Government

“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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 

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.

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.