Government

A draft of the Town of East Hampton’s $15.1 million proposed capital budget for 2023, released last week, was notable for what it did not include — a line item for a new senior citizens center on Abraham’s Path in Amagansett.

The East Hampton Town Zoning Board of Appeals voted unanimously at a Feb. 14 work session to reopen a hearing concerning the Shagwong Tavern in Montauk a week after upholding a determination that it was operating as a nightclub, in violation of the town code.

With a negative environmental impact declaration in hand, the East Hampton Town Board voted last week to issue $850,000 worth of bonds to bury about 2,000 linear feet of utility lines in Montauk.

Suffolk County Legislator Bridget Fleming announced Thursday that she will not seek re-election to the Second Legislative District this year, and that she is endorsing Ann Welker of the Southampton Town Trustees to succeed her in office on the Democratic ticket.

East Hampton Town lawmakers are taking steps to address a longstanding problem relating to the protection of trees located on town-owned property that are either near or directly on construction sites.

An East Hampton Village property purchased in 2017 for $57 million does not have adequate access to the beach, and so the owner, Lee Fixel, has applied for a permit to build an elevated walkway through the dunes that would connect with an easement that leads to the beach.

When it comes to East Hampton Town's proposal to swap land it owns elsewhere for Hither Woods parkland in order to build a wastewater treatment plant, Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. and State Senator Anthony Palumbo will “take no action regarding sponsorship of park alienation legislation” until the town has undertaken a full state environmental quality review act analysis, Mr. Thiele wrote this week.

Ending two years of concerted effort, the Southampton Town Board voted on Tuesday to approve the use of community preservation fund money to buy the development rights for the John Steinbeck house on Bluff Lane in Sag Harbor Village, to turn it into a writers retreat.

The East Hampton Town Board is set to opt out of a new opportunity for hunters in Suffolk County to shoot turkeys in the month of May — if there’s time.

At a Feb. 8 public hearing on the draft environmental impact statement and subdivision plan for the proposed Wainscott Commercial Center, 47 people spoke in person and by phone, almost all of them strongly condemning the project at the former sand mine.

Following a destructive “Black Cat” ransomware attack on Suffolk County computer systems beginning in September, the Town of East Hampton set out to fast-track its own cybersecurity in December, and on Tuesday approved a $360,000 expenditure to VirtuIT Systems of Nanuet, N.Y.

New York State’s highest court, the Court of Appeals, last Thursday struck down a permit that the State Department of Environmental Conservation had awarded in March 2019 to the Sand Land mine, a business in Noyac that predates the Southampton Town law prohibiting mining.