Government

Former G.O.P. leader cites his commitment to veterans

    “It’s such an important idea that it deserves a chance,” County Legislator Jay Schneiderman said yesterday, speaking in support of the county’s authorization of a ferry license for Hampton Jitney, operating as the Peconic Bay Water Jitney, to run a passenger service between Greenport and Sag Harbor.

East Hampton Town

Airport Tower Here Soon

    An air traffic control facility  — commonly called a tower but actually a modular building to house equipment and traffic controllers — could be up and running at East Hampton Airport by June 18, Town Councilman Dominick Stanzione said on Tuesday.

    The East Hampton Zoning Board of Appeals entered the labyrinth of logic inside a barn on Abraham’s Path in Amagansett Tuesday night as it began its initial deliberation on a challenge to a Nov. 3, 2011, reinstatement of a building permit by the town’s acting chief building inspector, Tom Preiato, who had revoked the permit five weeks earlier.

    Two attorneys active in town zoning affairs are squaring off against each other following an East Hampton Town Planning Board April 4 decision giving William Babinski, a Wainscott farmer, site plan approval to build a second barn. Litigation has begun even though the matter is headed for a public hearing before the town board at 7 p.m. next Thursday and even though the barn is 80 percent complete.   

    The 20th anniversary of the Peconic Estuary’s being named an estuary of national significance by the federal Environmental Protection Agency will be celebrated on Saturday, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., at the Long Island Science Center, 11 West Main Street in Riverhead. The estuary also has been called “One of the Last Great Places in the Western Hemisphere” by the Nature Conservancy.

    Contributions to the Peconic Bay Community Preservation Fund, from a 2-percent real estate transfer tax on most land sales, for last month are up from April, 2011, totaling $6.1 million this year versus $5 million last year.

“Hopefully, this is an indication that we are entering a robust period for real estate sales,” New York State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. said in a press release this week.

    The East Hampton Town Board will hold a hearing next Thursday on a $60,000 project designed to correct problems with the streetlights in downtown Montauk. The lights, which meet dark-sky friendly standards, have become dimmer over time, prompting complaints to the board that it is difficult to see in the downtown area at night.

    According to Councilman Dominick Stanzione, the globes on the fixtures have been weathered by the elements, causing the problem, and will be the only thing that will be changed.

    Recent tests that revealed the presence of a dangerous form of marine plankton in shellfish taken from Sag Harbor Cove have prompted the East Hampton Town Trustees to invite the scientist responsible for the testing to share his knowledge.

    Dr. Christopher Gobler of Stony Brook University will give a talk tomorrow at 5:30 p.m. in the East Hampton Town Hall meeting room on “Paralytic Shellfish Poisoning and Red Tides in East End Waters,” addressing the causes, effects, and distribution.

    East Hampton Town’s first attempt to create a road improvement district, taxing residents of certain subdivisions to pay for improving their roads so that they can be taken into the town highway system, is proceeding, though not without some dissension.

    Jeffrey Bragman, a zoning and planning attorney since the 1980s, was asked recently to elaborate on his views about East Hampton Town’s proposed music-entertainment legislation and his concerns, more generally, about town policy, and planning and zoning regulation.

Following a heated exchange at an East Hampton Town Board work session Tuesday over a controversial proposal to deal with large crowds gathering outside at restaurants or bars, Councilwoman Theresa Quigley, who offered the legislation, challenged the two Democrats on the board to produce a proposal of their own to address the problem.

    A fence war broke out during the East Hampton Town Planning Board’s May 9 meeting, pitting the owner of the Amagansett I.G.A., also called Cirillo’s Market,  against a long-vacant building and parking lot next door.

    Fran Cirillo, the market’s owner, is expanding it, on both the east and west sides of the building, by about 5,000 square feet, to over 20,000 square feet. She received site-plan approval from the board last August.

    With only 17 days remaining to Memorial Day weekend, East Hampton Town’s Ordinance Enforcement and Animal Control Departments are both short-staffed, Patrick Gunn, the town’s public safety division administrator and an assistant town attorney, told the town board on Tuesday.

    Four full-time officers and one part-timer are assigned to code enforcement.  A senior ordinance enforcement officer — “probably the most productive one,” Mr. Gunn told the board — was injured while fighting last month’s wildfire, and could be out of work indefinitely.

East Hampton Town

Issue $1.7 Million in Bonds

    With a unanimous vote last Thursday, the East Hampton Town Board authorized the issuance of almost $1.7 million in bonds to cover the costs of a variety of capital projects. After postponing the adoption of a capital budget until prior financial accounting problems were ironed out, the board drafted a three-year capital plan this year.

    East Hampton Town Trustee Debbie Klughers has secured a federal grant that will not only make it possible for fishermen to dispose of used fishing gear but also allow them to turn the gear, including line, lobster pots, nets, dredges, and buoys, into energy.

    The Fishing for Energy program is a partnership of the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Covanta Energy Corporation, and Schnitzer Steel Industries. All four organizations are working together to reduce mountains of derelict fishing gear nationwide.

