Government

    Was the driveway asphalt, or was it gravel, or was it gravel-covered oil? And is gravel-covered oil the same as asphalt?

    Those were the questions of the day at the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals hearing on March 26. The driveway in question is part of a sprawling 186,000-square-foot property at 2118 Montauk Highway on Napeague owned by Lawrence Weiss.

    A majority of the East Hampton Town Board voted Tuesday to allow the Montauk Brewing Company, which plans to add brewing equipment to its tasting room in Montauk, to use three public parking spots in a nearby lot to fulfill a town requirement to provide more parking.

    Instead of having a consultant create a comprehensive wastewater management plan for East Hampton Town — a plan that is to include recommendations on environmental protection, ongoing surface and groundwater quality monitoring, meeting regulatory mandates, and what to do about the town’s currently inoperable scavenger waste treatment plant — Councilwoman Theresa Quigley suggested on Tuesday budgeting perhaps as much as $10 million to subsidize upgrades of private septic systems in ecologically sensitive areas of town.

East Hampton Town

Louse and Lazy: Much Debris

    Cleanup efforts led by the East Hampton Town Trustees last week at Louse Point in Springs and Lazy Point on Napeague yielded a large amount of debris that was hauled away from the beaches and boat-launching areas. Deborah Klughers, a trustee, reported to the town board on Tuesday that 13,500 pounds of debris had been collected at Lazy Point, not including fishing ropes, traps, and the like taken separately to a gear drop-off at the Montauk recycling center. At Louse Point, the total was more than 5,800 pounds.

    “Dear Honorable President Obama:” begins a letter sent last week to the president by the East Hampton Town Trustees.

    Members of the 300-year-old panel asked Mr. Obama to direct the United States Fish and Wildlife Service to delay the start of annual efforts to protect endangered shorebirds beyond April 1. That is the deadline for halting all activities that might endanger piping plovers and least terns during their breeding season, which ends in August. An extension would allow workers to continue restoring beaches ravished by Superstorm Sandy.

    A draft capital plan for East Hampton Town in 2013 includes $9.5 million in projected spending, on items ranging from playground equipment to new stairs at Culloden Beach in Montauk and Police, Parks, and Highway Department vehicles.

    In 2014, the proposed plan, for which a town board vote is forthcoming, includes $1.9 million in projects.

    The projects will largely be funded by borrowing money — through issuing bonds — although some will be subsidized by federal, state, and county grants.

    The fate of the last parcel of undivided farmland in the Wainscott corridor, once part of two farms owned by the Hedges and the Osborne families, came before the East Hampton Town Planning Board on March 20.

    The land, almost 40 acres at 55 Wainscott Hollow Road once owned by Ronald Lauder, is owned now by a limited liability company with the address as its name.

    Suffolk County Legislator Jay Schneiderman, who was the East Hampton Town Republicans’ top choice to run for supervisor this year, announced Monday that he will instead seek a sixth and final term in the Legislature, leaving Republicans to seek out a new candidate to lead their ticket.

    “It was not an easy decision,” Mr. Schneiderman said Monday. “Ultimately I came to the conclusion that I could still do a lot for the community at the county level.”

    An East Hampton Town committee developing recommendations on protecting Lake Montauk from pollution presented the town board with several interim suggestions at a board meeting on March 12.

    Residents of the East Hampton neighborhood comprising Miller Lanes West and East and Indian Hill Road have been left frustrated with the results of their continuing appeals to the town board to do something about the volume of traffic and speeding through their neighborhood.

    A majority of the East Hampton Town Board last Thursday ratified an agreement between the town and Sheila Carter, a supervisor of the Human Services Department’s senior citizens bus service who was brought up on disciplinary charges in October.

    Diane Patrizio, the human services director, had alleged misconduct and incompetence, insubordination, failure to perform duties, and an unacceptable performance of supervisory responsibilities, and sought to have Ms. Carter fired. She was placed on an unpaid 30-day suspension through Nov. 9.

    Calling the Sagaponack Village Board’s ongoing discussions of the Wolffer Trust’s two-year-old subdivision proposal “completely irrational,” an attorney for the trust pressed the board on Monday to schedule a public hearing on the project.

    Michael Walsh, the attorney, told board members that neighbors might want to weigh in on their latest request, for a new plan with houses built further west on the property, closer to Sagg Road. Wolffer wants to build four houses on a 12.3-acre piece of its 134-acre parcel.

    Three vendors who won bids last year to sell food and drink at Montauk beaches or road-ends are relinquishing their sites, opening the way for others.

    Bids will be accepted beginning March 14 by East Hampton Town’s Purchasing Department on the right to vend at the westernmost parking lot at Ditch Plain, at Kirk Park, and at the end of West Lake Drive.

    Bidding will also be reopened on exclusive rights to sell at two locations on which no one bid last year: Gin Beach in Montauk and Maidstone Park in East Hampton.

    The Federal Aviation Administration’s designation of East Hampton Airport as a “regional” airport in a May 2012 report classifying airports across the nation has raised concerns on the part of East Hampton’s Quiet Skies Coalition and touched off a new volley between that group and the East Hampton Aviation Association.

