Government

The Sag Harbor Village Board was receptive to a pitch on Tuesday to reduce single-use plastics, which the Surfrider Foundation says constitute the bulk of litter found at its beach cleanup efforts. 

A proposed amendment to the East Hampton Town Code that would allow certain projects to be defined as “community resources,” and thus exempt from compliance with the town zoning, planning, and architectural review board review, received a warm, if at times cautious, reception from the town board this week.

A balloon, three feet in diameter, hovering exactly 150 feet above the location of a proposed communications tower behind the Springs Firehouse on April 21 will be part of a test that will allow people to assess the visual impact of a proposed 150-foot tower from many vantage points. The new tower would replace the one that is already there.

The crowds began to gather in front of Town Hall in East Hampton and at Steinbeck Park in Sag Harbor around 11:45 on Saturday morning as part of the Hands Off! rallies held concurrently across the country and in Mexico to protest the actions of the new Trump administration.

People will gather in East Hampton, Sag Harbor, and communities across the country on Saturday for a nationwide “day of action” organized by Hands Off 2025.

Looking to make constructing accessory dwelling units even easier, the East Hampton Town’s A.D.U. committee made five recommendations to the town board this week, suggesting removing some zoning restrictions and changing eligibility requirements.

A hacker disrupted the Zoom portion of last Thursday’s Sag Harbor Village Board budget meeting, displaying pornographic images alongside racial and antisemitic slurs on the twin screens in the meeting room. “Those disgusting images are etched in my brain,” said the board’s Bob Plumb.

On March 14, President Trump signed an executive order that would strip the Institute of Museum and Library Services, established in 1996 and the only source of federal funds for the state library, to its bones. The state library is the sole conduit through which state and federal aid flows, providing support services to libraries across the state and reducing redundancies.

Five years after an eight-acre parcel comprising four lots, across from the Wolffer Estate Vineyard in Sag­aponack, was purchased for agricultural use with money from the South­ampton Town Community Preservation Fund, it remains fallow, and Friends of the Long Pond Greenbelt are now asking the Southampton Town Board to switch the parcel’s use to protect Poxabogue Pond, which the land borders.

Since February, East Hampton Town has lost the heads of its Code Enforcement, Building, and Housing and Community Development Departments, and the top two lawyers in the town attorney’s office.

Adam Potter’s project at 7 and 11 Bridge Street in Sag Harbor took another step forward Tuesday evening, when the Sag Harbor Village Planning Board unanimously voted to deem the draft environmental impact statement on the project complete.

A bill to reinstate New York State recognition of the Montaukett Indian Nation, introduced by Assemblyman Tommy John Schiavoni, has passed the Assembly in a unanimous vote. It has now been delivered to the State Senate, where it needs to pass before it reaches the desk of Gov. Kathy Hochul, who has twice vetoed similar bills, most recently in December. 

The East Hampton Town Board voted last Thursday night to change a formula in the zoning code that ties the maximum gross floor area of a residence to the size of its lot. 

East Hampton Town completed a pilot invasive species removal project at the 42-acre Springs Park on March 18. The park was closed while the work was being done, and town employees who spent the day guarding the gates estimated that 80 people had to be turned away. 

The Wainscott Commercial Center will be required to provide more environmental analysis of its planned 50-unit industrial park near the western gateway to East Hampton Town, after a unanimous vote by the town planning board last week.

The Sag Harbor Village Board met Saturday afternoon to hold a public workshop on the village’s accessory dwelling unit laws, discussing ways the village can make it easier for people to build them on their properties, particularly on those that already have a pre-existing structure. 

In January, when the Shinnecock Indian Nation received confirmation from the U.S. Department of the Interior that its sovereignty extends to the territory known as Westwoods, Lisa Goree and her colleagues on the tribal council should have been able to breathe a bit easier. Instead, they find themselves in fight mode all over again.

Aidan Corish of the Sag Harbor Village Board has announced his intention to seek his fifth two-year term.

Despite division, the East Hampton Town Board was set to approve a plan to reduce the maximum gross-floor-area formula, a part of the town’s zoning code that ties the maximum square footage of a house to the size of its lot. With two holdouts on the board, there was still enough support for a cap of 7 percent of a lot plus 1,500 square feet.

Sag Harbor Village and the Suffolk County Department of Transportation do not know who owns the four-way intersection of the Bridgehampton-Sag Harbor Turnpike, Brick Kiln Road, Jermain Avenue, and Main Street. This became apparent during the March 11 meeting of the village board.

Tom Preiato’s friendly, matter-of-fact style has served him well in the 25 years he has been a building inspector on the South Fork, working for East Hampton Town, Sag Harbor Village, and East Hampton Village. Though he has at times been a “building inspector to the stars,” the soon-to-be retired Mr. Preiato said, “I’m just a regular guy. I don’t get caught up with who they are.”

Rick Martel, on the Republican and Conservative lines, defeated John Leonard, a Democrat who also ran on the Working Families line, in Tuesday's special election for the Southampton Town Board seat vacated by Tommy John Schiavoni.

The surprising news in an update on wildfire readiness in East Hampton Town at Tuesday’s town board meeting was that trees felled by the southern pine beetle are not top of mind for fire experts who are assessing the town’s fire risk. 

The United States Army Corps of Engineers has successfully completed an emergency dredging project at the Lake Montauk Inlet. 

“Press 3 if you want to get in the queue to ask a question, and press 6 to subscribe to my newsletter,” Representative Nicholas LaLota said, repeatedly, throughout his March 5 tele-town hall, when he answered questions about the Department of Government Efficiency, Ukraine, tariffs, and the border, among other topics. 

The East Hampton Town Board offered unanimous support to use $1.5 million in Community Housing Funds to purchase a four-unit multiple residence building, at 109 Hampton Street in Sag Harbor Village, in concert with the Sag Harbor Community Housing Trust, which would pitch in an additional $1.2 million. 

A public hearing on an East Hampton Town proposal to alter the calculation that governs the maximum size of a house — going from a gross floor area of 10 percent of a lot size plus 1,600 square feet down to 7 percent of the lot size plus 1,500 square feet — was replete with buzzwords: community, resources, traffic, McMansion, greed, and sliding scales. Building professionals and concerned citizens stuffed Town Hall past capacity to offer mostly educated comments. 

A unanimous East Hampton Town Board passed a resolution Tuesday to create the John Osborn Homestead Historic Landmark at 66 Main Street in Wainscott. The town purchased the property from Ronald Lauder, using community preservation fund money, for $56 million late last year.

In the early days of Donald Trump’s second term as president, local Republican leaders and those who are serving in elected positions now or did in the past reflected on the administration’s first months, calling for patience amid the upheaval.

At a 2025 Environmental Roundtable hosted by State Senator Anthony Palumbo in Riverhead last Thursday, where elected officials from across the East End met with environmental interest groups, East Hampton Town Councilwoman Cate Rogers used her time to speak about one of the town’s biggest environmental issues, coastal resilience, and the fear that some projects may no longer get the federal funding that small municipalities rely on.