Government

The East Hampton Town Board took up the matter at Tuesday’s work session in a discussion led by Councilman David Lys, who wants to see free public Wi-Fi hotspots at numerous town beaches — including Gin Beach in Montauk, Maidstone Park in Springs, and Atlantic Avenue Beach in Amagansett — among other proposed locations.

Freshman Representative Nick LaLota of the First Congressional District said he was “happily notified” on Monday that Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy had named him to two plum committees — Armed Services and Homeland Security.

Consultants for East Hampton Town gave a brief presentation at Tuesday’s town board work session spelling out the latest steps in the town’s march toward some resolution at East Hampton Airport. Several Montauk residents expressed concern about what changes at the airport might mean for the small privately owned airport in a far-flung part of the hamlet.

The new 874-foot stone revetment at Montauk Point will be completed six months ahead of schedule but with many more boulders than originally budgeted for.

“It’s been the longstanding policy of the village, when you’re starting out from scratch, and you have a cleared lot, to comply with all codes,” Philip O’Connell, an East Hampton Village Zoning Board of Appeals member, told a representative of Gianfranco D’Attis and his wife, Surbhi, on Friday. Mr. D’Attis was recently named the C.E.O. of Prada.

In their ongoing inventory of docks throughout their jurisdiction, the East Hampton Town Trustees have discovered a number of waterfront structures, such as docks and staircases, that lack permits. In an effort to ensure that those comply with local regulations, the trustees voted on Dec. 12 to establish a new, voluntary process — the “application to legalize” — to remedy the issue.

East Hampton Town Democrats and Republicans have put out the call for people interested in running for public office this year.

East Hampton Town Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc announced Friday that he will retire from public service at the end of this year, opting not to seek re-election to a fourth term. His deputy supervisor, Councilwoman Kathee Burke-Gonzalez, will seek the Democrats' nomination for supervisor.

Bamboo bans, beach party limits, and the proposed $25-million-plus new senior center on town-owned land were all on Tuesday’s East Hampton Town Board agenda.

The entity behind the recent series of blistering print and social media advertisements targeting members of the East Hampton Town Board relative to the proposed privatization of the town airport, has been identified as a recently formed not-for-profit organization calling itself Political Transparency, Inc., but in charging the board with a lack of transparency, the group has raised numerous unanswered questions about its own transparency.

After months of discussion at Sag Harbor Village Board meetings, members of the public will have their say in front of the Southampton Town Board at 1 p.m. on Jan. 24 regarding a potential use of community preservation fund money on the John Steinbeck house on Bluff Point Lane in the village. Residents can also submit written comments to the board before the 24th.

“Degraded, inadequate, and poorly maintained.” That’s how East Hampton Town Police detectives characterized the safety management systems at the Maidstone Gun Club’s 200-yard rifle range during an investigation into a bullet, allegedly originating from the club, that struck a Merchants Path house on Aug. 5, 2022.

Freshly minted Representative Nicholas LaLota says the Republican Party’s dramatic and dayslong effort to elect a speaker of the House last week didn’t have much of an impact on his ability to hit the ground running as the new representative for New York’s First Congressional District.

A year and four months after learning the truth about Capt. William J. Rysam’s role in slave trading in the founding days of this community, the East Hampton Town Trustees on Monday voted unanimously to drop his name from the scholarship they award annually to a graduating senior from East Hampton High School.

Everybody must get zoned: That was the message coming out of a Southampton Town Board meeting last Thursday as the town continues to work its way toward rules to guide the new world of marijuana legalization in New York State.

The powerful storm that hit the East End just before Christmas left Accabonac Harbor in need of help: A particularly pronounced sand spit emerged, causing boaters and fishermen difficulty in navigating the area off Louse Point.

In his State of the Town address last Thursday, East Hampton Town Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc highlighted areas of concern, conflict, and possibility that East Hampton will encounter this year.

“Even in the grave, all is not lost,” wrote Edgar Allen Poe, but Poe never encountered the all-powerful New York developer and real estate lobby that ultimately helped persuade Gov. Kathy Hochul to veto a popular gravesite-protection bill on Dec. 30.

The East Hampton Village Ambulance Association has hired a lawyer to fight what it says was an illegal transfer of its ambulance service certificate from the association to the village government without its agreement, notification, or use of administrative protocols required by state law. The transfer could lead to billing for ambulance services.

The latest report from Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr.’s office shows that year-to-year community preservation fund revenues in the five East End towns have fallen more than 17 percent over all.

The Peconic Land Trust is hoping to transfer just over 13 acres of property in a preserve north of Town Lane in Amagansett to a private estate adjoining it off Abraham’s Path, but to do so it first needs the East Hampton Town Planning Board’s approval of a modification of the parcel’s lot line and — because Suffolk County owns the development rights to the property — approval from the county’s farmland committee.

In a far-reaching, $1.65 trillion package of federal legislation signed by President Biden last Thursday, the campaign to permanently preserve Plum Island took another step forward: Congress has officially invited stakeholder agencies to come to the table for a joint briefing on the island’s future.

Dozens showed up for a New Year's Day hike in Hither Woods, many with signs, to send a message to the East Hampton Town Board: They do not support a sewage treatment plant in the parkland there, even one that is near the old, capped landfill.

The bright blue slashes of paint stand out like neon under a black light, marking the trunks in a stand of healthy pine trees along both sides of Cranberry Hole Road on Napeague that will be sacrificed to protect the overall health of the region’s forests as the southern pine beetle continues its destructive eastward march.

Year-round tennis in Amagansett: That’s the goal of the plan pitched by Claude Okin, who owns the Sportime facility and camp off Town Lane and Abraham’s Path, to the East Hampton Town Trustees in December.

Off-premises catering companies on the South Fork are welcoming Gov. Kathy Hochul’s signing, on Dec. 20, of legislation to close a loophole that previously restricted them from obtaining liquor licenses. Now, they will be able to apply for permanent catering permits that will ultimately enable them to add liquor, and sales of alcohol in general, to the “approved” list.

Nicholas LaLota, newly elected in the First District, said in a statement Tuesday that while he, like other House Republicans, is “eager to be sworn in and focus on our commitment to America and our respective districts,” he had heard from countless Long Islanders expressing “how deeply troubled they are by the headlines surrounding George Santos.” Mr. LaLota added that as a Navy veteran “who campaigned on restoring accountability and integrity to our government,” he believed a full investigation by the House Ethics Committee, “and, if necessary, law enforcement, is required.”

East Hampton Town Councilwoman Cate Rogers has a legislative “bucket list” item for 2023 that would see the creation of a pilot program to ramp up composting efforts in the town. Her vision would flip the script on the well-worn “farm-to-table” concept to a so-called table-to-farm program where residents — and eventually, restaurants — would collect food scraps that would then be composted instead of being sent off to landfills, where some 40 percent of all waste is residential food waste.

Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. told The Star that he had some optimism that the bill might ultimately be met with her signature, noting that Gov. Kathy Hochul and her staff had been engaged in discussions over the bill with stakeholders that include New York’s powerful real estate lobby, which leans Democratic in its campaign-funding largess and is one of the reasons Governor Hochul prevailed in her race against Lee Zeldin this year.

Chief lifeguard John Ryan Jr. this week recapped what he called a “great summer,” in which lifeguards performed 137 rescues — including 15 on unprotected beaches.