Government

East Hampton Town

Contractor License Crackdown

A crackdown on unlicensed contractors working in East Hampton Town resulted in the arraignment on Monday of a dozen workers who had failed to obtain or carry with them the required town license.

Senator Charles Schumer spoke out this week about the utility poles installed by PSEG Long Island throughout East Hampton and across Long Island, calling a chemical used to treat the wooden poles “highly toxic” and “known to cause serious health issues,” and urging the federal Environmental Protection Agency to investigate its use immediately. He demanded that PSEG suspend the use of the chemical, penta, on utility poles, and halt further pole installation until the E.P.A. investigation is complete.

State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. has been unremittingly critical of PSEG Long Island and LIPA, both for the utility company’s reluctance to discuss burying the high-voltage lines with East Hampton Village and Town, and because of the state-sanctioned handoff of Long Island’s electricity supply responsibilities from LIPA, which still owns the delivery infrastructure, to PSEG. Last month, he introduced legislation designed, he said, “to restore some degree of transparency and oversight to the activities of LIPA and PSEG-LI.”

East Hampton Town officials are bracing for a large turnout tonight at a hearing on four proposed regulations that would cut back on traffic to East Hampton Airport in order to reduce noise.

A hearing on the proposed restrictions at East Hampton Airport has been rescheduled for March 12 because of Thursday's snowstorm.

Planning Board

The East Hampton Town Trustees and homeowners on trustee-managed land at Lazy Point in Amagansett are moving toward an agreement under which residents’ annual leases would rise by 10 percent this year, far below the trustees’ initial proposal of a fourfold increase, and there would be a doubling of the transfer fee, levied when a house is sold, to 4 percent.

Four laws designed to cut down the din from aircraft using the East Hampton Airport will be the subject of a hearing next Thursday and could take effect before the start of the busy season.

United States Army Corps of Engineers staff and New York State officials have sidestepped East Hampton Town in moving ahead with a planned multimillion-dollar project to protect the downtown Montauk ocean shoreline without obtaining local authorization.

A State Supreme Court judge has dismissed a lawsuit against East Hampton Town, its office of housing and community development, and the East Hampton Housing Authority over a mold infestation at the Windmill Village affordable housing complex.

Local municipalities can, and should, enact standards for septic systems that are more stringent than those upheld by the Suffolk County Health Department, which regulates septic waste systems throughout the county, Kevin McAllister, the founder of Defend H20 in Sag Harbor, told the East Hampton Town Board this week.

Several companies have introduced technology that can reduce the amount of nitrogen in the effluent released into the environment from septic systems — a key pollutant causing the deterioration of drinking and surface waters.

Although new pumps have been installed at the Empire Gas station, now Citgo, in Montauk and a pump island has been expanded, its application for site plan approval for the expansion remained in limbo on Feb. 4 when the members of the East Hampton Town Planning Board coalesced against a canopy for the island. 

East Hampton Town

Montauk Beach: Easements Are In

East Hampton Town has obtained all of the needed agreements from the owners of Montauk properties along the downtown shore where the Army Corps of Engineers plans to build a reinforced sand dune.

Representatives for HomeGoods received a chilly reception from the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals last week as the board reviewed a request for signs on the new Wainscott building the store will occupy.

Town code limits total sign area to 20 square feet at that location, but HomeGoods wants to exceed that by nearly 50 percent, with a 14-square-foot sign on the back of the building by the parking lot and another one on the Montauk Highway side of the building.

Susan Knobel, who for more than a year has sought permission from the East Hampton Town Trustees to move her house from a severely eroded shoreline at Lazy Point in Amagansett, had reason to celebrate on Tuesday night. The trustees, who have debated the request while often asking for additional information, voted to authorize Ms. Knobel to apply for the variance relief that she will need from the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals to relocate her house to nearby lots that are at a higher elevation.

