Government

    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.

    A hearing on the Sagaponack Village budget has been scheduled for Monday at 3 p.m. in Village Hall.

    “Total spending rises from $663,180 to $708,059,” Mayor Don Louchheim said in a letter on March 27. In the statement, he wrote that the “new budget projects modest increases in both spending and non-tax revenues, with no increase in the village property tax rate for the fifth consecutive year.”

East Hampton Town

Trails Acquisition

    A 6.7-acre tract in the Stony Hill woods of Amagansett to be deeded to the town contains trails that connect sections of the extensive trail system in the area, Scott Wilson, the town’s director of land acquisition and management, told the East Hampton Town Board on Tuesday.

    The site, off Laurel Hill Lane, was set aside as a reserve when a subdivision was created. Under site plan approvals, such reserves must be given to the town or held by a homeowners association.

    A restructuring of East Hampton Town’s Human Resources Department, expected to be put to a vote at a town board meeting tonight, will eliminate the department head position held by Pat Breen, and, after the transfer of two department staffers, leave just one person in the department.

    After putting all capital spending on hold while sorting through the effects of past financial mismanagement, which resulted in a $27.2 million deficit, the East Hampton Town Board considered a three-year capital spending plan on Tuesday, and is expected to approve it at a board meeting tonight. The plan calls for spending $2 million next year, and $7 million over three years.

    David Eagan, the attorney for the Concerned Citizens of Wainscott, which has one lawsuit pending over a proposed Wainscott development and another waiting in the wings, blasted the East Hampton Town Attorney’s office this week for working too closely with real estate lawyers who are representing applications before the town.

    He referred in particular to a statement made by the developer Michael Davis, whose certificate of occupancy for 411 Montauk Highway in Wainscott Mr. Eagan was challenging before the town zoning board of appeals on March 27.

    On Monday afternoon in East Hampton, Daniel G. Rogers, an attorney for Paul and Kelly Lester, announced that he had asked Gov. Andrew Cuomo to instruct the state’s inspector general to investigate the actions of the State Department of Environmental Conservation before and after its raid on the Lester property on Abraham’s Path in July.

East Hampton Town

Energy Forum at Town Hall

    The East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals ruled on Tuesday in favor of two applicants who needed variances to install septic systems. In a unanimous decision, the board found that a variance for a third floor was appropriate because it provided a way to put in a multi-ringed septic system that would conform to the county health code and help protect Lake Montauk.

    At the same meeting, the board granted a 60-foot variance from the required setback from the oceanfront dune crest in Amagansett so that a septic system could meet county regulations.

    There is seemingly only one obstacle remaining between Michael Davis and his Wainscott Wombles development on the corner of Montauk Highway and Sayre’s Path, but that last obstacle may be impassable, at least according to David Eagan, an attorney for the Concerned Citizens of Wainscott and a neighbor, who is challenging the right of Mr. Davis to proceed with his plans to tear down the building there and construct a similarly-sized one with a garage, small house, and parking spaces behind it.

East Hampton Town

Accabonac Excavation

    The East Hampton Town Trustees will hold a special meeting today starting at 10 a.m. in their Bluff Road, Amagansett, office. The subject will be the excavation of the entrance to Accabonac Harbor.

Draft New Lighting Law

    Councilwoman Theresa Quigley and members of a lighting code committee presented a new draft of outdoor lighting legislation on Tuesday. The draft will be reviewed by town board members and discussed at a future meeting.

    A push this week by Town Councilwoman Sylvia Overby to suspend or rescind a resolution to sell a piece of public land in Montauk and first obtain an appraisal on it was rejected and prompted angry outbursts by Supervisor Bill Wilkinson and Councilwoman Theresa Quigley.

    An attempt by the Committee to Stop Airport Expansion to obtain a temporary restraining order stopping East Hampton Town from accepting a Federal Aviation Administration grant for an airport fence project failed in New York State Supreme Court earlier this month. An appeal will be heard by a four-judge panel today.

    The Babinski farmland on Beach Lane in Wainscott has been worked by members of the same family since colonial times, and the development rights to the 20-acre parcel were sold to the Town of East Hampton and the Peconic Land Trust, but a proposal now before the East Hampton Town Planning Board to build a second barn there has met with opposition.

    In a meeting on March 7, the board considered Bill Babinski’s site plan application. The law allows another barn on the property. But to Tom and Shelly Gilbert, the neighbors, the location chosen for the barn is a burden.

    East Hampton Town Board members continued to argue this week over a decision by the Republican majority to sell a portion of a town-owned strip of land in Montauk to the owners of the Ronjo Motel.

