Government

    Taxi drivers in East Hampton Town will be fingerprinted and checked for criminal convictions under a new law passed last Thursday.

    Before being issued a town taxi license, drivers and principals in taxi companies will be vetted by state and town officials.

Amagansett may finally get the public restrooms some residents have sought for more than a decade.

At a meeting of the hamlet’s citizens advisory committee on Monday, East Hampton Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell, the town board’s liaison to the committee, showed a blueprint of the parking lot on the north side of Main Street, and suggested a restroom location near the lot’s center adjacent to a vegetated island as opposed to in the southwest corner, as had originally been proposed.

Although the opening of the season is drawing near, opening day at Cyril’s Fish House, a summertime bar and restaurant on Napeague, remains far away as it deals with a stop-work order from East Hampton Town and a restraining order from State Supreme Court. If that weren’t enough to keep the popular roadside institution shuttered, last Thursday East Hampton Town Justice Steven Tekulsky rejected a motion by Dianne Le Verrier, attorney for the owners, to dismiss 53 zoning alleged zoning violations. That case is due back in Justice Court on Monday.

As a Rhode Island company navigates multiple regulatory agencies in order to construct the first offshore wind farms in the United States in the ocean east of Montauk, commercial fishermen are raising concerns about how such projects will impact their livelihood.

East Hampton Town

Scavenger Waste, Mass Gatherings

The future of East Hampton Town’s scavenger waste treatment plant, which has been mothballed pending repairs and upgrades to meet environmental standards, will be the subject of a hearing tonight before the town board.

The plant is being used only for the transfer of septic waste from pump-out trucks for transport to other processing facilities, and officials are considering closing it permanently, based on a recommendation by a consultant.

The Sagaponack Village Board put off a decision on Marc Goldman’s proposal for a 13,770-square-foot house on the corner of Daniel’s and Peter’s Pond Lanes until his representatives can show how much the house will hinder one of the last unobstructed views in the village.

The East Hampton Town Trustees are holding firm in their opposition to the town board’s proposed ban on the consumption of alcoholic beverages within 2,500 feet in either direction from the road ends at Indian Wells and Atlantic Avenue Beaches, Amagansett.

The owners of Cyril’s Fish House on Napeague were handed another setback in their fight to open the popular roadside eatery for the 2014 summer season, when the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals upheld a stop-work order issued last winter by Tom Preiato, the town’s chief building inspector.

The board, led by John Whelan, its newly appointed chairman, voted 4-0 to uphold the order, which was issued on Jan. 28 after two gasoline tanks dating from the late 1960s, when the site was a gas station, were dug up and removed.

Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone and Legislator Jay Schneiderman took to the road in heavy wind and rain to meet with their East End constituents, coming all the way to Montauk, Mr. Schneiderman’s home town, where they sat down with some 30 people at Gurney’s Inn and talked with a group of commercial fishermen at the docks.

An agreement between the Eastern Region Helicopter Council and East Hampton Town’s airport managers and air traffic controllers regarding helicopter routes into and out of the airport calls for choppers to reach altitudes of 3,000 and 3,500 feet over certain waypoints along designated routes, flying 1,000 feet higher than what had previously been outlined.

Suffolk County

Schneiderman to Address League

Suffolk County Legislator Jay Schneiderman will be the guest speaker at the annual meeting of the League of Women Voters of the Hamptons on Sunday. Mr. Schneiderman, who is in his sixth and final term in the Legislature, will discuss East End issues and trends over brunch at the Southampton Cultural Center on Pond Lane.

Installation of solar energy systems on Long Island is poised to expand with Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s announcement last week of a $60 million investment to support the solar industry’s transition to PSEG Long Island, which operates the Long Island Power Authority’s transmission and distribution system.

Speakers at a hearing last Thursday on proposed regulations on chain stores in East Hampton Town were largely in favor of the idea, but some counseled caution and urged the town board to notify individual commercial property owners and give them another chance to weigh in.

“I don’t read the little print on these newspapers,” said Michael Cinque, the owner of Amagansett Wines and Spirits and several Main Street buildings in that hamlet. “Slow this down,” he said. “You should be contacting the people who are affected.”