Citing “the amount of money coming into the village, and what this money can do,” Mayor Paul F. Rickenbach Jr. and his colleagues on the East Hampton Village Board heard last Thursday about the mushrooming number of basements that extend beyond the footprints of their houses, providing more living space but also adding more “density.”

Residents’ anxiety over being priced out of the modest houses they own on land they lease from the East Hampton Town Trustees at Lazy Point in Amagansett was evident during a lengthy and sometimes tense meeting on Tuesday night, with accusations heard that the members of the panel were continuing to be adversarial and belligerent.

The trustees had previously announced their intention to raise annual leases to $6,000 per lot per year. Leaseholders now pay $1,500 per year.

The economy of East Hampton Town — how money is made, from whom, and the needs of consumers and businesses — will be the subject of a study to be commissioned by the East Hampton Town Board.

The East Hampton Town Republican Committee will screen potential candidates for Suffolk County legislator on Wednesday at the American Legion Hall in Amagansett.

Legislator Jay Schneiderman of Montauk, first elected on the Republican ticket and now a member of the Independence Party, is serving his sixth and final two-year term in the Legislature, which has term limits. In 2013, Chris Nuzzi, then an outgoing Southampton Town councilman, ran against Mr. Schneiderman on the Republican and Conservative lines.

A Montauk resident’s civil rights lawsuit against former East Hampton Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson has been dismissed.

Town Hall Campus Remake

East Hampton Town will accept proposals from architectural firms with ideas for remaking the Town Hall campus, where the original Town Hall building has sat empty for several years after the completion of a new main building from donated historic structures.

The plan is to eliminate off-campus town offices, such as those at the Pantigo Place office condominiums, which would be sold, and to consolidate all of the town offices on the main campus.

A review of the East Hampton Town Building Department prompted by the discoveries of an undeposited 2010 check for a building permit, $290 in undeposited cash along with a receipt lacking a year, and a cash receipt book with pages missing has led to the development of stricter controls over the issuance of building permits and the collection of fee payments.

Just as long-awaited plans for a public restroom in Amagansett’s business district parking lot near completion, with bids for construction to be opened today, opponents of its location reopened the debate at Monday’s meeting of the hamlet’s citizens advisory committee.

The Montauk Movie, where rainy days could be spent catching the latest flick, will be reincarnated in the coming months as SoulCycle, where folks will be able to spin their days away instead, if a site plan now before the East Hampton Town Planning Board is approved. Although no structural changes to the building are planned, the change of use triggers the review.

After a somewhat contentious debate Tuesday night, the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals approved a subdivision of a Georgica Association property that will leave the resulting lots smaller than the five-acre standard there. The four board members who voted to approve the requested variance from the minimum lot size held that by doing so they were actually reducing density, in accordance with the goals of the comprehensive plan for the area.

The East Hampton Town Planning Board will hold four public hearings Wednesday night, including one for a proposed subdivision in Wainscott that has generated controversy and three others that have not been questioned.

New York State Gov. Andrew Cuomo last week signed into law a bill designed to protect licensed physicians from sanction by the New York State Board of Professional Medical Conduct for prescribing long-term antibiotic therapy for Lyme disease.

The law, which was co-sponsored by Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr., was among recommendations by the Senate Majority Coalition’s task force on Lyme and tickborne diseases in order to improve prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of such diseases in the state.

“The Town of East Hampton v. Clan-Fitz, et al.,” East Hampton Town Justice Steven Tekulsky said Monday morning, calling the attorneys for both the town and Cyril’s Fish House to the floor in court once again. The legal battle has been raging between the two for years, in both local and state court. But, in keeping with the holiday sentiment, there was an air of peace between the two on Monday.

The Amagansett Citizens Advisory Committee voted on Monday to inform the East Hampton Town Board that it is considering whether to request a hamlet study in which problems related to housing, wastewater, transportation, utility lines, and beaches would be identified and addressed.

The Suffolk County Legislature approved a measure last week that could bolster the county’s drinking water protection program by paying reimbursements for the salaries of employees doing water quality work back to the program, rather than into the county’s general fund.