of overall traffic versus 33 percent in 2014, while the use of turboprop planes — including seaplanes that fall outside the “noisy aircraft” category and have become a growing source of noise complaints — increased to 23 percent of air traffic, up from a 20-percent share in 2015 and 16 percent in 2014.

Consultants will finish compiling this year’s results and will present a report to the board analyzing the information and trends at a future date.

After a hearing before the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals Tuesday night, Fred and Joanne Wilson’s plan to build a family compound in Amagansett appears poised to clear its last hurdle.

It was the couple’s second appearance before the board. On Aug. 30, they asked permission to tear down a seven-bedroom house at 15 Seabreeze Lane, built just three years ago, and replace it with a four-bedroom house, using the extra space for amenities such as a theater room and a game room. The board okayed that project last month.

The Wilsons, who bought the lot at 15 Seabreeze in 2000, bought the neighboring parcel, number 9, earlier this year. That parcel has a three-story house on it, unusual in East Hampton Town, where the limit is two. The Wilsons’ attorney, Andy Hammer, explained that the house was built before the zoning code took effect.

It will be torn down and replaced with a 4,890-square-foot two-story house if the board allows it. There are dunes and wetlands in the area, so a permit must be granted before construction can begin. “This is where he wants his family to spend the rest of their days now,” Mr. Hammer said.

For the board, there were two major selling points in the proposal; first that there will be a new septic system on the property, and second that an existing swimming pool, just 27 feet from wetlands, will be removed. The pool is no longer needed, Mr. Hammer said, because 15 Seabreeze Lane already has one.

David Lys, a board member, asked if the Wilsons would be amenable to having scenic easements on the property. Mr. Hammer indicated that would be fine. No one spoke in opposition to the application.

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has signed state legislation that will allow the Town of East Hampton to create tax districts to pay for the underground installation of public utility lines. 

Sponsored by Senator Kenneth P. LaValle and Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr., the legislation was the result of the installation by PSEG-Long Island of an aboveground, high-voltage electric transmission line along a six-mile route through East Hampton Village to a substation on Old Stone Highway in Amagansett. Residents along the route and others, concerned about the visual, safety, and health impacts of the overhead lines, had pushed to have them removed and installed underground, but PSEG refused to bear the expense.

The new law would permit the Towns of East Hampton, as well as Southampton, to create “underground utility improvement districts” that could enter into agreements with utility companies, such as PSEG, to place electrical, cable TV, or telephone lines underground or to replace overhead lines with an underground system.

Special tax districts require “yes” votes by those living within them before they can be established. Once established, the towns would collect taxes to pay for the installation.

“We need to protect our energy system, and a great way to do that is by selectively undergrounding our utility infrastructure,” Assemblyman Thiele said in a press release. “New York, in general, needs to build an electric grid that is stronger, more resilient, and smarter. Long Island, and more specifically, the Town of East Hampton, is particularly susceptible to northeasters, tropical storms, and hurricanes,” the release said.

A utility tax district would pave the way for better systems, Senator LaValle said in the press release, while providing “the opportunity to share costs or spread them out over time.”