    In a press release, Kathleen Cunningham, the Quiet Skies Coalition president, said that the classification “clearly demonstrates the F.A.A.’s aggressive expansionist view of the East Hampton Airport.”

East Hampton Town

Budget Meeting Tomorrow

    East Hampton Town’s Budget and Finance Advisory Committee will meet tomorrow to discuss possible improvements to the town’s information technology systems.

    The East Hampton Town Board will hold a hearing next Thursday on a request to change the zoning of two parcels on the Napeague stretch from one-acre residential to neighborhood business.

    The land, owned by Michael Dioguardi, totals just over an acre. One parcel is vacant, the other is the site of Cyril’s Fish House.

    Even as winter winds on, the seeds of a future garden on the grounds of East Hampton Town Hall are firmly in place, with plans to begin planting daffodils, jonquils, and boxwood surrounding the  entrance sign by Earth Day this spring.

    The town’s litter committee has taken on the project, which it is envisioned will ultimately result in plantings of native, heirloom, and deer-resistant herbs, flowers, and shrubs around the historic Town Hall buildings and along walkways leading to and from various town offices. It will be an all-volunteer effort at no cost to the town.

East Hampton Village has appointed a replacement for Larry Cantwell, the village administrator for the past 30 years, Mayor Paul F. Rickenbach Jr. announced on Friday.

    The question of who was put in charge of installing a new telephone system at East Hampton Town Hall and why it has taken two years and counting to complete the job prompted biting remarks from Supervisor Bill Wilkinson and Councilwoman Theresa Quigley over the pace of progress and sharp criticism for a town employee and fellow board members.

    Sharon McCobb, a member of the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals, failed to win reappointment last Thursday when a resolution supporting her did not get a majority East Hampton Town Board vote.

    Councilwoman Sylvia Overby, who introduced the resolution, and Councilman Peter Van Scoyoc voted for her reappointment. Supervisor Bill Wilkinson and Councilwoman Theresa Quigley voted no, and Councilman Dominick Stanzione abstained. There was no discussion of the matter.

    Working capital small business loans are still available to small businesses, agricultural cooperatives, and private, nonprofit organizations who have unpaid bills and lost business due to Hurricane Sandy. The Small Business Association loans have a cap of $2 million for physical damage and economic injury, and are also available to homeowners associations and planned unit developments.

    “I wish they would do more,” said Sagaponack Village Mayor Donald Louchheim on Monday after a glance at proposed deer legislation drafted by New York State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr.

    The village trustees had been asked for feedback on the proposed law, which would increase deer-hunting opportunities on the East End. Board members looked over the draft at their meeting on Monday.

    Oceanfront homeowners in Bridgehampton and Sagaponack voted on Saturday to approve a $24 million beach renourishment project in an effort to protect approximately six miles of shoreline from further erosion.

    The long, winding road that the Beach House, a Montauk summer hotspot for the young and hip, has journeyed, may be coming to a close — or just beginning, depending on what happens at Tuesday’s meeting of the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals.

    Is a new house to be built on Cranberry Hole Road in Amagansett closer to wetlands than the one already on the property? And would the new house be a minor enlargement or a major one? Those are the questions the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals wrestled with Tuesday as it considered Michael Patrick and Carol Sedwick’s application for several variances to tear down their 2,054-square-foot house and replace it with a larger one.

    The New England Fishery Management Council’s scientific and statistical committee met yesterday in Newburyport, Mass., to decide how deeply to cut the quota of Georges Bank cod. The committee’s decision could have a big impact on the Montauk charter and party boat industry.

    Stock surveys undertaken in the spring of 2012 and again as recently as December appear to show that the two primary cod populations, the Gulf of Maine stock and the Georges Bank stock, are in “poor” condition, according to a report released by the council last week.

East Hampton Town

Calling Wireless Companies

    Hoping to prompt wireless communications companies to expand their coverage, eliminating dead zones in East Hampton, as well as to raise revenue for the town, perhaps, by leasing public sites for antennas and other equipment, the East Hampton Town Board is developing a request for proposals from the industry. Councilwoman Theresa Quigley has been pushing the effort.

“Do we have to close Indian Wells Highway at Bluff Road and say you can’t get by there without a town sticker?” asked Kieran Brew, the committee’s chairman. “I don’t like the ‘police’ aspect of it, but it is kind of crazy down there.”

    After abruptly quitting her job as assistant to East Hampton Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson on Jan. 4, Johnson Nordlinger, a Montauk resident, has reportedly met with an attorney who specializes in helping employees who have allegedly been wronged.

    “We’ve met with her, and we’re investigating the situation,” Thomas Horn of Sag Harbor said Tuesday. “So far it’s a rare combination of alarming but not surprising,” he said of the circumstances surrounding Ms. Johnson’s resignation.

    The future of Hren’s Nursery, a landmark on the Montauk Highway between East Hampton and Amagansett, was on the agenda of the East Hampton Town Planning Board  last week. The business was closed last year. Now, however, the Hren family has proposed subdividing the property, with one lot for the nursery, four house lots, and an agricultural reserve. The landscaping part of the business would be discontinued.