Government

Gov. Kathy Hochul signed the Clean Slate Act into law last Thursday, saying that “the best crime-fighting tool is a good-paying job. That’s why I support giving New Yorkers a clean slate after they’ve paid their debt to society and gone years without an additional offense.”

Rowdy Hall opened in Amagansett on Tuesday night, its facade painted black in defiance of the East Hampton Town Architectural Review Board, which had turned down the business’s request for black paint last month. It is scheduled to answer for doing the work without approval in town justice court on Dec. 4.

East Hampton Town Councilwoman Kathee Burke-Gonzalez, who won the race for town supervisor last week, announced an initial transition plan for 2024 on Monday. She stressed the importance of identifying residents to serve on appointed boards, citizens committees, and the open seat on the town board, her election to supervisor having created a vacancy.

As East Hampton Town officials labor to alleviate the scarcity of affordable housing, the president of a nonprofit community development organization pitched its assistance to property owners in financing the creation of accessory dwelling units.

Following the recently retired judge Paul Baisley’s referral of Daniel Rodgers for disciplinary consideration to the Grievance Committee for the Tenth Judicial District — which Mr. Baisley made on the day of his retirement, Aug. 31 — Mr. Rodgers has filed suit, alleging “significant personal and professional harm.”

Five people spoke during the East Hampton Town Trustees’ public hearing on Monday regarding whether the body will permanently prohibit new docks in Three Mile Harbor, where docks are not prohibited now on its eastern shore, and enact other changes to its dock policy.

A man charged last year with violating East Hampton Town’s rental registry law has succeeded in having evidence from Airbnb suppressed, with Town Justice Lisa R. Rana ruling that it was improperly obtained.

A proposed law in Sag Harbor would allow a village resident to remove any tree with a diameter at breast height of 18 inches or less, without a permit. But the audience was firmly against the 18-inch limit, instead pressing the village board to require a permit before trees more than 12 inches in diameter can be removed.

East Hampton Town and its union workers had ratified a new contract. Under it, C.S.E.A. members will see a $2,000 across-the-board increase to their base wages in 2024, on top of a $3,000 base wage hike implemented in 2023. In addition, the union members’ new base wages will increase by 4 percent annually in the first three years of the contract, and by 5 percent in 2027, its final year.

The five original sites making up East Hampton Town’s emergency communications infrastructure have been upgraded and are operational, as is an additional site off East Lake Drive in Montauk and a temporary installation on Gann Road in Springs, the latter pending a permanent tower at Camp Blue Bay in that hamlet.

The East Hampton Town Board will hold a public hearing next Thursday on a management plan that calls for the use of goats as well as machinery to remove invasive species at the Benson reserve, a roughly 40-acre stretch of land between Old Montauk Highway and the Atlantic Ocean beach in Montauk.

After an anonymous phone call tipped off the town's director of ordinance enforcement that the façade at Rowdy Hall's new location in Amagansett had been painted black on Wednesday, just weeks after East Hampton Town's architectural review board had turned down a request to do so, the business was issued a stop-work order and a violation for not having a building permit. "They said it was primer. Doesn't matter. They got a ticket for no A.R.B. approval and another for having no building permit."