Government

East Hampton Village has big plans for the holiday season, including a tree-lighting at the Hook Mill sponsored by Prada and Santa arriving by helicopter in Herrick Park, but those tiny trees that went up last week? Not planned.

The East Hampton Town Board formally adopted the its proposed budget of $90.355 million for 2023 at its meeting last Thursday. The adoption, by unanimous vote, followed a Nov. 3 public hearing.

For the second time in just under a year, the East Hampton Town Board held a public hearing on a proposed law that would give the town regulatory powers over mining, mulching, and composting operations and require the monitoring and reporting of the impact of such operations on groundwater.

The East Hampton Town Board voted last Thursday to raise the cap on money it could pay the Cooley law firm, its outside consultants on matters relating to the town’s effort to enact restrictions at East Hampton Town Airport, to more than $3 million for fiscal year 2022. The move came shortly after attorneys for three plaintiffs who have successfully prevented any such changes at the airport, petitioned New York State Supreme Court to compel Cooley and two other law firms to return to the town’s airport fund all fees they received for work performed after May 16.

The East Hampton Town Board’s vote this month to acquire 18.8 acres of vacant land at 66 East Lake Drive in Montauk with general municipal funds, and not community preservation fund money as initially intended, has prompted both suspicion that the land will be swapped with Suffolk County for property in Hither Woods to build a wastewater treatment plant, and, more recently, one accuser’s resignation from an advisory committee on which he has sat for more than a decade.

Since East Hampton Village's Town Pond was “mucked out” last year, it has had a difficult time holding water. It is also beset by an invasive aquatic plant, Eurasian watermilfoil, which workers are beginning to remove this week, but the effect will be largely aesthetic, as plant fragments and roots will remain in place allowing the invasive plant to spread in the future.

A proposal to subdivide the long-vacant former Stern’s Department Store property on Pantigo Road in East Hampton into three house lots has raised the question of whether the site might be better used for affordable housing, and with an apparently willing seller open to discussions, the town planning board agreed on Nov. 16 to let the town board know it was unanimous in support of that option.

Four potential designs for East Hampton Town’s new senior citizens center, to be constructed on seven acres at 403 Abraham’s Path in Amagansett, were unveiled at the East Hampton Town Board’s work session this week.

New York State’s Clean Water, Clean Air, and Green Jobs Environmental Bond Act of 2022, which voters passed by a comfortable margin on Nov. 8, will be of greatest benefit to Long Island, an environmental activist said this week.

The East Hampton Town Trustees have extended the moratorium on new residential docks, catwalks, floating docks, floating structures, and platforms in waters under their jurisdiction for a second year.

Stymied by lawsuits and a New York State Supreme Court justice in its efforts to implement restrictions on aircraft operations at East Hampton Town Airport, the town board discussed options with its consultants this week.

The East Hampton Town Trustees gave permission to John Nicholas, an owner of the East Hampton Oyster Company and of Sunset Cove Marina, on Folkstone Creek off Three Mile Harbor in Springs, to convert a portion of the marina to an oyster nursery.