Government

In light of extreme-weather events in 2011 and 2012, it is essential that residents take a more proactive and self-reliant approach to future storms. That was the message from Bruce Bates, the Town of East Hampton’s emergency preparedness coordinator, when he addressed the Amagansett citizens advisory committee on Monday.

The Vajravarahi Meditation Center in Sag Harbor has asked the Sag Harbor Zoning Board of Appeals to overrule a building inspector’s determination that meditation classes cannot be held in its Hampton Street storefront.

    Improving air quality in the pool area at the Y.M.C.A. East Hampton RECenter could cost a minimum of $20,000, and perhaps considerably more, Juan Castro, the facility’s executive director, told the East Hampton Town Board on Tuesday.

    The town owns the building and has contracted with the Y.M.C.A. to run the center. The agreement calls for a $590,000 annual contribution from the town to the Y’s $2.2 million budget, and makes the town responsible for capital repairs to the building.

East Hampton Town

Tax Day Descends

    Payments of the first half of 2012-13 East Hampton Town property taxes are due today and can be made in person at the town tax receiver’s office on Pantigo Place in East Hampton until 4 p.m.

Payments can also be made, using a credit card, online at officialpayments.com, or by phone, using a number provided on the town Web site, town.east-hampton.ny.us.

    A $554,310 grant was announced last week that will be used to make it safer for students to walk and bike to the Springs School.

    Johnson Nordlinger, East Hampton Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson’s assistant, abruptly resigned from her job, without notice, on Friday.

    Ms. Nordlinger, a Montauk resident, declined to comment this week, beyond confirming that she is no longer working at Town Hall. Her position drew an annual salary of $45,000 last year, and was to have increased by $8,000, to $53,040, this year. The cost of associated benefits last year was $33,949; in 2013 benefits for the position are expected to cost $37,556, according to the town budget.

A petition calling for East Hampton Town to prohibit waterfowl hunting on Montauk’s Fort Pond prompted a discussion at a board work session on Dec. 18

    The Sagaponack Village Board adopted five local laws at a meeting on Monday, with lot coverage regulation and a coastal erosion plan among them.

    Local Law No. 4, designed to control excessive development of residential parcels, had been of particular interest to many in the village, as shown by large crowds at the public hearings preceding its adoption and many written comments.

    The terms of a negotiated agreement between East Hampton Town and Linda Norris, who had been suspended in October from her post as the adult day care supervisor for the Human Services Department, were detailed this week. In addition to being kept on in a different town department, as announced last week, Ms. Norris will be required to attend sensitivity training at her own expense, and has been put on notice that she would be fired if any further issues arise.

   An East Hampton Town employee who was suspended from her job for 30 days without pay after her supervisor, Diane Patrizio, the head of the Human Services Department, brought disciplinary charges of misconduct and incompetence against her, will be transferred to another town department, at a slight pay decrease.

East Hampton Town

Litter Initiatives

    The town’s litter committee is seeking a go-ahead from the East Hampton Town Board for a number of initiatives, Deborah Klughers, a committee member, told the board at a meeting on Tuesday. Several could save, or even earn, the town money, she said.

   After a decade of attempts at remediating the often-polluted Havens Beach off Bay Street, the Sag Harbor Village Board has allocated $295,000 toward the project and entered into a grant agreement with Suffolk County to get it done.

   The cleanup plan involves the reconfiguring of a 24,000-square-foot drainage ditch and system, which storm waters run through before entering Shelter Island Sound.

     The owner of an approximately one-acre property at the northeastern corner where Ditch Plain Road hooks east and becomes Deforest Road continued to seek the East Hampton Town Planning Board’s approval on Nov. 28 to divide it into two lots, each about the same size. An existing house to the north of the property, which has a shared driveway with another lot to the east, would fall into the newly created eastern lot.

    Prompted by a constituent’s frustration over being shuffled between the town’s planning and architectural review boards and a desire to streamline the review process, East Hampton Town Councilwoman Theresa Quigley advocated Tuesday for the planning board’s absorption of the A.R.B.’s duties.

    Although not all town board members were in agreement, the proposal will be subject to further consideration.

    With weekends quieter than in the summer, when taxis swarm downtown hamlets seeking passengers buzzing about for a night of festivities, the East Hampton Town Board is taking time to review legislation that regulates taxicab companies here.

