Government

The East Hampton Town in-person meetings will resume at Town Hall today, with a 2 p.m. town board meeting, but some officials, citing the more contagious Delta variant of the coronavirus and compromised immune systems, are not ready to return to the format.

The site, at climatechangeresources.org, is to serve as a one-stop portal for anyone seeking information and wanting to take action on climate change. It was founded by Lena Tabori, an East Hampton resident and a member of the town's energy sustainability advisory committee, and Mike Shatzkin, a media consultant.

An ongoing boom in the real estate market produced nearly $94 million in revenue for the Peconic Bay Region Community Preservation Fund in the first five months of 2021, the highest five-month total in the program's history, Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. announced last week.

The public will have a chance to comment on the "revisioning" of East Hampton Airport, in person or remotely, at a town board work session on Tuesday at 11 a.m. The meeting will be broadcast live on LTV and via its website.

In an organized act of civil disobedience, East Hampton baymen and their supporters drove a caravan of 39 trucks onto what is popularly known as Truck Beach on Napeague on Sunday morning to assert what they believe is their right to use, and drive on, the ocean beach there. 

East Hampton Town will buy 32.6 acres of farmland in Amagansett from the Bistrian family using $28 million from the community preservation fund, the town announced on Tuesday. The acquisition, following years of discussion and negotiation, is the town's largest of farmland to date.

Free Wi-Fi is up and running at East Hampton Village's Main Beach and is coming soon to its other beaches and commercial district but with a requirement that did not sit well with two village trustees.

The East Hampton Town Board's plan to begin implementing recommendations from the Wainscott hamlet study, adopted and incorporated into the comprehensive plan last year, got off to a bumpy start with last Thursday's public hearing on a proposed amendment to the zoning code that would reclassify a stretch of Montauk Highway in the commercial district from central business to a single-family residence designation with limited business overlay.

Thirty-three years after joining East Hampton Town's Planning Department, JoAnne Pahwul, the department's director for the last two years, retired on Friday. 

Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc recognized Ms. Pahwul at the town board's meeting last Thursday. She "served our community extremely well over all of those many years," he said, noting her rise to senior planner, assistant director, and director. "Thank you for helping keep East Hampton the beautiful place it is today." 

"I'm excited, you can tell," Suffolk County Legislator Bridget Fleming said about the new Suffolk Transit On-Demand service along Noyac Road from Sag Harbor to Southampton Village. The project has been at the heart of Ms. Fleming's work since her election in 2015, shortly after which eight bus routes were cut from service because of budgetary constraints.

The East Hampton Town Board approved the immediate addition of sand to the ocean beaches at Ditch Plain in Montauk as well as to the hamlet's downtown beach following a Memorial Day weekend northeaster that rendered the former beach unsafe and partially exposed geotextile bags installed to stabilize the downtown beach several years ago.

The Hampton Hopper, a seasonal bus service serving Montauk that was suspended during the pandemic last year, will resume service as soon as Thursday, with an expanded service territory.