Government

    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.

Expected to attend the Concerned Citizens of Montauk's candidates forum on Sunday are State Senator Kenneth P. LaValle, a longtime incumbent, his Democratic challenger, Southampton Town Councilwoman Bridget Fleming, as well as Representative Tim Bishop and his Republican challenger, Randy Altschuler, and Wendy Long, who is challenging Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand for her Senate seat.

    A lawsuit brought by a neighbor of the Empire gas station site on East Hampton’s North Main Street, challenging a Zoning Board of Appeals decision that paved the way for construction of a convenience store on the property, has been dismissed in Suffolk County Supreme Court.

    In an Oct. 5 decision, Justice W. Gerard Asher upheld the zoning board’s decision and dismissed the matter “in its entirety.”

    A state plan to rid approximately five acres of invasive phragmites within a section of the Walking Dunes on the eastern end of Napeague using an herbicide has been delayed until spring so as not to threaten the annual cranberry harvest.

    The season might be over, but the summer days at Indian Wells Beach in Amagansett have not faded from the memories of local beachgoers, who found themselves inundated by large groups of visitors who were encouraged by blogs and online social media to meet at Indian Wells to “party hearty.”

    Monday’s monthly meeting of the Amagansett Citizens Advisory Committee saw an unusually small turnout, only nine people including the chairman, Kieran Brew; the vice chairwoman, Sheila Okin, and the committee’s liaison from the East Hampton Town Board, Councilwoman Sylvia Overby, who began the brief session with an upbeat report on Eli Zabar’s Farmers Market.

    The Peconic Baykeeper organization has asked the New York Department of Environmental Conservation to reduce nitrogenous water pollution through more stringent septic discharge standards and has threatened a federal lawsuit if it does not respond.

    The request, made on Sept. 17, seeks modifications to state pollutant discharge elimination systems, known as SPEDES, permits for sewage treatment and septic systems. The permits, said Kevin McAllister, the director of the Peconic Baykeeper, fall under the federal Clean Water Act, which was passed in 1972.

    What to do about the town’s aging scavenger waste treatment plant, the question of whether residents would be willing to pay taxes to hire additional code enforcement officers, and issues of budget strategy — specifically, what to do with some $4.2 million that was borrowed to help address a budget deficit, but was not needed — took center stage during a discussion of East Hampton Town’s 2013 budget on Tuesday.

    A hotly contested appeal by East Hampton’s senior building inspector seeking to overturn a certificate of occupancy issued by his predecessor was coolly disposed with by the town’s zoning board of appeals on Oct. 9.

    Tom Preiato, the building inspector, was trying to reverse a 2008 C. of O. for two stone pillars with attached gates at the entry to 17 Beverly Road in Springs that he believed was issued by the late Don Sharkey based on “erroneous and misleading information.”

    After a presentation by Dominick Ninivaggi, superintendent of the county’s Division of Vector Control, members of the East Hampton Town Board decided not to act on calls by several residents to ask the county to stop using the chemical methoprene to spray for mosquitoes in salt marshes here.

    Mr. Ninivaggi said there was “a lot of misinformation and misunderstanding of what the scientific data show.”

    The East Hampton Town Board will ask the Army Corps of Engineers to proceed with its “enhanced navigation” plan for the dredging and maintenance of the Montauk Harbor inlet. The plan will increase the depth of the inlet to 17 feet and will dig a “deposition basin,” essentially a trench, on the channel’s east side to collect sand that would otherwise allow dangerous shoaling to form. The $26 million fix will cost the town $801,000.

     East Hampton Town Justice Lisa Rana dismissed four charges against Thomas Ferreira, a Montauk mechanic, on Sept. 24 on the advice of John Jilincki, the town attorney, and Robert Connelly, an attorney in Mr. Jilincki’s department. In doing so, she cited their brief of July 30, which cited a “legal impediment to the conviction of the defendant for the offenses charged.”

    In an effort to address concerns about density, lot coverage, and “excessive use of land,” the Sagaponack Village Board is considering a number of changes to its village code to deal with maximum building coverage, seasonal rentals, and coverage as it relates to accessory structures like swimming pools, playing courts, fences, walls, decks, and patios. A hearing on the changes will be held on Monday at 4 p.m. at Village Hall.

East Hampton Town

Disciplinary Matters

    The East Hampton Town Board turned its attention this week to several disciplinary matters involving employees.

    Two employees of the East Hampton Town Human Services Department were suspended from their jobs for 30 days on Tuesday following disciplinary charges brought against them by Diane Patrizio, the human services director. 

    Jorge Kusanovic, an East Hampton Town Parks and Recreation Department employee, filed a lawsuit in late August against the town alleging that he was discriminated against because of his race, age, and national origin.    

    An American citizen raised in Chile, he had filed a complaint with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 2007. The lawsuit claims that “Jorge Kusanovic was subject to a continuous pattern of harassment as a Latino pioneer in the overwhelmingly white employment of East Hampton Town.”

    How could an effort begun by East Hampton Town in 2010 to construct a drainage system on Route 114 farmland that would resolve flooding in a nearby neighborhood, wind up in a gaping hole in the ground without anyone making sure that Suffolk County, which owns development rights to the protected land, had okayed the excavation? The East Hampton Town Board searched for answers at a meeting on Tuesday.

