Government

The East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals held a heated public hearing last week on an application by Farrell Builders to demolish a beach cottage, unchanged since the early 1970s, and construct a new house at 175 Atlantic Avenue in Amagansett.

The site restoration and stormwater abatement project at the end of Louse Point Road in Springs has been completed as of mid-November — well in advance of the projected time frame when work began early that month. 

The Amagansett Citizens Advisory Committee would like to see streetlights added to the hamlet's commercial district from Indian Wells Highway to Atlantic Avenue, but it's a pricy proposition and one the East Hampton Town Board has yet to endorse.

The East Hampton Town Board this week revealed some details and a prospective timeline for a contentious plan to build an estimated $75 million sewage treatment plant in Hither Woods to serve parts of Montauk.

The South Fork’s L.G.B.T.Q.+ community is celebrating President Biden’s signing on Tuesday of the Respect for Marriage Act, a new, bipartisan law that protects the marriages of same-sex couples across the country.

Environmental consultants from the firm AKRF gave a detailed accounting of the environmental review process now taking off at East Hampton Airport at the town board’s work session on Tuesday.

In a move that surprised many people, last week the East Hampton Village Department of Public Works removed about 35 arborvitae, each anywhere between 20 and 30 feet tall, that separated Herrick Park from the Douglas E. Dayton Arboretum, the 3.2 acres at the end of Muchmore Lane that was purchased by the Town of East Hampton starting in 2017 with community preservation fund money.

An amphitheater, a boardwalk, and Montauk boulders were among the items discussed Tuesday night when Ed Hollander, the landscape architect behind the nascent John Steinbeck Park, at the base of the Lance Cpl. Jordan C. Haerter Veterans Memorial Bridge in Sag Harbor, updated the village board on the project.

July Fourth drone shows, catered weddings in the sand, and surf instructors at Ditch Plain were among the issues invoked by the East Hampton Town Board during its Tuesday work session as the town looks to update its laws addressing permitted special events at public, residential, and commercial spaces.

The East Hampton Town Board is considering numerous revisions to the town code pegged to accessory dwellings. “There is an opportunity to solve this problem by using existing property,” the town supervisor said this week. “We are not going to build our way out of this problem,” he added, stressing that using existing property “requires removing some of the barriers” and possibly lifting the cap on the number of permissible buildouts of detached accessory units in the town.

At the 12-second mark of a short YouTube video taken from backyard surveillance footage at a Merchants Path house in August, the sharp crack of a rifle shot rings out. As workers duck for cover, a bullet strikes the house. The clip is one piece of evidence in a lawsuit filed on Nov. 29 by seven homeowners who live near the Maidstone Gun Club, which as of Friday has been temporarily shuttered by order of a State Supreme Court judge.

A long-dormant agricultural tract on Cedar Street that was bought by East Hampton Town earlier this year will be farmed once again by a duo who were chosen for a unique opportunity to license the farmland, farm buildings, and a small house there.

After years of advocacy, Suffolk residents who took advantage of county Septic Improvement Program grants to replace their aging systems with a low-nitrogen variety will no longer need to claim those grants as taxable income, and those who were taxed for them in the past will be able to recoup their payments.

East Hampton Town Board members voted last Thursday to double the cost to residents or brokers to sign on to the East Hampton Rental Registry.

The East Hampton Town clerk’s office is accepting applications starting today for the annual lottery for hunters who want to use firearms to hunt deer during the month of January.

The Route 114 project aims to add 50 units of housing and 100 beds for persons of moderate means and their families. It comprises two town-owned parcels, at 776 and 780 Route 114, together totaling 6.5 acres, and an adjoining two acres at 782 Route 114, owned by the Sag Harbor Community Housing Trust.

The village has leased the lot from KeySpan Energy for parking since 2016. It became the center of controversy this week when the village petitioned the Public Service Commission to nullify a new lease on the property, held by Adam Potter through his 11 Bridge L.L.C. If the commission lets the lease stand, it will begin on Jan. 1, and the lot would be out of the village’s control for the first time since 2016.

The solution to persistent flooding at the intersection of Stephen Hand’s Path and Route 114 in East Hampton, devised by traffic engineers hired by the town, is a new drainage trunkline now being installed underneath the road that will collect runoff through a series of manholes on the east side of Stephen Hand’s Path and channel the water into the woods on the south side of Route 114.

The East Hampton Village Board will raise the price of nonresident beach parking permits from $500 to $750 next year. But if you're here in the winter, mark your calendars: There will be a one-day, in-person sale at the old price for town residents.

The renovation of the bathrooms at Herrick Park has begun, and at the other side of the park, when "The Platinum Bull" moves on after the holidays, Guild Hall will help choose future works for a pilot Art in the Park series.

“There is Christmas spirit,” said Rick White, president of the East Hampton Kiwanis Club, after he received 40 trees deemed too small by East Hampton Village to offer as part of the club's Christmas tree sale, which helps fund scholarships for local high school seniors, a holiday toy drive, and a donation to Katy’s Courage, among other causes.

The National Business Aviation Association, one of several entities to have filed a lawsuit to prevent East Hampton Town from privatizing its airport and enacting new restrictions on aircraft operations, has withdrawn its lawsuit. 

In an attempt to get a handle on the impacts of the region's outsize deer population, East Hampton Town established a new fenced-in deer “exclosure” in mid-October in Northwest Woods. The idea of it is pretty simple: Deer are restricted from feasting inside the fence, so that the plant life inside “can be compared to vegetation outside of it to determine the impact deer 'browse' is having.”

Demonstrating a supply issue that dates back to 2008, Canadian grower’s first shipment to Fowler’s Garden Center had no larger trees, so it offered East Hampton Village smaller ones at a discount. Now it will provide larger trees of a more expensive variety for the same price. “We don’t do this to make money,” said Rick Fowler. “This is our way to give back to the community.”

East Hampton Village has big plans for the holiday season, including a tree-lighting at the Hook Mill sponsored by Prada and Santa arriving by helicopter in Herrick Park, but those tiny trees that went up last week? Not planned.

The East Hampton Town Board formally adopted the its proposed budget of $90.355 million for 2023 at its meeting last Thursday. The adoption, by unanimous vote, followed a Nov. 3 public hearing.

A proposal to subdivide the long-vacant former Stern’s Department Store property on Pantigo Road in East Hampton into three house lots has raised the question of whether the site might be better used for affordable housing, and with an apparently willing seller open to discussions, the town planning board agreed on Nov. 16 to let the town board know it was unanimous in support of that option.

The East Hampton Town Board voted last Thursday to raise the cap on money it could pay the Cooley law firm, its outside consultants on matters relating to the town’s effort to enact restrictions at East Hampton Town Airport, to more than $3 million for fiscal year 2022. The move came shortly after attorneys for three plaintiffs who have successfully prevented any such changes at the airport, petitioned New York State Supreme Court to compel Cooley and two other law firms to return to the town’s airport fund all fees they received for work performed after May 16.

The East Hampton Town Board’s vote this month to acquire 18.8 acres of vacant land at 66 East Lake Drive in Montauk with general municipal funds, and not community preservation fund money as initially intended, has prompted both suspicion that the land will be swapped with Suffolk County for property in Hither Woods to build a wastewater treatment plant, and, more recently, one accuser’s resignation from an advisory committee on which he has sat for more than a decade.

Since East Hampton Village's Town Pond was “mucked out” last year, it has had a difficult time holding water. It is also beset by an invasive aquatic plant, Eurasian watermilfoil, which workers are beginning to remove this week, but the effect will be largely aesthetic, as plant fragments and roots will remain in place allowing the invasive plant to spread in the future.