    At a work session on Tuesday, Democratic Councilwoman Sylvia Overby asked the majority to rescind its vote last week to sell what is called an alleyway to the new owners of the motel for $35,000. The majority refused to do so. She said the town should have had the strip, which bisects the Ronjo property, appraised.

    Springs residents hoping that town officials will heed their call for increased efforts to eradicate illegal housing in their hamlet appeared once again before the town board last Thursday, reiterating a call for a summit on the issue and pleading for stepped-up enforcement efforts.

    “We’ve had plenty of fact-finding,” Joan Baum said. “I’d like to add my voice to a call for your focused attention to these suggestions, and appeal to you for a timely and specific response, now,” she told the board.

East Hampton Town

Town Hall Renovation

    The Town of East Hampton will accept proposals from architects through April 19 for the renovation of the old Town Hall. The board voted last Thursday to solicit proposals over the objections of Councilwoman Sylvia Overby and Councilman Peter Van Scoyoc, who wanted a list of guidelines developed first.

Police Promotions

    A provision in the East Hampton Town code barring bedrooms in basements of single-family residences may be dropped, as it is more restrictive than the New York State building code.

    East Hampton’s town attorney, John Jilnicki, told the town board on Tuesday that the town may not, without specific state approval, enforce laws more restrictive than those in the state building code. Though the town could seek the state’s okay, he said it is unlikely a variance would be granted.

    East Hampton Town Board members disagreed sharply along party lines on Tuesday over whether to proceed with the sale of a slice of town-owned land to the new owners of the Ronjo motel in Montauk. The land, once designated an alleyway, apparently runs through the motel site.

    At a meeting last week, Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson had brought up the sale, saying that Chris Jones, the new owner, was willing to pay the town $35,000 to transfer the land.

    When is a story not a story? That was the knotted yarn the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals tried  untangling on Tuesday night.

    North Harbor Realty, a limited liability corporation held in part by the Kalimnios family, longtime Montauk resort and hotel owners, was before the board requesting relief from the town prohibition against third floors for seven condominium units it plans at 374 West Lake Drive in Montauk.

East Hampton Town

Actual Cost of Chief Auditor

    An item last week about the appointment of Charlene Kagel, an accountant who has been working part time for the town, to a chief auditor position, inaccurately described the impact of the move on the town budget.

    Ms. Kagel will earn a $90,000 salary in the new, full-time post. She had been paid on an hourly basis, which, extrapolated to a full-time position, would equal an annual salary of approximately $84,000, as was reported.

    The future of the final parcel of undeveloped beachfront property on the dunes that run along Marine Boulevard in Beach Hampton in Amagansett was debated Tuesday night at an East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals meeting.

    The applicants, a local family who own the half-acre property as Pandion L.L.C., had originally started an application process in 2008, but pulled their application in order to assess the impact of new Federal Emergency Management Agency regulations, according to Stephen Latham, their attorney.

    On Tuesday morning it appeared that a compromise allowing both the Montauk Artists Association and the Montauk Veterans Association to proceed with their Memorial Day weekend plans, both of which involve using the Montauk green, would be struck by the time a town board work session concluded. But whether the veterans would sign on to an idea developed by Councilman Dominick Stanzione in concert with Ken Walles, a member of the group, remained up in the air.

    The East Hampton Town Board is expected to vote tonight to reject a bid to purchase the town-owned office condominiums at Pantigo Place, now occupied by the Building Department, tax assessors, Planning Department, and other town departments.

    With the absence of Town Councilman Dominick Stanzione at an East Hampton Town Board meeting last Thursday leaving the four remaining board members split evenly along party lines, “no” votes — and an abstention — by the two new Democratic board members made it impossible for Town Councilwoman Theresa Quigley to gain approval for three of her initiatives.

    East Hampton Republican, Conservative, and Tea Party members came out early, and presumably will be out often, in support of Randy Altschuler, with an endorsement on Friday at the Hook Mill in East Hampton.

    The group included East Hampton Town Supervisor Bill Wilkinson, and town board members Theresa Quigley and Dominick Stanzione, East Hampton Town Conservative Party chairman Vincent Downing, East End Tea Party chairwoman Lynda Edwards, and Kurt Kappel, the East Hampton Town Republican Party chairman.

    Beginning today, food peddlers who wish to set up shop at one of 12 authorized sites at town-owned beaches in East Hampton can pick up applications from the Town Purchasing Department allowing them to bid on the rights to use one of the spots.

    The rights will be given to the highest bidder. A points system, which the board attempted to institute last year, allowing the town board to weigh non-monetary factors such as experience and community ties as well as business and marketing details, has been abandoned.