    A new state-of-the-art hospital is in the works for the Stony Brook Southampton campus through a partnership between the State University at Stony Brook and Southampton Hospital, according to a nonbinding letter of intent signed by both parties and announced in a release dated Oct. 1. The 125-bed facility would join the university’s health care system, with a goal of the two hospitals’ working together to “improve health care quality and access, coordination of care, and efficiency for their patients.”

Candidates disavow negativity, dish some anyway

    The Bay Street Theatre in Sag Harbor has invited the public to watch the presidential debates between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney on Wednesday, on Oct. 16 from Hofstra University in Hempstead, and on Oct. 22. They will be shown on a large projection-screen television. The Joe Biden-Paul Ryan vice presidential debate on Oct. 11 will also be shown, as will election night coverage. Doors open at 8 p.m., and the debates begin an hour later.

Admission is free. Drinks and snacks will be available for purchase at the bar in the theater’s lobby.

East Hampton Town

Consider C.P.F. Buys

    Two properties being eyed for preservation through a town purchase with the community preservation fund will be the subject of an East Hampton Town Board hearing next Thursday at 7 p.m. at Town Hall.

    The board will take comments from the public on the proposed purchase of 1.1 acres at 8 Deer Path in Springs, owned by Barry McCallion and JoAnne Canary. The cost is $385,000.

    Adelaide de Menil, who donated the historic buildings that now form the new Town Hall complex to East Hampton Town, received approval from the town’s zoning board of appeals Tuesday to build a new house for herself on Mile Hill Road in East Hampton overlooking Northwest Harbor.

    At the Sept. 11 meeting of the East Hampton Town Board it was announced that Montauk’s Viking Fleet wants to berth its Viking Stariper, the fleet’s smallest party boat, at a town-owned bulkhead at the end of Gann Road on Three Mile Harbor.

    The 65-foot boat, built in 1957 and formerly known as the Jigger, would operate from Commercial Dock during April, May, and June in and around Gardiner’s Bay. With the approval of the town board, the Stariper would begin fishing from Three Mile Harbor in the spring.

    In the First Congressional District rematch, Representive Tim Bishop has 52 percent of the likely vote, a 13-point edge over Randy Altschuler, his Republican opponent, according to a Siena Research Institute press release issued last Thursday.

    In 2010, Mr. Bishop won by a margin of 593 votes, and the Siena poll taken three weeks before that year’s election had Mr. Bishop with a double-digit lead over Mr. Altschuler.

    A preliminary plan to tear down the old Star Room, before that the Swamp nightclub, at East Gate Road and Montauk Highway in Wainscott, and replace it with a 5,400-square foot car wash, came before the East Hampton Town Planning Board on Sep. 12.

    The former discotheque, on a roughly 50,000 square-foot parcel, has been closed for over 10 years. “It’s an eyesore,” said Dianna Weir, the board’s vice chairwoman.

    The United States Department of Commerce issued a disaster declaration last Thursday for New York State’s fishing communities, one that could pave the way for financial relief for hard-pressed commercial fishermen.

    Reacting to the possibility of severe quota reductions in the Northeast and Southern New England groundfish fisheries, the state’s Congressional delegation joined last spring with the governors of four New England states to ask Washington for the declaration. Lawmakers requested $100 million in federal relief for fishing communities.

    Southampton Town Councilwoman Bridget Fleming defeated Jennifer Maertz by a wide margin in a Democratic primary on Thursday to determine who will represent the party in a bid to unseat Republican State Senator Kenneth P. LaValle in the Nov. 6 general election.

    “The voters have spoken loud and clear,” Ms. Fleming said after the announcement of preliminary results last Thursday, which showed 79 percent of votes in her favor. “They no longer want to allow their tax dollars to be distributed to the rest of the state,” she said.

    A four-year battle that began in the spring of 2008 with the construction of  a gate at 17 Beverly Road in Springs may finally be drawing to a close, as the East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals began preliminary deliberations on the drawn-out affair on Sept. 11.

Southampton Town

Southampton Town Grants

    Applications are now available for certified 501(c)3 organizations to apply for annual grants from the Town of Southampton. Human services grants assist organizations that help people obtain employment, counseling, psychotherapy, health care, child care, and educational services. Cultural arts and recreational grants mainly assist organizations that encourage visual or performing arts and recreational programs.

    The Army Corps of Engineers is seeking a decision from East Hampton Town about what tack to take for future dredging of Montauk Harbor and erosion control along the nearby western shore.

    At a town board meeting on Tuesday, Brian Frank, an environmental analyst at the Planning Department, laid out the options and their costs, estimates developed in 2010. Three alternatives had been presented by the Army Corps to the town board and to the public at two forums in June.

    A meeting on the regional impact of helicopter noise and traffic out of East Hampton Airport took place in Southampton on Monday, hosted by Southampton Town Supervisor Anna Throne-Holst, Southampton Councilwoman Christine Scalera, and Congressman Tim Bishop. No representative of East Hampton Town, which owns the airport, was present.