Government

From court appearances to public hearings, it’s been a busy couple of weeks for Rita Cantina, the embattled Mexican restaurant near Maidstone Park in Springs.

“Faced with access versus no access, access won,” East Hampton Town Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc told the Amagansett Citizens Advisory Committee Monday night. The Cranberry Hole Road bridge to Lazy Point, a destination beloved of clammers, kite surfers, windsurfers, birders, and solitary seekers of peace and quiet, was recently reopened — though with no guarantee of permanence — after being shut down on May 7 when a large gap appeared in its wooden substructure.

The East Hampton Town Democratic Committee has rescheduled its campaign kickoff party for Friday night from 6 to 8 at the Clubhouse in Wainscott.

At a special meeting on Monday, the East Hampton Town Trustees gave themselves an Aug. 15 deadline to complete an inventory of docks and other structures in waterways under their jurisdiction.

Manny Vilar, the Republican Party candidate for Suffolk County legislator in the Second District, will hold his campaign launch event Thurssday night from 6 to 8 at the American Legion Hall in Hampton Bays. On Wednesday, the town’s Republican Committee will hold a fund-raiser from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Clubhouse in Wainscott.

“The only way to save what’s left of our culture is to offer as much affordable housing to our local families as we possibly can,” Prudence Carabine said at a June 7 East Hampton Town Planning Board hearing on the town’s proposed affordable housing development at 395 Pantigo Road.

While everyone seemed committed to reaching a workable solution, plans for a new outdoor pavilion behind the Jewish Center of the Hamptons, at the Woods Lane gateway to East Hampton Village, brought more than the usual amount of opposition at a public hearing on Friday before the village zoning board of appeals.

Attorneys for East Hampton Town and the town trustees described “vans full of nonresident people coming at night” and “taking bushels and bushels of shellfish out of Napeague Harbor” and other waterways including Georgica Pond, where people working alone or in concert have repeatedly poached blue-claw crabs. New deterrents to punish poachers might include fines starting at $1,000 and possibly even jail time.

The East Hampton Town Board voted on June 6 to approve six of its water quality technical advisory committee’s seven recommendations to fund projects, from a motel in Montauk to Clinton Academy, that emerged from the committee’s first request for applications in 2023.

Fifty years after Judith Hope was elected East Hampton Town supervisor, a woman running for supervisor is hardly noteworthy. But while women routinely run and win elections at the local and state levels, and a woman was elected vice president of the United States in 2020, the East End of Long Island has a particularly abundant crop of women seeking office in 2023.

The New York State Legislature has once again voted in favor of a bill to reinstate state recognition and acknowledgement of the Montaukett Indian Nation, a measure that was vetoed four times previously by a New York State governor.

Tim Garneau, an East Hampton Town trustee and volunteer for many civic-minded groups, was recognized by the town board last Thursday for his leadership in the relocation of Little League playing fields from Pantigo Place in East Hampton to the recreational facility on Stephen Hand’s Path in Wainscott, which opened in April.

The lawsuit brought by several residents of Merchants Path in Wainscott against the Maidstone Gun Club continues to wind its way through Suffolk County Supreme Court, meaning that renewal negotiations on the club’s lease of town-owned land on Wainscott Northwest Road, which expires in October, are on hold.

East Hampton Town Councilwoman Sylvia Overby suffered a medical event during the town board’s meeting on May 9 and has been absent from the board’s meetings since then.

The Julius D. Parsons Homestead, nearly 11 acres in Springs, includes the 1880 farmhouse of Julius Dayton Parsons, who also ran the Springs General Store, a circa-1880 two-story barn, a small family cemetery, and a cottage that was moved from the other side of the road, which an 1873 atlas identified as the residence of Henry Mitchell, believed to have been part Native American.

A campaign launch and fund-raiser for the campaign of Manny Vilar, the Republican Party candidate for Suffolk County legislator in the Second District, happens next Thursday from 6 to 8 p.m. at the American Legion Hall in Hampton Bays.

There were charges of class favoritism and redlining at an East Hampton Town Board meeting as Patricia Currie of Noyac and John Kirrane of Sag Harbor angrily denounced the impact of a recently reinstated flight path to the airport on people living beyond East Hampton’s borders.

The East Hampton Town Democratic Committee will launch its 2023 campaign next Thursday with an event from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Clubhouse in Wainscott. Those attending will be able to meet the Democratic slate in this fall’s elections.

Sand Highway L.L.C., a 14.49-acre sand and gravel mine on Middle Highway in East Hampton, is challenging a 2022 determination by the town’s principal building inspector that its mining activities have surpassed what the town allows. The matter was in front of the town’s zoning board of appeals on May 16. There is a lot of history.

The East Hampton Town Board will hold a public hearing this afternoon on the proposed acquisition of nearly 11 acres on Springs-Fireplace Road in Springs using community preservation fund money. Should the board approve the purchase, the town will pay $5 million for the 10.9 acres.

With about $2 million in hand for water quality improvement projects, East Hampton Town has put out a call for applications for projects that will improve wastewater treatment, abate pollutants, and restore aquatic habitats.

The House of Representatives voted 314 to 117 Wednesday night to suspend the debt ceiling for two years and set federal spending limits, sending the Fiscal Responsibility Act to the Senate, but Representative Nick LaLota was disappointed his SALT reduction amendment was not included.

Three weeks ago, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission and its Atlantic Striped Bass Management Board voted to approve an emergency measure to lower the maximum striped bass size to 31 inches. The current “slot” regulation in New York allows anglers to keep one bass between 28 and 35 inches in length per day. However, there has been pushback from local political representatives on the reduced slot for the highly-prized striper before the New York Department of Environmental Conservation moves forward with a formal ruling.

An East Hampton Town proposal for 16 affordable housing units on a vacant 12-acre parcel at 395 Pantigo Road in East Hampton is set for a public hearing Wednesday before the town planning board. It would be the third affordable housing project in the pipeline for the town, where both the public and private sectors are having difficulty finding and keeping employees, in part due to a lack of housing options.

On May 1, as part of its mosquito control program, the Suffolk County Department of Public Works began to spray biological and chemical pesticides in some tidal marsh and wetland areas here, but county residents can opt out through a “no-spray” registry.

The East Hampton Town Board set June 15 as the date of a public hearing on amendments to the town code regarding attached and detached affordable accessory apartments.

A new mixed-use proposal for the Amagansett Historic District, centering on a 112-spot parking lot, was unanimously panned last week at a meeting of the East Hampton Town Planning Board.

Marcos Baladron, the East Hampton Village administrator, unveiled the village’s nearly $28 million 2024 budget at last Friday’s village board meeting. While budgets are never truly exciting, residents can be pleased that for the second year in a row taxes will be lower — for the first time in the village’s history, according to Mr. Baladron.

“We’re going to have to regroup,” Francis Bock, clerk of the trustees, said of their dock inventory effort, “figure out exactly what got done last year, what needs to get done this year, and make it a priority. We have to complete it this year.”

New York State Supreme Court Justice Paul Baisley Jr. on Friday held the town in civil contempt for violating the temporary restraining order he issued last May to keep the town from converting the public airport to a private one or imposing restrictions on flight activity there. He ordered the town to pay the plaintiffs $250,000 and a fine of $1,000 per day “for each day it fails to comply with the T.R.O. from the date of this order.”