A unanimous vote by the East Hampton Town Board last Thursday to buy 19 acres of Amagansett land along Montauk Highway and preserve it for agriculture and recreation drew kudos and congratulations from members of the audience, several of whom spoke at a hearing on the $10.1 million purchase prior to the vote. The money will come from the town’s community preservation fund.

Alex Walter, a member of the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals, is to resign from that board and become the executive assistant to Supervisor Larry Cantwell, according to resolutions to be offered at a town board meeting tonight. Mr. Walter will earn an annual salary of $30,000 in his new post.

John Whelan, an architect who is East Hampton’s representative on the County Planning Commission and a Democrat who once ran for town board, is to be appointed to the Z.B.A for the remainder of Mr. Walter’s term, through the end of this year.

 “The sadness of an era passed,” one member of the Amagansett Citizens Advisory Committee called it, as the committee considered on Monday night whether to support a proposed ban on alcoholic beverages at the hamlet’s two popular ocean beaches, Indian Wells and Atlantic Avenue.

A big push to get work done by Memorial Day, then it will be quiet time

A new chain store on the site of the old Plitt Ford dealership on the Montauk Highway in Wainscott is becoming a reality almost two years after the death of the principal owner of the property in a car crash just miles away.

A 15,000-square-foot Home Goods store, designed by the architect Peter Cook, will be constructed there, Mr. Cook said Tuesday. Home Goods specializes in home furnishings and is  part of a larger corporation, TJX, which also owns Marshall’s, T.J. Maxx, and Sierra Trading Post, according to the Home Goods website.

A toll-free telephone number at which residents could register complaints about construction and landscaping noise was one outcome of the East Hampton Village Board's ongoing discussions on restricting the offending activities.

The East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals gave a Wainscott property owner unanimous approval Tuesday night for a second house on a single property, an apparent first since two houses on one site are prohibited by the town code. Members not only approved the proposal but praised it, although one, Don Cirillo, questioned the sincerity of one of the applicant’s stated goals, the preservation of a historic farmhouse.

East Hampton Town

Deer Management Online

The East Hampton Town Board will hold hearings next Thursday on three potential property purchases, including the 19 acres of Amagansett farmland where a luxury housing development had been proposed, as well as on new legislation governing the establishment of chain stores in the town.

The new zoning law, if enacted, would limit the possible locations for chain, or “formula” stores — those with 10 or more locations worldwide — to central business zones, excluding spots within or within a mile of historic districts, or within a half-mile of a designated historic building.

A revamp of the laws regarding large gatherings in East Hampton Town is under way in advance of “the season,” when town officials often juggle scores of requests for large fund-raisers, parties, and sporting events.

Draft legislation that would rescind two existing chapters of the town code and combine their regulations into one new section was developed over the last few months by Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell and John Jilnicki, a town attorney, who reviewed it at a town board meeting on Tuesday.

A meeting that was to have happened last week between local officials and representatives of PSEG Long Island did not take place. Its purpose was to discuss the future of the electric utility’s six-mile transmission line project through East Hampton Town.

According to Town Supervisor Larry Cantwell, PSEG has maintained the stance that if East Hampton residents want the new high-tension overhead transmission lines buried, the community must bear the entire cost.

Efforts to preserve two East Hampton historic sites and open them for public use are continuing, while the fate of a third property, the Sherrill Farm in East Hampton, remains undecided.

The former Duck Creek Farm in Springs and the former Selah Lester farm at the corner of North Main and Cedar Streets in East Hampton were bought by East Hampton Town with money from the community preservation fund. Repairs to the structures at both sites are being made.

The East Hampton Town Board has backed away from the purchase of a house and land in Springs that was opposed by the Springs Citizens Advisory Committee and will instead hold a hearing next Thursday on the purchase of a 12-acre portion of the parcel for $1.2 million.

‘The East Hampton Town Board will seek the public’s opinion on banning drinking during the daytime hours when lifeguards are on duty at Atlantic Avenue and Indian Wells Beaches in Amagansett, where large crowds of unruly and drunken beachgoers have gathered in recent summers.

A recent restructuring of debt through the re-funding of $14.6 million in bonds issued in 2005 will save East Hampton Town $3.3 million over the nine-year life of the bonds.