Government

In the past year and a quarter, East Hampton Town has kept spending down, reduced costs, and accrued surplus in its various budget funds, Len Bernard, the town’s budget officer, told the town board last week.

In a report on the town’s financial affairs in 2014 and 2015, to date, the town’s Finance Department credited “prudent and conservative budgeting and close budget monitoring” throughout the year.

“A large reason for our good fund performance is because we spent less than we budgeted for,” Mr. Bernard told the town board.

The scarcity of parking in Amagansett’s commercial district, along with potential remedies and enforcement, were primary topics of discussion at the hamlet’s citizens advisory committee on Monday.

The East Hampton Village Board's tentative 2015-16 budget, unveiled last Thursday, includes money to extend its paid emergency medical services program so that a first responder can be on staff around the clock seven days a week.

The State Department of Environmental Conservation announced on Thursday that due to the detection of a marine biotoxin the harvesting of shellfish and carnivorous gastropods, such as whelks, conchs, and moon snails, was temporarily prohibited in approximately 3,900 acres in the Town of Southampton.

New high-voltage electric transmission lines that run through narrow residential streets of East Hampton Village could be removed and instead installed underground, according to a recent proposal by PSEG Long Island.

A 150-foot cellular communications pole erected several weeks ago behind the Springs Fire Department building on Fort Pond Boulevard has angered neighbors.

A pilot project aimed at reducing the flow of nitrogen into surface waters would see the installation of a permeable reactive barrier at the head of Three Mile Harbor in East Hampton.

The twice-monthly meetings of the East Hampton Town Trustees may soon be recorded and broadcast on LTV, East Hampton’s public access television station.

With seven of the nine members of the governing body present at a meeting on Tuesday, the group addressed recent calls by some of the residents who regularly attend trustee meetings, agreeing to contact LTV to inquire about the installation of audiovisual equipment and broadcast of the meetings, which would also be archived on the station’s website.

Alexander Peters of Amagansett, who owns 3.5 acres of vacant land atop the Stony Hill aquifer there and wants to sell the parcel to the Town of East Hampton but has been stymied by a 20-year-old deed giving others a right of first refusal, said this week that a recent development may support his cause.

A controversial proposal for Duryea’s Dock in Montauk — to remove all the structures on the site and replace them with a restaurant and an open deck with a total capacity of 353 patrons — was tabled on April 22 before the East Hampton Town Planning Board could consider it.

A group largely consisting of young Latino adults who are determined to both live on the South Fork and participate in the political process have organized a monthly meeting at which they can discuss the issues important to them and their peers.

Find out what's happening on the political front.

A Native American burial site, which was discovered in 1917 off Springs Close Highway in East Hampton, has split the town planning board down the middle in connection with a subdivision application for property across the street.

When the East Hampton Town Planning Board met on April 22, all the stars seemed — at first, anyway — to be aligned for the approval of a proposed 40-acre subdivision of mostly open Wainscott farmland into seven buildable lots and a large agricultural reserve.

Residents of a Napeague neighborhood along the Atlantic beach are facing down Memorial Day without the no-parking signs that stood for years along the west side of Dolphin Drive, and are predicting traffic and problems caused by people seeking a spot to park so they can go to the ocean beach.

The East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals, by a vote of 4 to 1, rejected a request from four homeowners to build a revetment on Gardiner’s Bay toward the end of Louse Point Road.

The East Hampton Town Republican Committee will hold screenings on Tuesday for the positions of town supervisor and town councilperson.

East Hampton Town

A Place to Meditate in Eddie Ecker Park

A 50-foot-wide stone path in the shape of a labyrinth will be constructed in a section of the Eddie Ecker Park, on Fort Pond Bay in Montauk.

With a vote last Thursday night, the East Hampton Town Board agreed to accept a donation from Twelve Women, a local group, to fund the installation and maintenance of the labyrinth, a cobblestone path leading in concentric circles. Walking a labyrinth is a traditional spiritual and meditative practice.

A second round of bids by mobile food purveyors for the exclusive right to set up at prime East Hampton Town-owned sites, including the ocean beaches, will soon be considered.

A carry-in, carry-out policy aimed at keeping trash from piling up at East Hampton Town beaches could begin on a trial basis this summer, at a beach yet to be chosen.

At a town board discussion on Tuesday, members approved of the idea but said it would require extensive public education and a shift in the mindset of beachgoers accustomed to leaving their trash in the cans at beach road ends, or, worse, on the beach. The cans often overflow despite frequent pickups.

A weekend ban on helicopters at the East Hampton Airport will not be among the restrictions designed to reduce aircraft noise over East Hampton and the East End.

Changes to the East Hampton Town Code were on the town board’s agenda this week, and hearings will be scheduled soon to gauge public opinion on some of them.

In the face of widespread unhappiness with a plan to open some town launching ramps to use by personal watercraft such as Jet Skis, board members agreed it should not move forward.

A state Supreme Court judge ruled last Thursday that PSEG Long Island, an electrical energy provider, and the Long Island Power Authority, for which PSEG is a contractor, are not subject to local zoning and other laws.

Two controversial applications for subdivisions moved a step closer to a vote by the East Hampton Town Planning Board on April 1 after clearing a procedural hurdle.

The board concluded, after some contentious debate, that neither proposal, at 55 Wainscott Hollow Road in Wainscott and 38 Indian Wells Highway in Amagansett, required a lengthy evaluation under the State Environmental Quality Review Act.

The water quality in bodies overseen by the East Hampton Town Trustees is generally excellent, according to a presentation at Town Hall on Monday, but algal blooms that can be harmful to shellfish, finfish, and humans remain a concern.

While the East Hampton Town Trustees, who manage many of the town’s beaches and waterways on behalf of the public, have signaled grudging acceptance of the town board’s intention to ban alcohol at Indian Wells Beach in Amagansett during lifeguard-protected hours on weekends and holidays during the summer, they expressed greater enthusiasm at their meeting on March 25 for a pilot program aimed at reducing litter by removing trash receptacles and instituting a carry-in, carry-out policy there.

The future and dangers of former electrical generators and abandoned fuel tanks on Fort Pond on Industrial Road in Montauk were taken up by the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals Tuesday night.

Management goals, maintenance plans, and operating and capital budgets for the many historic properties and buildings owned by East Hampton Town are being developed for needed restoration and plans for public use.

At Louse Point in Springs four neighbors want to build a rock revetment that will connect to the two already in front of properties to the north, creating more than 900 continuous feet of armored shoreline.

A dozen new members were appointed to the Springs Citizens Advisory Committee by the East Hampton Town Board on March 19.

Councilman Fred Overton, who is the board’s liaison to the committee, declined to offer the resolution and voted against it; it was offered instead by Councilwoman Kathee Burke-Gonzalez, who, like Mr. Overton, is a resident of Springs.