Government

Gov. Kathy Hochul continues to hold a double-digit lead over Representative Lee Zeldin, her challenger, according to a recent Emerson College poll.

East Hampton Town Councilman David Lys, the town board’s liaison to the Montauk Citizens Advisory Committee, brought up a few projects and problems in his presentation to the committee this week, including the anemic response in Montauk to a joint East Hampton Town and Suffolk County program that would provide up to $30,000 to residents to upgrade their septic systems in hopes of improving water quality in the hamlet.

The Southampton Town Patrolman’s Benevolent Association has endorsed Representative Lee Zeldin’s campaign for governor of New York. Mr. Zeldin, the Republican and Conservative Party candidate, is challenging Gov. Kathy Hochul in the Nov. 8 election.

The New York State Supreme Court Justice who issued a temporary restraining order on May 16 blocking East Hampton Town from closing East Hampton Airport and reopening it as a private facility with new restrictions has ordered that three lawsuits challenging the town’s plan be combined.

The East Hampton Town Board appears poised to amend the town code to increase the property tax exemption for senior citizens and disabled persons with limited income, based on their income level.

Tuesday is National Voter Registration Day, and the League of Women Voters of the Hamptons, Shelter Island, and the North Fork will observe the day with voter information tables throughout the East End.

The "last mile" shuttle bus service that takes passengers from the Long Island Rail Road's South Fork Commuter Connection trains to their destinations and back again expanded in East Hampton Town this week. 

“My initial reaction is, it’s too much," the chairman of the East Hampton Town Planning Board said of a plan to redevelop the parcel at 136 Main Street in Amagansett, where the owners want to renovate the historic building that fronts the long, narrow lot and add a new 7,200-square-foot building with six storefronts on the lower level and four affordable-housing units upstairs behind it.

The League of Women Voters of the Hamptons, Shelter Island, and the North Fork will host a virtual forum on the Nov. 8 ballot proposition that will ask voters to approve a .5-percent real estate transfer tax that would support the community housing opportunity fund.

Representative Lee Zeldin, the Republican and Conservative Parties’ nominee for governor of New York, is touting a new poll that has him trailing Gov. Kathy Hochul by just 4.4 percentage points, which sharply diverges from previous polls that had the governor holding double-digit leads.

All 18 members of the Suffolk County Legislature have signed a letter to President Joe Biden imploring him to declare Plum Island a national monument under the authority granted by the Antiquities Act of 1906 “for the purpose of ecological conservation, historical preservation, and the discovery and celebration of our shared cultural heritage.”

The East Hampton Town Board heard from several supportive Wainscott residents last Thursday when it held public hearings on the addition of stop signs at certain intersections, and a prohibition on parking, on the east side of Town Line Road.

By a 4-to-0 vote, the East Hampton Town Board adopted the Coastal Assessment Resilience Plan, known as CARP, into the town’s comprehensive plan last Thursday.

An upgrade of the town’s emergency services communications infrastructure that began in 2017 is mostly complete, but still outstanding is the node in the system that would cover Springs. And at a meeting on Tuesday residents loudly vented about poor to nonexistent personal wireless coverage and a gap in emergency communications coverage in the hamlet.

The Suffolk County Water Authority's Stage 1 Water Emergency for the East End, declared early last month, was extended to the entirety of its customer base, stretching from Montauk to the Nassau County border, on Thursday, with the agency reiterating a call for customers to cease nonessential water uses and stop watering lawns between midnight and 7 a.m.

Hero Beach has always been eager to serve food on premises. At first, the resort sought to convert an entire building to a restaurant. The East Hampton Town Planning Board was against that, but eventually came around to a revised version of the plans — the conversion of two basement units to a kitchen for food service to overnight visitors and their guests — although the board's decision was not unanimous.

The federal Environmental Protection Agency proposed on Friday the designation of two widely used perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, known as PFAS, as hazardous substances under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act, also known as CERCLA or Superfund.

An informational meeting about emergency and personal wireless communications in Springs is scheduled for Tuesday at 6:30 p.m. at the Springs Firehouse.

Former President Donald Trump will appear at a fund-raiser for Representative Lee Zeldin, the Republican and Conservative Parties’ nominee for governor of New York, on Sunday in Deal, N.J.

The subcontractor that will perform the onshore cable installation for the South Fork Wind farm plans to use an approximately one-acre area at the end of an abandoned East Hampton Airport runway, adjacent to Industrial Road in Wainscott, as a laydown area. 

Equity was a big talking point last Saturday at the second annual Hamptons Cannabis Expo held at the Clubhouse in East Hampton, where the frequent roar of private jets at East Hampton Airport combined with the aroma of roasting blunts provided a handy metaphor for an event top heavy with accounting firms, insurance representatives, cannabis investors, and multistate operators — large cannabis companies poised to enter a New York pot market that's off and running in a big way.

The new Three Mile Harbor development, expected to be completed within 18 months, will feature 10 one-bedroom, 29 two-bedroom, and 10 three-bedroom apartments across five two-story residential buildings. Officials broke ground on Aug. 17.

"Right now, our village code, and our zoning code specifically, lacks any regulations pertaining to wireless facilities," Billy Hajek, the East Hampton Village planner, told the trustees. "We've been able to get by without it, but as the population increases there's going to be more demand for wireless facilities."

The expiration of its 30-year lease of town-owned land is still more than a year away, but the Maidstone Gun Club, which leases some 97 acres of town land off Wainscott Northwest Road at an annual rent of $100, has informed the town it intends to negotiate its renewal.

The Lars Simenson Skatepark, on South Essex Street in Montauk, will reopen Friday after an extensive renovation made possible through a public-private partnership.

The East Hampton Town Board, citing rising instances of overclearing of parcels during building construction, voted last Thursday to increase the fees for vegetation compliance reviews. The vote followed an Aug. 16 discussion during which an assistant town attorney and Natural Resources Department official relayed numerous examples of overclearing.

The East Hampton Town Trustees voted on Monday to conduct an aerial drone survey of approximately 50 miles of shoreline, a companion to the recently commenced on-the-ground survey of docks in waterways under their jurisdiction.

East Hampton Village will soon be home to an enormous platinum bull, in the form of an art installation by the sculptor Enrique Cabrera that will graze for a time in Herrick Park.

Nicholas LaLota, the chief of staff to the Republican majority in the Suffolk County Legislature, is now the Republican Party nominee to represent New York's First Congressional District. He will face the Democrat Bridget Fleming, a county legislator, in the general election.

The East Hampton Town Board, citing inflation and its potential impact on employee recruitment and retention efforts, announced a one-time supplemental payment to employees on Thursday. The payments will total an estimated $660,000 and will come from surplus funds.