Government

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. 

“Modest home in tony Hamptons trailer park asks a record-breaking $4.4M” was the breathless headline in the Aug. 28 issue of The New York Post. While the report focused on the modular structure’s asking price, it “drew the attention of” East Hampton Town's public safety officials, with its “interior photos depicting an attic-floor bedroom that was apparently installed without permits."

A new study by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology suggests that what is called “artificial light at night” could be affecting whales, horseshoe crabs, and other marine life. “Light is a key structuring system in marine ecosystems,” says the report, and the negative impacts of artificial light could point to a need to revise lighting codes.

The League of Women Voters of the Hamptons, Shelter Island, and the North Fork has scheduled four debates among candidates for East Hampton, Southampton, and Shelter Island Town supervisor and town board, and for the Suffolk County Legislature’s Second District.

Under the new Community Housing Fund program, which saw a .5-percent real-estate transfer tax take effect in April to gather resources for affordable housing in four East End townships, money has been slowly — very slowly — coming in. Based on its glacial pace thus far, officials say, it will be some time before the money will have an impact on the availability and affordability of housing here. 

More than 600 “cobra-head” streetlights and around 10 historical streetlight fixtures will soon be converted to light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, reducing both costs and energy consumption in East Hampton Town by around 60 percent, the town board was told on Tuesday.

The East Hampton Town Board looked favorably on a proposal to install three small “stations” in coastal areas within the town that are meant to document site changes such as sea level rise and changing coastlines.

The outside counsel representing East Hampton Town in its long-running dispute with Duryea’s Lobster Deck on Fort Pond Bay in Montauk asked a New York State Supreme Court justice last week to vacate a 2019 order allowing a certificate of occupancy for the restaurant. Recently posted photos showing indoor seating led to a charge that it has “illegally converted a limited outdoor food service establishment into a full-blown restaurant and event space.”

After opening its Sept. 13 meeting with a quote from a Grateful Dead song, the East Hampton Town Planning Board revisited three applications that they’ve discussed multiple times, making sure they were ready for a vote.

After two years of silence, the Springs Fire Department has filed updated plans to build a cell tower at its headquarters at 179 Fort Pond Boulevard. It marks the beginning of a new chapter in what has been, at times, an acrimonious battle over the tower. A lot has changed since July 2020, when it was ordered that the previous application for a 185-foot tower, which required 30 variances, needed to undergo an extensive environmental review.

An amended town zoning code that would reduce allowable house size, clearing of vegetation, and lot coverage will get a public hearing on Oct. 5.

The New York League of Conservation Voters has endorsed Ann Welker for Suffolk County Legislature in the Second District.

Long Island Rail Road officials have determined that the bridge over its railroad track at the western end of Cranberry Hole Road in Amagansett, which has been closed to all vehicles, pedestrians, and cyclists since July 1, cannot be repaired and must be replaced.

The finishing work has been done on a management plan for what is to be called the Brooks-Park Historic Site, the 11-acre property on Neck Path in Springs that belonged to the Abstract Expressionist artists James Brooks and Charlotte Park.

The potential for American Cruise Lines, a newcomer to East End waters, to visit the village has created a buzz on social media louder than late-summer cicadas, leaving Mayor Thomas Gardella with more questions than answers. “Obviously they didn’t come to the board or make any applications, and the harbormaster didn’t know anything about it. Something of that magnitude will need permission. I don’t know how a 240-foot-long boat is going to dock on Long Wharf in May."

Hurricane Lee was unlikely, as of Tuesday morning, to have a significant impact in East Hampton Town, but residents should remain diligent in monitoring the storm’s path and expect rip tides and high surf over the weekend, the town's emergency preparedness coordinator said.

East Hampton Town Police Chief Michael Sarlo made a case for the continued existence of the Maidstone Gun Club to the Wainscott Citizens Advisory Committee on Saturday, saying that his officers rely on it for training and that the training has never caused an incident such as bullets fired from the club hitting houses, an allegation that led to the club’s being shuttered by order of a New York State Supreme Court judge in December.

Tucked improbably between two yacht clubs in Sag Harbor is a wastewater treatment plant, its sizzling open-air pools of excrement a thing of beauty if you’re looking at them in the right way. Without the plant, which an treat 250,000 gallons of wastewater daily, Sag Harbor couldn’t support the diversity of restaurants and cafes that add to the village’s popularity and character.

The Sag Harbor Village Board will hold a public hearing on Oct. 10 to consider a new local law that would allow the 93-space “gas ball” parking lot to remain open to the public. The proposed law, if passed, would allow a parking lot as a principal use on a property, providing the lot always remains open to the public and is free.

The League of Women Voters of the Hamptons, Shelter Island, and the North Fork will hold a public information program on East Hampton and Southampton Towns’ energy issues on Monday at 7 p.m. at the Hampton Library in Bridgehampton.