Government

Two Republican Party fund-raisers will happen on the South Fork this week.

East Hampton Town’s Ordinance Enforcement Department issued a stop-work order at the 50-unit affordable housing complex under construction on Three Mile Harbor Road in East Hampton on Tuesday after a heavy rainfall that morning led to runoff pouring down from the site and onto Three Mile Harbor Road. 

The East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals approved, in late July, plans by Carissa's Bakery to make improvements to its building and add housing for workers above a new structure proposed for an adjacent lot, which is to be merged with the main lot.

The East Hampton Town Board voted to accept the donation of a drone by New York State when it met last Thursday, intending to use the craft to monitor the waters off the town's beaches for sharks.

The New York State Supreme Court judge who has consistently sided with plaintiffs in lawsuits that have blocked East Hampton Town from closing and reopening its airport as a private facility and implementing flight restrictions there handed the town a victory last Thursday, denying the plaintiffs’ motion to require the town’s outside counsel to return to the airport fund money received for work performed after he imposed a temporary restraining order to halt the town’s plans in May 2022. 

There’s talk lately that artificial intelligence is going to wipe out the human race. Wouldn’t it be nice, though, if first it mowed our lawns? That’s the idea behind Greener, a Southampton company recently hired by East Hampton Village to cut two parcels of village-owned lawn at Village Hall and the Isaac Osborne House with robotic mowers.

Farrell Companies was before the Southampton Town Planning Board on July 13 with two intertwined applications that could result in 156,162 square feet of self-storage space spread over four buildings at 251 Butter Lane. To put that into perspective, the Home Sweet Home storage facility application that has been tied up in knots before the East Hampton Town Planning Board for the last few years is asking for 55,000 square feet of building.

Two public hearings held on July 26 before the East Hampton Town Planning Board drew scant comment, though both concerned projects that are large and potentially impactful for their neighborhoods.

Getting to the groundbreaking for the Montauk Playhouse Community Center’s new aquatic center was reminiscent of the concept of “third places,” said Sarah Iudicone, the Playhouse Foundation’s president. After home and work, “third places play an important part in our identity. They allow us to open ourselves up, learn more about the people around us, and deepen our civic engagement. And because of all of your support, Montauk is going to have a new third place.”

A plan to employ goats to remove invasive species in the Arthur Benson Preserve on Old Montauk Highway that Concerned Citizens of Montauk pitched to the East Hampton Town Board last month may sound quaint, but the board lightly tapped the brakes on the proposal on Tuesday when two residents pushed back on the idea, citing a judge’s 1994 ruling that prohibits fencing or any other structures on the roughly 40 acres south of the roadway and overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. 

The East Hampton Town Board held a public hearing last Thursday on proposed amendments to the town code that are intended to tighten control over the massive geotextile sandbags that are used to protect waterfront properties from erosion. 

The Sag Harbor Village Board took a first step toward returning to the planning board authority over special exception use permits for buildings greater than 3,500 square feet in the newly created Waterfront Overlay Protection District. It reverses an action that dates back to January 2022.