Government

Two years after banning the intentional release of balloons, the East Hampton Town Board appears poised to go further by also enacting a ban on the sale and distribution of filled latex and Mylar balloons.

After Sag Harbor Village began charging for parking spaces in the Long Wharf lot on Friday, residents and visitors said they were dismayed that yet another cost has been added to daily life on the South Fork.

Effective Wednesday in New York, people who are fully vaccinated against Covid-19 no longer need to wear masks or physically distance, both indoors and out. Immunocompromised and unvaccinated people should continue to wear a mask and practice social distancing, and masks will still be required in schools and correctional and health care facilities, on public transportation and in nursing homes and homeless shelters.

East Hampton and Sag Harbor Villages will begin charging for some prime parking spaces in their commercial districts in the coming days, and both will use ParkMobile, a smartphone app-based payment service. 

A proposal that would impose term limits on East Hampton Village's elected officials, a tentative budget for the next fiscal year, and the impact of the state's marijuana legalization were discussed at a village board meeting last Thursday. The board also announced that a public hearing will be held on Friday, May 21, on a proposal to convert parallel parking spaces to angled, drive-in ones on parts of Newtown Lane.

When the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Jon Bon Jovi walked up to a microphone at a benefit concert at an East Hampton sports complex on Friday, he might not have imagined that he was also stepping into a potential ethics controversy.

Consultants hired by the town to study aircraft activity at East Hampton Airport, including noise complaints and the potential economic impact of closing the airport, told the town board on Tuesday that after four consecutive years of increases, the number of flights between July 2 and Sept. 30, 2020, was 35 percent lower than in 2019, but because of the pandemic, "2020 was a unique year, and it's a bit of an outlier."

Amos Goodman, a former chairman of the East Hampton Town Republican Committee, last week pleaded guilty in Suffolk County First District Court to one misdemeanor and three violations after being charged in 2018 with 20 felonies when, during his time as chairman, he was accused of forging signatures on candidate petitions for an East Hampton Town special election.

James Larocca, a Sag Harbor Village trustee, is challenging Mayor Kathleen Mulcahy in the June 15 election. The mayor "ran on the promise of developing an overarching master plan, and the absence of such is one of the biggest problems we have in combating this wave of money and developers that are now swarming all over the west side of town," he said.

Members of the public will have a chance to comment on the East Hampton Town Airport on Tuesday during a board work session that starts at 11 a.m.

It's a drop in the fishing bucket, but New York has begun to distribute $6.7 million in relief aid to the state's seafood, marine commercial, and for-hire fishing industries after excessive business losses due to the Covid-19 pandemic. In the coming weeks, award recipients will receive a letter accompanied by a check, based on reported economic loss experienced in 2020 compared to the previous five years.

East Hampton Town's water quality technical advisory committee issued recommendations to a supportive town board on Tuesday to fund six projects using money from the portion of the community preservation fund allocated to water quality improvements.