East Hampton Town

Assessors Rolls Available

    The latest property tax assessments for the Town of East Hampton are available for review at the assessors office at 300 Pantigo Place weekdays from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. On Mondays there will be evening hours from 6 to 8. The board of assessment review will meet in Town Hall on May 15 from 10 a.m. to noon, from 2 to 4 p.m., and from 6 to 8 p.m. to hear grievances and requests for changes.

    A hearing will be held tonight before the East Hampton Town Board on a proposed law requiring bars and restaurants that offer live music or other entertainment to obtain permits. The permits would be subject to certain provisions, such as a limit on the number of people allowed to gather for outdoor entertainment. They would be issued by the town clerk without review, carry no fee, and be valid for a calendar year. One-year renewals would be automatic.

    The Surf Lodge, Montauk’s hot summer spot, will be mellowing down a bit this summer with a new ownership group, Montauk Properties L.L.C., it was announced Monday. The new team will still feature Jayma Cardoso as its day-to-day manager and public face, but Rob McKinley, Jamie Mulholland, and Steve Kamali, other former owners, are out of the picture, according to Montauk Properties.

    Ms. Cardoso sees this as a chance to reassess and reinvigorate the Surf Lodge, focusing more on the hotel and dining experience, as opposed to simply being a nighttime destination.

    The East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals debated two controversial applications Tuesday night, making a decision on one and tabling the other for a week.

    The first involved three and a third acres on Napeague, between Montauk Highway and the beach, where the owners, Mindy Nam and Mark Dehnert, have asked for a natural resources permit for a 2,000-square-foot lawn, a 6,050-square-foot tennis court, a 640-square-foot pavilion, a 100-square-foot shed, along with 831 square feet of deck and parking. The sticking point was the lawn.

    In the second of two challenges the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals heard Tuesday to recent rulings by the town’s senior building inspector, Tom Preiato, a group of Amagansett neighbors took on his decision to reinstate a building permit that he himself had rescinded for construction of a woodworking shop on Abraham’s Path.

    East Hampton’s scavenger waste treatment plant, which is next to the former landfill, now a recycling center, on Springs-Fireplace Road, is in a “unique location” above a groundwater divide, Kevin Phillips said on Saturday at a Town Hall forum held to discuss the plant and the handling of septic waste. “Theoretically, the water that leaches through the landfill goes straight down into the aquifer,” he said.

    With the season looming for places like the Surf Lodge on Montauk’s Fort Pond, the company that owns the controversial and popular night spot, which has been in and out of court on almost 700 alleged zoning code violations, is seeking a ruling from the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals that would allow it to get up and running. On Tuesday night, the Surf Lodge deliberations were on one of two appeals before the panel challenging decisions by the town’s senior building inspector, Tom Preiato.

    The East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals held a busy but brisk session on Tuesday evening at Town Hall with four applications for variances on the agenda, in addition to a discussion about the Wainscott Wombles project on Montauk Highway in Wainscott (covered separately). Only one of the four applications drew opposition at the meeting.

    Denise Schoen of Tarbet, Lester, and Schoen, the attorney for Michael Davis, who owns the Wainscott Wombles property at 411 Montauk Highway in Wainscott, received a two-week extension of time on Tuesday to respond to the Concerned Citizens of Wainscott, as represented by David Eagan, who is challenging a ruling by the town building inspector that a residence on the lot, which has a commercial use, would be legal.

Alex Walter, the Z.B.A. chairman, reported that the two sides were in negotiation toward a possible settlement, and the extension was approved unanimously.

    Peter Kirsch, an attorney serving as East Hampton Town’s consultant on airport matters, will speak to the town board at a 10 a.m. work session on Tuesday at Town Hall.

    Mr. Kirsch has been asked to discuss information provided by the Federal Aviation Administration in response to questions that Representative Tim Bishop submitted to the agency.

    Bill Babinski, a farmer who owns 20 acres of land on Beach Lane in Wainscott, will be able to build the second barn he needs after the East Hampton Town Planning Board okayed his application at an April 4 meeting. The 1,380-square-foot barn, to be erected next to one already standing, is a little less than half its size.

    A neighboring couple, Tom and Shelly Gilbert, expressed strong opposition to the application at a hearing on March 7, saying that the new barn would obliterate their ocean view if it were sited as proposed.

    “This was just woods,” Maureen Murphy, the executive director of the East Hampton Housing Authority, said. She was referring to the Accabonac Apartments, a 50-unit project that opened in 1999, a year after Ms. Murphy joined the agency. Now, Ms. Murphy is retiring from the post. “It’s enough,” she said. “It’s time.”

    The East Hampton Town Board split along party lines last Thursday in a vote on reorganizing the Human Resources Department. As reported last week, the measure, approved by the Republican majority, 3 to 2, abolishes the position of Pat Breen, the town personnel officer, who served as the department head. The board also moved two other staffers to different departments, one to the town clerk’s office and the other to the tax receiver’s office, leaving just one in human resources.

    Once the small group at the Amagansett Citizens Advisory Committee’s meeting on Monday evening had dispensed with minutes and reports from the committee’s zoning and planning board liaisons, summer 2012 seemed uppermost in everyone’s minds.