Government

With affordable housing in acutely short supply, more than 30 hopefuls attended a home ownership lottery drawing on May 31 at Town Hall in East Hampton, where numbers that had been randomly assigned to applicants were drawn and sequentially entered onto a waiting list.

A special Southampton Town Board meeting was held last Thursday to consider extending the current moratorium on new planned development districts.

The Southampton Town Independence Party has picked its slate for the November election. The choices are considered designations only, however, as the actual nomination is by petition, a process that starts today.

Rabbi Steven Moss, the chairman of the Suffolk County Human Rights Commission, will lead a community conversation about issues of bias in East Hampton and throughout the county at a meeting at East Hampton Town Hall on Wednesday at 4 p.m.

The public purchase of three lots in East Hampton Village that could provide space for an expansion of Herrick Park will be the subject of a hearing before the East Hampton Town Board tonight at 6:30 at Town Hall.

East Hampton Town’s hamlet studies will be discussed during a series of meetings beginning today with consultants who have drafted recommendations for the future of downtown areas based on previous public workshops and discussions. There will be separate presentations focusing on individual hamlets, as well as a presentation of the overall plan.

The situation at the East Hampton Airport last weekend, the first weekend of the 2017 high season following a court’s decision to strike down last summer’s overnight curfew on aircraft, was unremarkable, according to Jim Brundige, the airport manager.

In both traffic and complaints about aircraft noise, “it seemed to be a pretty normal weekend,” Mr. Brundige said on Tuesday. “It didn’t seem any busier than any other holiday weekend.”

Conditions in Georgica Pond are ripe for yet another harmful algal bloom, the East Hampton Town Trustees were told on Monday, and they should consider an emergency opening of the pond to the Atlantic Ocean, which would mitigate the situation.

With a vote at a board meeting tonight, East Hampton Town officials plan to hire a law firm that successfully represented the city of Santa Monica, Calif., in a fight to gain local control over its airport to advise the town as it pursues Federal Aviation Administration approval of restrictions on the use of East Hampton Airport in order to control noise.

About a year after Southampton Town initiated a moratorium on any new planned development district applications and an official review of the existing legislation began, Supervisor Jay Schneiderman has proposed wiping the law off the books.

East Hampton Town

Future of the Coastline

A public forum on the ongoing effort to develop a coastal assessment resiliency plan for East Hampton Town will take place on Tuesday from 5 to 7 p.m. at the Amagansett Presbyterian Church’s Scoville Hall, on Meeting House Lane. Representatives of GEI Consultants, who are working with a committee appointed by the town board, will discuss sea level rise, erosion, and potential storm impacts throughout East Hampton.

The East Hampton Town Republican Committee completed its selection of candidates for townwide offices last week and was expected to formally nominate them at its regular monthly meeting yesterday.

After a brief ribbon-cutting ceremony Monday evening to inaugurate Amagansett’s new privy in the parking lot behind Main Street, members of the hamlet’s citizens advisory committee repaired to the American Legion Hall for their monthly meeting.

The East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals must weigh a request that would allow a retirement "dream house" on a half-acre, landlocked parcel. The site contains wetlands and dunes.

East Hampton Town’s Republican and Democratic Committees have finalized their respective slates of candidates for the nine-member town trustee board.

On Monday, the East Hampton Town Republican Committee announced that Susan Vorpahl, a daughter of Mary Vorpahl and the late Stuart Vorpahl, is a designated candidate for town trustee in the Nov. 7 election.

A Montauk hotel with a popular outdoor lounge scene would use an adjacent property for unspecified events most weekends this summer, a town official said.

Representative Lee Zeldin has reintroduced the Plum Island Preservation Act, a bill to prevent the sale of Plum Island by the government to the highest bidder.

A dark cloud over a proposed car wash in Wainscott grew darker on April 19, when the East Hampton Town Planning Board, by a 5-to-1 vote, asked the Planning Department to prepare a memorandum examining the environmental impact of the proposal.

Real estate transactions in the first quarter of 2017 raised less money for the Peconic Bay Community Preservation Fund than they did in the first months of 2016, although the number of sales was virtually the same.

A new television show created for LTV, the local cable provider, by members of the nonpartisan East Hampton Group for Good Government had begun focusing on key issues through discussions and interviews with public officials, experts, and community leaders.

The United States Supreme Court has ordered the Friends of the East Hampton Airport, a group comprising aviation businesses and advocates, to submit a brief by May 19 describing its opposition to the town’s petition for Supreme Court review of an appeals court decision last fall that found the town did not have the right to enact laws that restrict the use of East Hampton Airport in order to reduce aircraft noise.

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has announced the launch of an initiative to require manufacturers of household cleaning products sold in New York to disclose chemical ingredients on their websites.

The new public restroom in Amagansett, constructed by East Hampton Town in the municipal parking lot to the north of Main Street, will be officially opened on May 8 at 6 p.m.

A historical Montauk property will see some changes soon, even though the members of the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals, who approved them on Tuesday, were concerned that its appearance would be different.

As expected, the East Hampton Town Republican Committee formally endorsed its 2017 slate of town board candidates at its meeting on April 5. Manny Vilar, a sergeant with the State Parks police, is the party’s candidate for supervisor.

Jerry Larsen, former East Hampton Village police chief, and Paul Giardina, who recently retired after a long career with the Environmental Protection Agency, join Mr. Vilar as candidates for town board.

A program proposed by Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone would provide grants and low-interest financing to help homeowners replace antiquated septic systems with new ones that remove nitrogen, which has been identified as a major cause of surface and groundwater pollution.

The Southampton Town Board has agreed to purchase enhanced development rights on a property that is under an acre, but next to two larger farm fields, for $958,000 from the community preservation fund.

A draft three-year capital budget discussed by the East Hampton Town Board this week calls for $5.2 million in spending on capital projects this year, an estimated $8.3 million next year, and $7.9 million in 2019.

Democrats to Hold Elections Forum

The East Hampton Democratic Committee will host an event that will focus on participating in elective government tomorrow from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. at St. Michael’s Lutheran Church in Amagansett. “Candidates for Our Future: How to Elect and Be Elected” will feature presentations from Democratic Party leaders including Supervisor Larry Cantwell, Councilwoman Sylvia Overby, Betty Mazur, the East Hampton Democrats’ vice chairwoman, and Andrew Harris. The event is free and open to the public.

A recent audit by the New York State comptroller’s office of the East Hampton Housing Authority, covering 2015 and part of 2016, is critical of a number of the authority’s financial practices and calls for better oversight and tighter controls.