Government

An audit of East Hampton Town for the year ending Dec. 31, 2021, found the town in strong fiscal health, a certified public accountant told the town board on Tuesday.

An overflow crowd packed into the Municipal Building in Sag Harbor Tuesday evening on one of the hottest days of the year and half the people were there to talk about Adam Potter’s large-scale development proposal for the village’s office district.

East Hampton Town will soon enter into a partnership agreement with the Army Corps of Engineers for long-planned improvements to the navigational channel in Montauk Harbor that include a deepening and widening of the channel. Work is scheduled for the fall of 2023.

National Grid wants to construct two 20,000-gallon fiberglass water tanks at its East Hampton generating station at Cove Hollow Road, but the East Hampton Town Planning Board does not yet have enough information to vote on the plans.

The Wainscott Citizens Advisory Committee will mostly support a proposal to add new stop signs at intersections on Town Line Road, the street that divides the hamlet from neighboring Sagaponack Village.

The East Hampton Town Planning Board did not approve Hero Beach’s request to convert its basement into a kitchen at its July 27 meeting. The sticking point was the Montauk motel’s refusal to restrict food service to “overnight guests” rather than just “guests,” and worries about how that seemingly slight difference might affect parking.

Suffolk County Legislator Bridget Fleming, the presumptive Democratic nominee to represent New York’s recently redrawn First Congressional District, has released results of a poll that shows her in a neck-and-neck race with her potential Republican opponent in the Nov. 8 midterm election.

East Hampton Town’s code governing its rental registry may be modified to address updates that an assistant town attorney called “pretty obviously the product of forgery or falsified information.”

The East Hampton Town Board voted unanimously last Thursday to revoke all beach driving permits previously issued by the town clerk's office and declare that no permit issued by the town before or after the resolution confers the right to drive on the 4,000-foot stretch of ocean beach at Napeague popularly known as Truck Beach. Postcards mailed to permit-holders will act as temporary permits.

One side, calling itself the Tri-Community Working Group — the presidents of the three communities along with 14 residents — seeks an overlay district as the best means of preservation for the historically Black communities of Sag Harbor Hills, Azurest, and Ninevah. The other wants historic designation that would go a step further.

Throughout New York State, "people are talking about their safety, their freedoms, and their economy," Alison Esposito, the Republican Party's nominee for lieutenant governor of New York State, said last Thursday at the Clubhouse in East Hampton. 

Affordable housing is a problem not just here, but nationwide, so it makes sense, especially given its size, that a 79-unit complex with housing above and retail space below proposed for downtown Sag Harbor is generating spirited conversation and debate. Some see it as welcome housing, others say its more of a "shopping mall with an affordable housing component."

The effort to preserve and restore the Springs house and studios of the Abstract Expressionist artists James Brooks and Charlotte Park took on new urgency this week when a consultant told the East Hampton Town Board that the 1,318-square-foot Brooks studio, called by one advocate of its preservation "a cathedral to midcentury abstract art," was beginning to collapse.

The Suffolk County Legislature is considering a bill introduced on July 26 that aims to address a chronic concern for parents, educators, and others in the wake of New York's landmark cannabis legalization law that passed in March of 2021: the packaging of pot products, and especially edibles.

East Hampton Village has given the owner of one of the few agricultural parcels in the village 10 days to clean up its Egypt Close property before the village cleans it up instead, at the owner's expense. The move, which came after a hearing on Friday before the village board, marks the first time that a property owner has been called to task under the village's new property maintenance and nuisance abatement law, added to the code in October.

The League of Women Voters of the Hamptons, Shelter Island, and the North Fork will hold a debate among candidates for the Republican Party's nomination to represent New York's First Congressional District on Monday from 7 to 8 p.m. over Zoom. 

The Nov. 8 midterm elections may be a tough one for Democrats, but three months before Election Day, Gov. Kathy Hochul, the Democratic incumbent, is comfortably ahead of her challenger, Representative Lee Zeldin, in the race for governor of New York State. 

Having achieved listing on the New York State and National Registers of Historic Places for Sag Harbor's historically Black communities of the Sag Harbor Hills, Azurest, and Ninevah subdivisions in 2019, advocates came to the East Hampton Town Board on Tuesday to discuss town-level designation.

As part of a long-range plan to convert all streetlights in East Hampton Town to energy-efficient LEDs, a consultant proposed to the town board on Tuesday the replacement of 682 fixtures, all but 41 of them of the "cobra head" design, an initiative that will save money while reducing impacts to the environment and providing better lighting,

The Suffolk County health commissioner has announced the first mosquito samples to test positive for West Nile virus this year, 12 of them from samples collected late last month. 

The double-yellow stripes running up and down Town Line Road make up the official dividing line between the hamlet of Wainscott and the Village of Sagaponack, in East Hampton and Southampton Towns respectively. But where it divides, it will also now unite — albeit in the wake of a tragedy.

The East Hampton Town Board will hold a public hearing next Thursday at 2 p.m. on the adoption of the draft Coastal Assessment Resiliency Plan, which was issued in April. The plan is described as a first step to reduce the town’s vulnerability as a coastal community and adapt to a changing climate.

The East Hampton Town Democratic Committee elected Anna Skrenta as its new chairwoman and Michael Koegler as its vice chairman on July 20. Frederick Brooks, representing the town’s Election District 18, in Montauk, was elected secretary of the committee.

A new affordable housing fund, to be paid for by a .5-percent real estate transfer tax, is headed for the November ballot in East Hampton Town.

East Hampton Town’s Nature Preserve Committee has recommended to the town board that the 6.9-acre wooded area bordered by Crandall Street, Lincoln Avenue, Norfolk Street, and Fort Pond Boulevard in Springs be made part of the town’s nature preserve. Not everyone agrees.

“It’s not a glamorous job,” Savannah Van Der Walt observed one day last week as the East Hampton Town Trustee pumpout boat she was piloting glided toward a dense array of houseboats at Snug Harbor Marina on Lake Montauk. “But you see the thousands of gallons that we pump every week. If people dumped it here, we would have a disgusting mess."

Since July 4, ordinance enforcement officers have observed numerous instances of overcrowding at tt’s, at 466 West Lake Drive, and Sel Rrose, at 4 South Elmwood Avenue, according to a town attorney. East Hampton wants to compel both establishments to comply immediately with the town code.

The draft environmental impact statement for the 50-lot Wainscott Commercial Center is still not ready for public comment, the East Hampton Town Planning Board agreed earlier this month.

After National Grid closed off the Reutershan parking lot for half the day on Friday to complete the tie-in of a new gas main, East Hampton Village Mayor Jerry Larsen, who had not been contacted in advance, was incensed. Disrupting traffic at the busiest time of the year is something local officials do not take lightly.

Vice President Kamala Harris is expected for a fund-raiser Thursday and Representative Adam Schiff on Saturday. Also Thursday, Alison Esposito, Republican candidate for lieutenant governor, will be here.