Government

East Hampton Town’s new senior citizens center “really is shaping up to be something we can all be proud of,” Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc said at the conclusion of a presentation by its project team on Tuesday.

The hamlet's historic district guidelines, which were drawn up in 2000, was one topic of discussion at Monday's meeting of the Amagansett Citizens Advisory Committee. The Reform Club, an event and wellness venue on Windmill Lane, was another.

Wastewater management, renewable energy, housing, traffic, and migrants were among the topics addressed in Monday’s debate between candidates for the Suffolk County Legislature’s Second District, hosted by the League of Women Voters of the Hamptons, Shelter Island, and the North Fork. Manny Vilar of Springs, the chairman of the East Hampton Town Republican Committee and a retired state parks police officer, is the Republican candidate. His Democratic opponent is Ann Welker, a Southampton Town trustee.

The East Hampton Town Justice race to replace Lisa R. Rana, who, after 20 years on the bench, is retiring, pits David Filer, running as a Democrat, against Brian Lester on the Republican ticket. Both men are fathers, both boast of family ties tracing back to East Hampton’s earliest settlers, and both have had long careers in the law.

In the race for Suffolk County executive, voters will choose between an experienced politician, Ed Romaine, a Republican and the current Brookhaven Town supervisor, and a newcomer to politics, Dave Calone, an entrepreneur and former prosecutor who is a Democrat. Steve Bellone, a Democrat who has served as county executive since 2012, is term-limited and could not run for re-election.

“Oysters do a fantastic job of filtering our water,” Bob Tymann of South Fork Sea Farmers explained to the Sag Harbor Village Board last week while displaying a slide showing algae, nitrogen, and other contaminants entering an oyster and coming out clean. The bivalves are like mini wastewater treatment plants, each adult filters 50 gallons a day. 

The extension of the residential dock moratorium, first enacted in 2021 and now effective through Dec. 31, will “give the public a chance to weigh in on the points that we’re bringing up,” said John Aldred, an East Hampton Town trustee, during Friday's meeting.

A traffic roundabout at the intersection of Stephen Hand’s Path, Long Lane, and Two Holes of Water Road in East Hampton could see “substantial completion” by summer, a consultant told the board on Tuesday.

A wintertime pipe burst at the Springs General Store, which has been shuttered for a year, spurred changes to plans to redevelop and reopen the store. Its owners have obtained liquor licenses for on and off-premise consumption, which seemed to pique the anxieties of the East Hampton Town Planning Board last week.

Nancy Goroff, the Democratic Party’s 2020 nominee to represent New York’s First Congressional District, has announced a second bid for the party’s nomination, three years after losing the election to then-Representative Lee Zeldin.

This month will see candidates debates for East Hampton Town and Southampton Town supervisor and board, and for the Suffolk County Legislature’s Second District, hosted by the League of Women Voters of the Hamptons, Shelter Island, and the North Fork.

“Today, we are topping the building with a final piece of steel," Dr. Fredric Weinbaum, Stony Brook Southampton Hospital’s chief medical officer and chief operating officer, told the East Hampton Town Board on Tuesday. Completing the 23,000-square-foot structure itself is one hurdle and staffing it will be another, he said, but the freestanding emergency room under construction could be open this winter.

East Hampton Town’s Water Quality Technical Advisory Committee has endorsed nine projects, aimed at improving the health of local surface and ground waters by upgrading septic systems and eliminating pollutants, to receive a combined $2.24 million in grant money.

As Sag Harbor Village considers a law pertaining to the preservation of trees, one village resident displayed photos that, she said, "illustrate how often, when given the opportunity, all trees on properties are felled, and usually replaced with lawns and hedges, not new trees.”

The East Hampton Town Board’s public hearing last Thursday on amending the “purposes” section of the zoning code to control development drew more than 35 comments, nearly all of them in favor of modifications that would better reflect the town’s comprehensive plan.

East Hampton Village already has a leash law at beaches during the summer. Now new rules being considered would expand the leash law to the village’s other public places.

The long-awaited Fire Island to Montauk Point reformulation project, a coastal restoration and protection effort covering 83 miles of shoreline between Fire Island and Montauk Point, is set to begin this fall, with downtown Montauk to see the bolstering of its Atlantic Ocean beach with 450,000 cubic yards of sand dredged and pumped from an offshore site on Napeague during the winter or early spring. 

Because of the heavy rains of last week and the subsequent closure of most East Hampton Town waterways to the harvesting of shellfish, the town trustees’ Largest Clam Contest, already postponed from Sept. 24 to Sunday, has been canceled.

Democratic candidates for East Hampton Town supervisor and town board accentuated leadership and experience, while their Republican counterparts pointed to what they called mismanagement and slow progress on a range of issues, during a forum hosted by Montauk United at that hamlet’s firehouse on Sunday.

With cooperation among East Hampton Town's Ordinance Enforcement Department, the fire marshal, the police, and other departments “at an all-time high,” enforcement of East Hampton Town’s code was a success in the summer of 2023, the director of ordinance enforcement told the town board this week.

On Saturday, Representative Nick LaLota of New York’s First Congressional District voted yes on a continuing resolution that prevented a government shutdown that would have started on Sunday amid the latest partisan battle over federal spending.

A clash between what is allowed by law and what has existed for the last 75 years in East Hampton's Sammy's Beach neighborhood has people fed up. A proposal to demolish three houses built in the 1950s, two which are under 1,000 square feet, and replace them with a nearly 5,000-square-foot modern glass structure was roundly criticized at an town zoning board of appeals meeting last week.

Last week, for the third time since July, the owners of Rowdy Hall, the popular East Hampton bar and restaurant that is relocating to Amagansett, attempted to win approval from the East Hampton Town Architectural Review Board to bring its signature look to Amagansett Main Street. It did not go well.

In a joint Sept. 27 letter to Gov. Kathy Hochul, Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr., Assemblywoman Michaelle Solages, and State Senators Kevin Thomas and Monica R. Martinez pressed the governor to direct the State Department of Environmental Conservation to end mining activity at the site.

East Hampton Town’s 2024 budget, issued in tentative form on Friday and examined by the town board at its meeting on Tuesday, would grow by just over $4.7 million, or 5.256 percent, over the 2023 adopted budget, to $95.4 million.

Concerned Citizens of Montauk has started a petition in support of a project the group pitched to the East Hampton Town Board that would see goats used to remove invasive vegetation in a portion of the roughly 40-acre Arthur Benson Preserve. As of Wednesday morning, it had 210 signatures.

The citizens group Montauk United is sponsoring the first campaign event in East Hampton Town’s 2023 election season, a candidates forum on Sunday from 3 to 5 p.m. at the Montauk Firehouse. 

The East Hampton Town Board is poised to amend its code to require that an updated certificate of occupancy be obtained upon a change in a property’s ownership, following a public hearing last Thursday. 

The East Hampton Town Trustees approved a request, on behalf of the Maidstone Club in East Hampton Village, for permission to stabilize two small areas of shoreline on Hook Pond. “We are proposing to restore those areas by supplementing them with compost and mulch, and replanting them with native plants,” Drew Bennett and Steven Giles of D.B. Bennett Engineering explained to the trustees.

Since June, East Hampton Village residents have submitted over 50 letters opposing an application to install a pool at the historic Huntting Inn. The zoning board of appeals has received zero letters of support for the application, though some residents expressed support for an aspect of the project that would provide accessibility for those with disabilities.