Government

The East Hampton Town Republican Committee will launch its 2023 campaign next Thursday at the Clubhouse, giving people a chance to meet candidates including Gretta Leon for supervisor and Scott Smith and Michael Wootton for the town board.

The nearly 10-year tale of a communications tower at the Springs Fire Department took a turn last week when the department offered the East Hampton Town Planning Board a new preliminary plan for a shorter pole in a different location on its property. In a powerful change of script, the two sides appeared aligned.

In a letter delivered to Representative Nick LaLota of New York’s First Congressional District on April 3, more than 200 constituents complained that he had yet to hold a public “town hall” event. The letter said its signers had hoped Mr. LaLota would “a different kind of representative” than his predecessor, Lee Zeldin, who was largely inaccessible to the general public. Perhaps in response, the congressman scheduled a virtual town hall on Wednesday night.

A new East Hampton Town senior citizens center on Abraham’s Path in Amagansett took another step toward reality on Tuesday when the architects selected for the project presented updated plans to the town board. Design development and construction documentation will continue for another six months, with hopes of putting the project out to bid in the first half of 2024.

New signs offering visual depictions and greater specificity have been installed alongside text-only signs at the East Hampton recycling center on Springs-Fireplace Road, and a new brochure on recycling is being distributed with new permits to use the center.

The East Hampton Village engineer, Vincent Gaudiello of the Raynor Group, declared the village’s Emergency Services Building on Cedar Street unsafe for public assembly last Thursday afternoon after a condensation leak exposed a structural problem in the roof.

A couple who live next to Herrick Park in East Hampton Village filed an Article 78 petition in Suffolk County Supreme Court on Sunday seeking to stop the village from building lighted pickleball courts in the park. They also say plans for an ice-skating rink and a "concert venue" in the park as part of a later phase of construction would violate both the procedural requirements of the State Environmental Quality Review Act and the covenant language in the deed to the park.

A famous surf break in Montauk known as the Ranch may soon have to be called the Ranches if an applicant gets approval for a 3,591-square-foot residence overlooking it. The break is at the base of a cliff in the heart of the moorlands, a dwarf forest habitat that doesn’t exist anywhere else in New York State.

Nearly a month after an explosive public hearing on the creation of a new East Hampton Village Department of Emergency Medical Services to take control of the ambulance association, the corps is experiencing a shortage of volunteers to cover overnight shifts and its chief is asking the village to hire a paid emergency medical technician to fill the gaps.

Save Sag Harbor and a group of village residents scored a victory against the village this week when Justice Stephen Hackeling of Suffolk Supreme Court ruled in their favor, striking down two village laws that allowed for Adam Potter’s proposed 79-unit affordable housing and retail complex. Justice Hackeling agreed with the petitioners that the village had failed to comply with the New York State Environmental Quality Review Act when it crafted the laws.

The Suffolk County Legislature voted 14-to-3 last week to raise its hotel/motel tax from its current 3-percent rate to 5 1/2 percent. The increase starts on June 1, just in time for the season. Legislator Bridget Fleming was one of the three who voted against the hike, along with Al Krupski of Cutchogue and Anthony Piccirillo of Holtsville.

A groundbreaking ceremony for a long-awaited aquatic center at the Montauk Playhouse is planned for July, Sarah Iudicone, the president of the Montauk Playhouse Community Center Foundation’s board, told a delighted East Hampton Town Board on Tuesday.

The East Hampton Town Board last Thursday voted to promote Eric Schantz, the assistant planning director, to director of housing and community development, making him the fifth new town department head appointed since late December, following the retirement of several longtime key officials.

Opponents of a new spring turkey hunting season pleaded with the East Hampton Town Board to opt out of the program until the last minute, but on Tuesday the board, as it had previously indicated it would, voted only to prohibit hunting during a five-day span around Memorial Day weekend.

The East Hampton Town Board voted last Thursday to extend the time that developers of the South Fork Wind farm have to complete the restoration of Beach Lane in Wainscott, from April 30 to May 22.

Sag Harbor Main Street is scheduled to be repaved from Monday morning through approximately Wednesday, weather permitting. According to the village's Department of Public Works, no street parking will be permitted from 6 a.m. until 6 p.m. until the work is complete.

The owners of a historic timber frame house on Montauk Highway in East Hampton Village appeared before the village’s design review board on Tuesday to seek a retroactive certificate of appropriateness after gutting the house during renovations.

The county leads New York State by a huge margin in pesticide and herbicide diversity and use, according to a report released by the State Department of Environmental Conservation last week. In 2021, a staggering 6.5 million pounds of pesticides were applied in Suffolk.

In East Hampton Town, the massive geotextile sandbags that are used to protect waterfront properties from erosion are allowed on only a temporary basis — for just six months with the potential for a three-month renewal — but in reality those erosion-control measures have sometimes remained in place for years.

“The sentiment, I think, would range from discouragement to outrage right now,” the chairwoman of the Wainscott Citizens Advisory Committee said, as discussion turned to the Maidstone Gun Club, which hopes to renew its lease on East Hampton Town land even as a group of residents is suing the town and the club in an effort to permanently close it.

The federal Department of the Interior announced on Monday that the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement has completed a 60-day review of critical design and installation reports for the South Fork Wind farm, the final regulatory hurdle that clears the way for installation of the wind farm’s foundations and turbines.

The East Hampton Town Board is expected to pass a resolution Thursday regarding an additional turkey hunting season, which would span May 1 to May 25 this year. Ahead of the 2 p.m. meeting, a protest at Town Hall will be staged by the East Hampton Group for Wildlife.

The mayoral election in Sag Harbor is June 20 and the race, or perhaps lack thereof, is becoming clearer. Last week, Mayor James Larocca announced in a staff meeting that he would not be seeking re-election, and on Monday, Thomas Gardella, the current deputy mayor, confirmed that he will be running for mayor.

A puzzle of an application involving two adjacent parcels, a bunch of portable restrooms, access to them, and a house in a commercial neighborhood came before the East Hampton Town Planning Board this month. The immediate issue is that the house, even though it is on a commercially zoned lot, is the parcel’s only legal use (though it pre-exists town zoning and is classed as nonconforming).

On paper, a 2,379-square-foot house on the South Fork may not seem outlandish, but place that house on a .17-acre lot in a flood zone with a raised swimming pool and decking in the middle of Ditch Plain in Montauk, and both neighbors and town planners have a problem.

Beachgoers will soon see temporary string fencing at sites along 18 miles of ocean and bay shoreline, as the federally and New York State-protected piping plover makes its annual return to East Hampton Town and Village.

Anna Soccorsi of the Natural Resources Department told the town board on March 21 that it is seeking seasonal volunteers to monitor sites where the shorebirds nest, the better to assist conservation efforts of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and State Department of Environmental Conservation.

The East Hampton Town Trustees voted on Monday to allocate $83,160 for the 2023 water quality and bottomlands assessment of waters under their jurisdiction.

The East Hampton Town litter action committee will launch a monthlong No Fling Spring initiative on Earth Day with a cleanup of Springs-Fireplace Road. Beach cleanups and a No Fling Spring Fling dance party in May are also on the agenda.

Owners of the third-largest commercial building in East Hampton Town, the Home Sweet Home warehouse in Wainscott, want to convert it into a self-storage facility, but town planners want to see a smaller building with more space for parking, among other things.

After a long-anticipated historical and architectural assessment of the Springs house and studios of the late Abstract Expressionist artists James Brooks and Charlotte Park was delivered to the East Hampton Town Board on Tuesday, the board signaled that it was ready to embrace the site’s restoration and conversion into an arts and nature center.