    A law put in place before last season required taxi operators to obtain licenses from the town clerk after providing proof of insurance and driver’s license information.

East Hampton Town

Free Well Water Tests

    Residents with private wells who are concerned about contamination after Hurricane Sandy can have their water tested free of charge by the Suffolk County Water Authority. The tests will seek to ensure that wells have not been contaminated by bacteria, fuels, or chlorides via saltwater intrusion during the storm.

    The Nov. 20 meeting of the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals, held two days before Thanksgiving, proved anything but a holiday for its members, who sat through a stormy four-hour session, almost all of it devoted to one of the most valuable parcels of land in the United States, at 278 Further Lane in East Hampton.

    The East Hampton Town Board unanimously adopted the 2013 budget at a meeting last Thursday night, calling for $69 million in spending next year, an increase of just over 5 percent from 2012.

    The Veterans Day holiday and the lingering impact of Hurricane Sandy were blamed for an attendance of precisely two at Monday night’s Amagansett Citizens Advisory Committee meeting.

    One of the two was East Hampton Town Councilwoman Sylvia Overby, the town board liaison to the committee. The other was the committee’s vice chairwoman, Sheila Okin, who was to have run the meeting that night for the chairman, Kieran Brew.

East Hampton Town

Totaling Up Sandy’s Damage

    A vote is expected this evening on East Hampton Town’s budget for 2013, after a few last-minute changes were approved by a majority of the town board on Tuesday.

    As originally proposed, the budget totaled slightly more than $69 million  and would result in tax rates of $27.86 per $100 of assessed value to most town properties, a 4.6-percent increase, or a rate of $10.93 per $100 of assessed value for properties in the incorporated villages of East Hampton and Sag Harbor, a decrease of 1.7 percent.

    East Hampton is comprised of 19 election districts, and each one tells a story. Depending on where they live, voters formed two lines at East Hampton High School Tuesday night. Voters from District 14 reported waiting up to an hour that evening to cast their ballots, while for District 1 there was no line at all. The latter district encompasses neighborhoods south of the highway in East Hampton Village. The former district includes areas around Accabonac Road and Town Lane.

    A small piece of property in Springs spawned a stormy public hearing at the Oct. 23 meeting of the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals, raising the question of a landowner’s right to develop versus the greater good of the community.

    Three issues important to the East Hampton Town Trustees were brought to the fore by Hurricane Sandy — shellfish, sand, and public beaches.

    During a quickly scheduled meeting on Saturday, five days after the storm roared through, the trustee board voted to postpone the opening of scallop season in town waters until Nov. 19. The postponement follows the opening delay in state waters until Nov. 13 for fear of contamination of scallop habitat due to storm runoff and overwhelmed septic systems.

    A hearing will be held at East Hampton Town Hall next Thursday at 7  p.m. on the purchase, for open space, of approximately four acres of land on Ardsley Road in Wainscott. The $2 million price would be taken from the community preservation fund.

Although voters undoubtedly are focused on the presidential candidates, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, whose names appear at the top of the ballot along with their vice-presidential running mates, the ballot has a long row of slots for many other candidates.

    The threat of Hurricane Sandy kept several politicians from joining the Concerned Citizens of Montauk’s annual Meet the Candidates forum‚ held at the Montauk Firehouse on Sunday. The afternoon event had half the audience it usually gets.

    Representative Tim Bishop, a Democrat from Southampton, was busy working in Yaphank with representatives from Suffolk County, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and local officials to coordinate storm planning across Long Island. He sent a representative to explain his absence.

The Concerned Citizens of Montauk's meet the candidates forum is on for today at 1 p.m. despite the threatening storm, but because of the storm, Representative Tim Bishop will not attend.

East Hampton Town

Committee Appointments

    The East Hampton Town Board made several appointments at its meeting last Thursday night.

    Two new members were added to the town’s nature preserve committee, which oversees public properties designated as nature preserves, develops management plans for them, and makes recommendations as to new preserves. Laura Stephenson and Phil Berg will be the new members. The committee is chaired by Zachary Cohen.

    A hearing will be held at East Hampton Town Hall next Thursday night at 7 p.m. on a preliminary 2013 town budget of just over $69 million.

    If adopted as proposed, the budget would result in a 4.6-percent tax rate increase for most town residents, and a 1.7-percent tax rate decrease for those living in East Hampton or Sag Harbor Villages, who are not taxed for certain services already provided by the villages.