“The town attorney’s office is prepared to take any and all necessary steps to ensure any future instances of this type are dealt with accordingly, as to ensure the safety of our residents.”
The above quote comes from Jake Turner, the East Hampton Town attorney, regarding the town’s plan to appeal a ruling that compels the Building Department to issue a building permit to Joseph Macari and Kim Staller by next Thursday.
The attorney Jon Tarbet represented the couple, who applied for a building permit on Dec. 24, 2025. They had previously received a natural resources special permit to build a house on their 11-acre property on Bendigo Road in Amagansett’s Devon area (they sued the town to be given a hearing on the natural resources permit as well).
“The town board has told the public that the building permit wait time is down to six months,” said Mr. Tarbet. “I have a client who has waited six months and now has a court order requiring the town to review his permit within 15 days. Despite this, the town has apparently decided to spend as much as $20,000 in legal fees to appeal the order.”
He added that such delays are a “de facto moratorium on building permits.”
“Perhaps they’re appealing because they’re worried about the precedent this lawsuit might set,” he continued in a phone call Tuesday. “But the precedent will be much worse if I win in front of an appellate judge. Instead of spending the $20,000 on the appeal, maybe they should be spending that money on overtime for Building Department employees. I’m not sure how they can justify telling the public the wait is six months when my clients are at six months and now they’re going to appeal it.”
There are over 700 building permits pending in the Town of East Hampton, according to a Freedom of Information Law request fulfilled in early June.
A separate FOIL request indicated that there are 135 outstanding certificate of occupancy applications.
One well-known permit expeditor who spoke to The Star this week, who showed up roughly 20 times on the building permit FOIL list, said they filed a building permit for a house in Springs last June.
Their company received comments back from the Building Department in December with some items to address. They responded in a week and still haven’t seen a permit. “Do they count that as a June filing or a December filing?” they asked. “I don’t know, but to me that’s a June filing and we are a year without a permit.”
The Building Department delays have been a red-hot issue for at least a year, with the town board scrambling for solutions amid a Suffolk County District Attorney investigation. A suspended Building Department employee and another who had recently resigned were indicted in April for bribery and official misconduct.
“Builders can’t wait a year for a permit. How do you bid something, wait a year, and have your bid be anywhere near accurate?” asked the expediter, who asked not to be named.
At a town board meeting in April, Richard Normoyle, then principal building inspector, told the board that he hoped by the end of the year that new builds would have a wait of three months, and that in April, the wait time was six months.
Patrick Derenze, the town’s public information officer, said via text this week “In May we issued 118 building permits.”
In fact, he said, earlier the Building Department had hoped to be through reviewing everything from 2025 by mid-July, but it has moved that deadline up to the end of June.
If so, the Building Department will be very busy in the next couple of weeks. The same expeditor said they still are waiting for certificates of occupancy requested in September, nine months ago.
In other Building Department news, the town board “reached a tentative agreement” with the suspended employee who was indicted, Evelyn Calderon, “resolving the dispute of their pay status while suspended.”
No further details were given. A FOIL request submitted immediately after the town board meeting had gone unanswered, and Ms. Calderon’s lawyer, Ed Burke Jr., did not respond to a request for comment.
Also on Tuesday, Mr. Normoyle, who was hired as principal building inspector in September 2025, took the Civil Service exam for chief building inspector and passed it. The town board approved his promotion to chief on Tuesday at an annual salary of $140,000.
He now enters a six-month probationary period.
