Government

Imagine a village with fewer empty stores in the off-season, with more cafes and affordable apartments in “bungalow courts.”

Those are a few of the potential changes a civil engineering firm hired by the East Hampton Village Board on Friday will explore as it develops plans to revitalize East Hampton Village’s commercial district, provide a sewage treatment system for the area, and increase parking and affordable housing.

A new policy handed down by the Trump administration last month will limit the ability of immigrants to obtain visas and apply for permanent residence. The “public charge” ruling, as it is known, pertains to applications by people who have used or are even likely to use many types of government benefits.

As if to underscore the validity of her words, Greta Thunberg twice interrupted her remarks to call for heat-related medical attention for one of the youthful mass gathered under the late-summer sun in Manhattan's Battery Park on Friday afternoon, the 16-year-old climate activist's appearance the culmination of the Youth Climate Strike that drew tens of thousands of students, some of them from East Hampton. 

Tomorrow is the seventh annual Car Free Day Long Island, and on Tuesday the East Hampton Town Board adopted a nonbinding resolution in support of the designation.

A proposal from the Springs Fire District to remove an unutilized 150-foot-tall communications tower behind the firehouse on Fort Pond Boulevard, and replace it with a 180-foot-tall tower to improve radio and pager communications for fire, ambulance, and police personnel, came before the East Hampton Town Planning Board on Sept. 11.

Residents and visitors alike are willing to pay for the preservation of Montauk’s ocean beaches, the East Hampton Town Board was told on Tuesday, and both groups are amenable to either a property tax or a lodging tax to finance a wide, healthy beach. 

The public weighed in on a proposal from the Peconic Land Trust to build a more than 4,100-square-foot barn on Quail Hill Farm in Amagansett at an East Hampton Town Planning Board meeting on Sept. 11.

Toward the end of a contentious meeting at which neighbors threatened legal action should the East Hampton Village Zoning Board of Appeals allow the replacement of a house at 33 Lily Pond Lane by a larger one with more amenities and lot coverage, the property’s owners told the board they would abandon their plans and renovate the existing residence instead.

In a move it described as precautionary, the Suffolk County Health Department announced on Monday that it will conduct a private well survey in an area surrounding the closed landfill and at least two commercial composting or mulching operations along the Springs-Fireplace Road corridor in East Hampton and Springs.

The House of Representatives voted on Sept. 11 to permanently protect the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and the eastern Gulf of Mexico from offshore drilling.

Tuesday is National Voter Registration Day, and the League of Women Voters of the Hamptons will use the opportunity to explain to people across the South Fork where, when, and how to register for the Nov. 5 election.

The Victor D’Amico Institute of Art, also known as the Art Barge, has closed for the season, but a project critically important to the Napeague landmark’s reopening next year is intensifying.

The bulkhead protecting the retired Navy barge from Napeague Harbor is in need of reconstruction. It has severely deteriorated on its eastern side, with sand leaking through it and into the harbor, rendering it ineffective and the ground landward unsafe to traverse.